Solve Your Process Bottlenecks, Not Your Sales.

Maybe more sales isn’t the issue. Maybe solving your process bottlenecks is.

I’ve been having a lot of conversations with business owners lately that are significantly different than in prior years. I’m hearing that increasing sales isn’t the problem they are facing right now. The problem is inefficient processes and procedures and declining employee output.

The articles I’ve been reading lately tend to support this.

So, what’s going on exactly?

Undoubtedly supply chain interruptions are being encountered by just about everyone. Whether you are waiting to get your new car/truck due to the lack of chips, or you’ve been involved in a wreck and your car sits at the body shop for 5 months waiting on parts, it seems that nothing is as readily available as we’ve come to expect in our country. And it doesn’t seem like this is going away anytime soon and maybe it will get worse.

So sure, supply chain issues such as manufacturing companies getting materials on time to make whatever it is they are making slows things down. But what else is slowing us down?

Perhaps our people, processes and procedures are slowing us down as well. What do searches on the internet tell us about this? A lot I think.

  • If you search “employee burnout” you will see about 579,000,000 hits. 579 Million!
  • “Quiet quitting” results in over 300 million hits.
  • “Quiet firing” over 130 million hits.
  • What about the “great resignation”? over 1.4 Billion (with a B) hits!

What’s going on and what are these searches telling us and what do we do to engage, retain, and help employees (and companies) do better and feel better about our current work dilemma?

Maybe a deeper dive into HCM (human capital management) will help us navigate this.

What is HCM? It is “a strategic approach to effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage.”

What does HCM consulting focus on for employees and employers? Here is a general list of topics that HCM consulting provides:

  • Maximize employee performance
  • Policies and systems
  • Success through people / human capital
  • Employee psychological ownership
  • Training and development
  • Motivation
  • Maintenance / continuous improvement
  • Recruiting – training – onboarding / from hire to retire
  • Systems/software but more than that
  • Retention
  • Burnout
  • Future leaders
  • Applying lean principles to HCM

Questions we should be asking to know whether or not we may have an HCM problem that needs to be addressed:

  • Are you struggling bringing on new talent, and keeping them?
  • Are you trying to do more with fewer people?
  • Are your existing people experiencing burnout and/or not as excited/driven these days?
  • Do you/your people know there are inefficiencies but have neither the time nor the approach to fix them?
  • Do your teams struggle with inter/intra-departmental communication? Is there friction between departments? Are departments siloed?
  • Did you put software and/or other tools in place to increase efficiency only to experience the opposite?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, or similar questions, maybe you need a Human Efficiency Expert. What is that exactly?

According to Webster: “one who analyzes methods, procedures, and jobs in order secure maximum efficiency.”

If you are experiencing any of these issues, or just wish to talk to someone about efficiency issues with your staff/departments, drop us a line, we’d love to chat.