A Survey About: Things We Don't Like to Talk About!

Things We Don't Like to Talk About!

We undertook a survey of 500 businesses connected within LinkedIn and ask them where do they think their ‘waste processes’ are found within the business they work?

This took place during late 2018 and across as many sectors and industries as possible, including; Fashion, Retail, Warehousing, Shipping, Beauty, Furniture Making, Electro-Engineering, Aerospace, Car Manufacturing, Restaurants, Hoteliers among them. Size of company ranged from ￡100k to ￡10bn a year. This being rather small study, may or may not affect you, but, we hoped it would give a good scope and width in terms of business type and size. Most importantly, we hope it gives food for thought, in terms of ‘the time wasters’ or ‘the time killers’ found in business and to some an anonymous hidden waste! The kind of stuff no one either wants to admit to, nor believe it is happening….

.....we just don’t talk about it!

The Results of The Survey:

• 12% found waste in spending money on things they just didn’t need.
• 3% said the business was wasting money on high salaries for managers
• 8% said there were doing things twice because, it wasn’t done right first-time round
• 40% said they were being distracted from getting the work done
• 26% said they were getting constant emails to read
• 11% said the business used software that was slow or software that created the need to enter data twice

Results Discussed

Interestingly, the highest results came from being distracted from getting work done. This came from other members of staff who seemed to have nothing better than to interrupt to have chit chat. The second highest was having constant emails to read. Interestingly another survey quoted that nearly 40% checked their emails between 30-40 times an hour. Poor quality software came in at a third of time lost.

So why did Library Suite conduct a survey into time being wasted at work?

Most if not all Companies have complained about improving efficiencies, but less than half never do anything about it.

Measuring and making Process Improvements in something close to Library Suite, since its sister Company, The Blue Bear Partnership are Process Improvement Practitioners and have a variety of case studies showing millions of pounds of savings achieved, through, relatively easy methods of efficiency.

After all isn’t it the simple things in life that make the difference?

Library Suite’s Software adopted the same view when being designed. It’s been long established within the realms of HR Practitioners that if the workforce is under stimulated (bored) they will find things to do to make the day go faster or be more entertaining. Some can turn to be very mischievous and others, the almost terrible. It has been seen that this hasn’t been anything to do with a particular behavioural issue, but seen as a need to have fun, in order to break up the monotony of work.

For some, they will go for a number of so called ‘loo breaks’, some ‘fag breaks’ (even though they don’t even smoke) and others still are creating practical jokes with people for their enjoyment. Stealing paperwork, hiding designs. These are all going on every day. If you’re a manager did you know this? Are you taking part?

Ok here’s a very scary thought for all the white-collar workers and business reading this article.

Did you know that within manufacturing companies over 40% of waste occurs within administrative processes?

How on earth can this be right? Well, how much emphasis is directed within admin roles? How much measuring occurs within it? Are the manufacturing companies alone in this? Clearly not! This is also a problem within departments, let alone industries!

Here are some process improvement examples, that you might find interesting.

A company that completes bids for work and supply has so many people required to sign off processes, that they often may win the work in an outstanding bid, but, are still behind in processing the signed off paperwork! That’s right, it took one company over 6 months to fully sign off paperwork from Accounts, Engineering, Purchasing and Managers and the work had already started before they completed the bid! Luckily a process expert, was able to narrow this down to 30 days which was still too much, but a step in the right direction.

In the wonderful world of HR, I had a task of investigating a complaint. The complaint was already over a year old! The member of staff was off sick, on full pay during this time. The member of staff was sick because the time it took HR so long, to respond, leaving them feeling depressed. On going to their GP, they were given meds which increased this feeling (often a side affect of anti-depressants) and this made them worse. What happened to the administration of time? The Policy in place didn’t have a time period for action, so it was left and the thought, that hopefully the person might just leave!? A good example of how HR Policies don’t always work for the good of all. Rightly this was rectified. The person returned to work and hopefully has found better treatment in recent years.

Consider, when an email comes into the office. What measures are in place to consider how quickly, or even better, how well do we respond to them, if some respond at all?

As an example, let’s consider an email from a website enquiry. We encourage all on visiting our websites, to not leave without giving details, or a comment. We even have ‘auto-bots’ on sites automating admin nowadays. When, or how often are they responded to? I can state personally that I am still waiting for over 70% of my web enquiries to respond. Hopefully this isn’t your company!

As discussed admin tasks are never normally measured and if they are, the need to measure them properly needs balancing. A national bank created a measure for their ‘call centre’. The measure was answering 100 phone calls an hour. So, when the calls came in, they were answered like cowboys to a holster!

Unfortunately, the caller was always redirected and or transferred without any means of help!

