Who is responsible for an Organisations efficiency?

This article is the sole opinion of the author and is not officially being endorsed by any organization and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of said organization.

In 2016, the President of an organization where I once worked sent a memorandum regarding the creation of a task force aimed at improving the success of the clients served by the organization. This group would, among other things, lead “…efforts to increase efficiencies throughout our institution.” I suspect over the upcoming years much will be heard about improving efficiency in all areas. 

Webster’s Dictionary defines efficient as “functioning effectively” and “being effective without wasting time or effort or expense.” Efficiency is defined as “skillfulness in avoiding wasted time and effort” and “the ratio of the output to input of any system.” It’s the true understanding of what it means to be efficient and doing something efficiently that gives me pause when I step back and view this organization as a whole entity and examine changes that have occurred or are likely to occur in the future. My concern is how many people in positions responsible for making major decisions truly know what it means and what it takes to be efficient? Sadly, some or many of their decisions will be looked upon as efficient decisions when in fact they are not. Most notably is the notion that eliminating spending or expenditures is an example of efficiency when in certain instances it isn’t and can many times lead to inefficiency.

Admittedly, any organization is in a state of flux and thus a constantly evolving and changing entity. It would be foolish to think there should be little or no need for change. It’s reasonable to expect as time passes, positions, services, and areas of an organization do become redundant or no longer serve their original purpose. It’s a simple result of change. However, that’s not true in every case and doesn’t always mean the occupants of those positions or services are themselves redundant or no longer serve a purpose. In fact, closer examination may reveal quite the opposite. The decision to discontinue or eliminate anything or anyone should be made with care, with honest investigation, and without personal motivation.

I would direct your attention to an article in Forbes magazine from Feb. 13th, 2013, written by Amy Rees Anderson titled Great Employees Are Not Replaceable. The article addresses the replacing of employees. Ms. Anderson states, “When a company has a truly great employee, that employee carries value that simply cannot be replaced. They carry deep institutional knowledge of the organization. They have extensive product, systems, and process knowledge.” She comments on a good employee’s experience on what works and hasn’t worked in the past and she goes on to state that such individuals play an important role in the morale and cohesive nature of a team with other coworkers. 

When decisions are made to transfer an employee to another area or end a service unit or area of support, this decision needs to be made carefully. To simply decide a position or service is no longer needed and thus move an individual or individuals to other areas (or worse yet, let them go) without making sure one understands the true nature of what that person or unit did is folly and can ultimately lead to the opposite of what was initially intended. It’s this attitude that concerns me.

On the surface, a unit or service may seem more of a financial burden than a benefit to an organization and thus eliminating it makes fiscal sense. This may seem a great idea at first glance, but now the duties once taken care of by, let’s say for the sake of argument, 8 people has been placed in the hands of another group of people, thus increasing their workload. However, has consideration been given to the idea there may be a reasonable need to hire a couple extra personnel to help compensate for the additional work load? 

Truth be told, we could all probably handle a little extra responsibility in our jobs, we just don’t want to admit it. But too much extra work leads to burnout. And it’s usually the best employees that are most impacted by the extra responsibility simply because of the nature of their work ethic. And when burnout occurs, productivity goes down, morale decreases, resentment begins to develop, work quality declines, complaints increase, and people begin to shut down or simply quit. Suddenly, what one thought was an efficient money-saving decision isn’t that at all. It ends up having the opposite effect. Sometimes to be efficient, one may need to actually spend some money. Leaders need to seriously examine the role an employee or unit plays and investigate what it is they actually do before transferring an individual to another area or eliminating positions and units all together.

Being efficient takes work. It takes time and attention. It requires knowing just what is going on in the area one supervises or manages. It also involves communication, purposeful oversight, and sometimes a little research. In the area in which I worked, we used to schedule events using a simple grid created on Excel. There was a grid for each room. We had 9 assigned rooms (not to mention the other rooms we used), 19 regular users of these rooms , and around 45 semi-regular users. I didn’t bother to count the number of events requiring the use of these rooms. Each year was a confusing and frustrating struggle as we worked to schedule an upcoming year's worth of activities without conflicts. When an addition to our main building was added, I knew we were going to acquire four more dedicated rooms and two more priority scheduling rooms. Thus adding to the chaos.

I played a large role in assisting with this scheduling in the organization and held responsibility for all our room scheduling in our area once the fiscal year was scheduled. I decided there had to be a better way. So, over the course of 9 months, I researched scheduling software. I requested the purchase of some software I liked, tested it, and found it made scheduling a simple matter of exporting from software used elsewhere in the organization and importing that information into the new software itself. It populates the whole year for me at the touch of a button, notifies me of conflicts, allows changes and customization. That’s a bit of an over-simplification but still, I had another copy purchased for my supervisor so she could also view and adjust the schedule if needed.

The point isn’t, “Look what I did!” The point is, what used to take me sometimes two days or more of focused attention just to get the ground work prepared now takes maybe two hours. I don’t have to use Post-it notes stuck to the wall or use Microsoft Outlook to do scheduling. (And yes, those are two examples of how some scheduling is done.) What is notable here is we actually had to spend money on two licenses. However, that expenditure made things better, increased my value to my supervisor, saved time for both of us, increased our speed, and made our process and work more efficient. And I assure you, if a time-on-task analysis was done, the money saved far exceeds the money spent. That! my friends, is an example of efficiency, and what it means to be efficient and work efficiently.

Any organization's notion of slashing funds, eliminating services, saying “no” to requests, and making decisions without proper investigation, needs to be slowed. Instead there needs to be collaboration between departments and units, better communication, thinking outside the box, and doing something a different way. More importantly, one needs to talk to, elicited feedback from, and listen to the individuals for which one is responsible. They know the true “story.” They see and deal with it every day on a personal basis. They are your best source of information for what works and what doesn’t. 

In the end, remember this: slashing funds and eliminating expenditure doesn’t result in efficiency or an efficient system. Efficiency or an efficient system result in the need for fewer funds and decreases expenditure.

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