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The Human Factor - Processes and Procedures |
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Every company has processes and procedures, both formal and informal. Your company works the way it does for a reason. Like every living organism,
your team has learned to adapt to constantly changing conditions and perform in a "survival of the fittest" environment. Your staff has done an amazing job of keeping up with these
changing business conditions, changes in tools, and even changes in the team itself. They have adapted and continued to be productive under increasing demands. The ways that they work,
both independently and as a team, have evolved and will continue to evolve.
Nobody sets out to decrease productivity or efficiency. Millions of dollars are spent every year on new software and other tools to improve individual productivity.
However, it is the human factor that ultimately determines not only the success or failure of a team, but also its productivity and efficiency as a collective whole. Just when
you work to get everything stable, life and business happens forcing your team to adapt and change yet again. And now … perhaps performance, communication, repeatability, or
quality are not quite where you need them. You feel that you are doing a good job at managing your projects - but just aren't completely satisfied with the results.
But how can you tell if your processes are at the root of your issues? |
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Here are some symptoms you might recognize...
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 | Seemingly simple tasks consistently take longer to complete than you expect |
| Staff members come to you and ask where to find information they need |
| You regularly mediate conflicts between team members about how things should be done |
| You feel you are forced to micromanage in order to have any hope of knowing what is going on in your group |
| You overhear complaints from your staff that tasks - or even their jobs - are unimportant or unnecessary |
| The promotion, transfer or loss of a key team member can keep your team scrambling for weeks to make up for the void of operational knowledge now missing from the team |
| You find yourself lacking objective data for performance evaluations |
| One of your staff "dropping the ball" on a key assignment is an all too frequent occurrence |
| You've tried adding staff and it hasn't helped |
| New members of your team learn most or all of what they need to know “on the job” via informal or undocumented methods – and it just takes too long! |
| Changes in personnel or business objectives have a serious impact on your team’s productivity |
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Can Processes and Procedures really make your life easier and better?
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Just a little more attention to the human details of your operation can provide huge boosts in both productivity and morale. Instead of feeling like you are in a
continual spiral downward trying to keep up with the demands of your business, you can create a new cycle of productivity where your whole team feels empowered and energized. This is accomplished
by clarifying the roles of each individual, plainly documenting lines of communications, business processes and critical success factors for every part of the business. When people can really see
how their contribution matters and the part it plays in the bigger picture of the business that positive impact realized is often beyond belief.
Successful companies understand the importance of hiring the best people they can find for their creativity and capacity. However, due to hectic schedules and changing environments, this new
talent is more often than not simply thrown into the deep end. If these folks don't have the correct context to understand your company, the best they'll do is an awful lot of thrashing before they
learn to swim. And even then, they'll never win any swimming competitions.
With Provare as a partner you change that by giving all of your high value employees, both new and long-time team members, the tools and insights they need to do their jobs even better.
You will also have the assurance that everyone, regardless of the length of time on the team, is focused on moving your company in the same direction.
Benefits of Accurate and Effective Processes and Procedures |
 Reliability |
Sometimes just having everyone agree on one way to track the many on-going tasks in your group can turn cacophony into symphony. The right processes ensure that everyone is playing from the same sheet of music. |
Quality |
Effective processes evolve and develop as skill and knowledge improve but are always built with the end result in mind and will naturally ensure quality results. No longer will quality be a parallel consideration – it will be the predictable result of your work. |
Predictability |
When your team is working smoothly at a consistently high level of productivity, it becomes much easier to predict how long it will take them to do tasks. Now that’s an improvement that will please your boss even more than it pleases you! |
Data Integrity |
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.” How many man-hours are wasted in our companies because we just can't be sure the information we have is accurate? The right process must be built on a foundation that ensures that your critical data is not only accurate but also current, safe, and available. The 21st Century demands no less. |
Productivity |
"There's never time to do it right but always time to do it over." Most people laugh at that statement because they know the deeper, yet less obvious, truth. By putting needed inputs at their fingertips, effective processes ensure that your employees spend their time where it counts most – the first time around. |
Job Satisfaction |
Nothing frustrates conscientious knowledge workers more than feeling stifled by an ineffective work process or environment. Once your tools and processes work optimally for your people, they’ll be free to apply their whole hearts and minds to meeting your goals. |
Interdepartmental Relations |
Once staff members see how important their work is to the functioning of the company, their professional pride won't allow them to give less than stellar work to your internal customers - making those upper-level staff meetings a much more enjoyable experience! |
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Go Big or Go Home? Not Necessarily...
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Some companies truly need expensive large-scale enterprise process solutions like Six Sigma or ISO9001. And if your company has recently embarked on an enterprise-wide
quality initiative, Provare can partner with you to align your current processes with the new structure. But many others, perhaps like your company or your department, simply need help getting your team
better aligned and working together more seamlessly. Smaller teams often don’t require major changes to be more productive – but they may need the objectivity of a consultant to see where those gains are to be had.
With Provare there is no need to scrap your whole system and add to your workload the daunting task of learning another “expert’s” system. We enable you to keep the soul of your
company intact while making small improvements that will enhance the quality of your products and the productivity of your team by raising the quality of your processes.
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Provare Technology's Process Team has experience across a broad range of marketspaces.
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We can serve as an accurate and honest reflection of what is and is not working in your environment. Additionally, we can apply our broad experience from multiple industries to help you develop and apply creative solutions to your specific situation. How can we help you?
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