So the calls were being answered at a rate of over 100 calls an hour, but the customer journey…..well, it was shocking and meant they had customers leave to another bank, where they were dealt with far better! See the point? There needs to be a balance on how we measure and measure for the better!

Ok so enough of this admin bullying what can be done to help these poor victims of boring work! What can be done to help ease the pain and burden of loading endless diary invites, meetings for meetings, trying to get work done, but being interrupted etc etc. Look no further!

Library Suite…. it has arrived from heaven!

It is easy to use. Its simple in function but behind it there’s some wonderful mechanics.

So, you hold files and have to update them yes?

Maybe it’s a report?

Maybe it’s updating a Policy or a Project?

Library Suite prompts you when you need to and takes you to the file that needs updating. You can program this ahead of any deadline so you’re never needing to panic! And we can safely say we will never hear you say ‘The auditor is here! Where’s the files!’

You can even ‘tag’ files in Library Suite so they are audit ready! – I know how clever and helpful is that?

So, to use Library Suite you simply Load your file, Set when it needs reviewing and click GO! ….that’s it.

What about updating these files, how’s does that work? Well guess what? It’s simple again!

Library Suite will send you an email and it will say you need to take a little look at this file. Click the link and the file (according to permissions set) will let you either edit it, read it, or authorise its changes.

If you’re a ‘reader’ then just read it click you understand and it will update your training matrix for you, or, keep you compliant in what ever you want to keep compliant in – say Law updates for example!

If you’re an ‘editor’ then click on the link, open the file check if its up to date, change it if you need to, type the changes made and save it again. If it doesn’t need updating, then don’t worry there a drop-down button to say, ‘no change required’.

If you’re a ‘reviewer’ then if a change is made you may get a copy to ‘review’ and check that you’re happy with it. If so, then click accept and an email will go to all your team for them to read and electronically sign off as read and understood. As they do this the compliance matrix will be updated and so with the dashboard showing you how your team are doing in this regard.

So, in this regard dear administrators!

Let’s have a quick look at the waste Library Suite Eliminates:

No need for training meetings to sign off paperwork!

No need to read what’s that’s not important – only stuff that is important!

No wasting time organising team talks,

No time wasted in updating planners,

No need for a ‘To Do List’ either.

Library Suite really does help! Imagine all the things time takes away from you, from your team, from your company! Want some of that 40% efficiency back? Talk to us at library Suite!

Calculating the Waste

In terms of money, just imagine calculating the hourly rate of sales turnover per employee times the amount of wasted time in admin that takes place! Now times that figure by, the number of Managers, Directors and staff in Departments all trapped, in this hidden cost that quite literally is oozing profits out the back door! Surely there can be a better use of this lost time and money!

On a more positive note, here are some more ways Library Suite can help firms and add-value in an admin world!

Does your Company hold an AEO (Authorised Economic Operator) Status?

Library Suite Manages and Automates all the standards of this HMRC Customs Accreditation.

Does your Company have a H&S requirement in place?

Library Suite Manages this and automates what you need to do to manage your HSE compliance.

Does your Company have Continuous Improvement in place? A Continuous Improvement Manager?

Library Suite Manages this and automate all the CI Training for Project Teams.

Does your firm have Project Managers and use Project Management skills for various projects going on?

Library Suite is a most useful tool in managing and automating these.

Does your Company have an ISO Accreditation? 9000:1 – 50,000:1?

Library Suite Can Manage These For You!

Is your Company a Training Centre or a College and do you need to keep all your trainees’ details and records along with a facility to manage your Assessors performances and IV reports for the Awarding Body?

Library Suite enables all of this and can help keep your team and centre compliant regardless of training multiple sites and projects. Did we say this also reduces the amount of admin for you too?

Is your Company an Awarding Body that has EV’s managing multiple-training centres, multiple-learners and do you want to have ‘live’ viewing of performances for compliance?

Library Suite can enable this for you too!

Library Suite is a most useful tool and diverse enough for you to use in different ways, for different things. Library Suite has no limits of how you use it, nor how many people use it.

Plenty of scope here, would you not agree? Why not book a demo and find out for yourself?

On the plus, if you can reduce the boredom at work, maybe staff can be more creative, have more energy and who knows it might just create the opportunity you’ve been waiting for! It is said, that when in times of being in space, it can enable moments of where euphoria occurs, and this produces something that we never thought of before! In these moments we can problem solve; find solutions and we can create amazing innovations!

What about having a building full of staff having those moments and finding ways to make the company, more diverse, more innovative, more fun to work in!

Library Suite will help eliminate and reduce the creator killer ‘excess admin,’ back to where it belongs, in a waste bin! Look to free yourself from the ‘waste’ elements and the money will look after itself, since waste, comes straight off your bottom line.

Library Suite is more than a Library…its Suite!