A game room, a pantry and a smoking zone- Where we spent time in our audit!

I was recently reading Ashneer Grover's 'Doglapan' and in one of the chapters he briefly cites an initiative on how his wife innovatively put up posters reading 'Take the stairway to success' in the lift lobby so that it put out a message to the employees to take the stairs to their 2nd floor office. This would save the operating costs on lift operations and make it tough for employees to frequently go down on chai and sutta breaks.

While this might seem a very innocent step taken by the HR/ Admin department for the well being of the employees and highlight the concern the organization breeds for employee health and well being , the hidden agenda was cost saving and more productivity.

This reminded me of one of our audit recommendations a few years back for a start up that had recently started operations in a well known IT park of Bangalore. While we were auditing the floor space utilization since they were paying an exuberant rent for the new premises which included a game room and a huge pantry filled with goodies (yes start up culture and funding money), we noted that these corners of the office occupied more- both floor space and the time an employee spent here. While we did not want to disrespect the 'incentives' that attracted young talents, we found an opportunity to cut costs and still retain the work culture.

Recommendation 1:

Do not have a lot of games in the game room, keep them to a minimal 3-4 games that can be played for a short duration including a few puzzles. This will reduce the average time spent by the employee in the game room, also the psychological pressure to give a chance to others waiting in line will let them quicken the game.

Use the rest of the available space by placing bean bags / comfortable chairs where an employee can sit and work while waiting for his chance.

(The admin and the HR actually implemented this on floor!)

Recommendation 2:

We noted that every morning the employees drained the previous day's water into the sink to refill their bottles for the day. Though, this was not anything to do with cutting operating costs, it was heartening to see RO water being wasted like this. We again recommended that a few potted plants be placed in the one of the empty corners just near the un utilized space near the sink and employees be encouraged to water the pots with the previous day fill, rather than emptying it into the sinks. The admin even put up a bulletin board where employees had to aggregate the water that they saved for the day.

While this was implemented, a lot many employees started keeping potted plants on their desks as well and it was a treat to watch the space a year later when we went for a re-audit.

Recommendation 3:

While we performed a data run on the employee time in and time out, a trend highlighted that certain specific group of employees were out of the office and the same time, every day. The time range lasted somewhere from an average 20-30 minutes, around three times a day. That meant a total productivity loss of 90 minutes * ~25 employees during a typical 9 AM- 6 PM office hours. What was surprising was the data anomaly revealed that these employee sets moved in certain groups at specific times, and almost belonged to the same team. The pattern was identical throughout the audit period and it pegged our curiosity. While we suspected a secret cartel (auditor instincts) plotting a fraud, the root cause was something too na?ve to even report.

After a couple of days of observing (read following) the employee groups, we had discovered that these sets went on chai-sutta breaks. Since this was an IT park, the nearest smoking zone was a good 10 minute walk from the premises and this was acceptable. But a loss of ~49500 hours a month across bands was not! . We recommended that the company request the IT park to designate a new smoking zone at a much more closer proximity and this was also taken care by the management, with a pinch of salt!

The operational audit that we performed in this new funded start up was one of the most fun audits I have done in my professional career. While we always had cost cutting and profit maximization as the ultimate goal, there were these small areas that are usually overlooked, where we gave our most creative recommendations that were appreciated by young, new-age start up company management.

Against popular beliefs that audit is merely finance and a fault finding activity, the right approach and thinking a little out of the box or maybe thinking like there is no box can open doors for the function to business partner and add realistic and materialistic value to the organization!