The substantial investment of time, energy and money required to implement workflow (process management) systems offers the prospect of significant returns. However, if your organization does not yet have a workflow system, or you have no personal experience with these solutions, it is reasonable to ask questions such as: ● How will I benefit from implementation? ● What will a system like this offer me? ● What financial return can I expect from implementation? To help you assess these questions, we have compiled five benefits of implementing a workflow system. We will explore them in a series of five posts, starting with this article. Since increased efficiency is now an almost self-evident—or at least widely recognized—benefit, we will focus instead on aspects that may initially seem surprising, or at least less obvious. The first is employee satisfaction: what impact does workflow implementation have in this area?
Beyond the obvious benefits
While the efficiency gains mentioned above are an undeniable benefit of workflow systems, employees remain a company's most valuable asset and, at the same time, its largest cost. Decades of research have repeatedly shown that the most successful companies in competitive markets are those that invest significantly in their people. This does not necessarily—or exclusively—mean high salaries. Rather, it means meeting employees' other needs to a high standard and providing opportunities. These may include training, career advancement, other incentives or rewards, and even flexible working hours or the option to work from home. Although these opportunities primarily focus on employee retention and are often subject to certain conditions, they may not deliver satisfactory long-term results in building genuine, intrinsic commitment. One reason is that while improved working conditions can be highly motivating in the short term, the nature of the work and tasks themselves becomes increasingly important over time. In other words, employees' attention gradually shifts toward their day-to-day work and the tools that support it: ● Is the tool available to me easy to use? ● Could at least some of my tasks be automated? ● Can I work efficiently with my current tools? If employees' responses to these questions are negative or largely unfavorable, the ability of working conditions to retain them declines dramatically over time, as does their efficiency, because intrinsic motivation can no longer be sustained.
Employee efficiency
It may come as a surprise, but research confirms that employees want to be efficient and effective. It is human nature to enjoy seeing the results of our work and knowing that the tasks we complete have an impact on our immediate or wider environment. When we feel that our day-to-day work has purpose and impact, we become much more committed to both our work and our employer. Conversely, it can be frustrating to feel that our work is ineffective, has no impact or is even unnecessary. The same applies when many of our tasks are dull and repetitive, and we cannot see how they help us or the organization we work for move forward. An example from our own experience involved a sales representative at a large company who complained during our discussions about the way the company's ERP system worked. Whenever the representative needed to issue a quotation, they would prepare it, but once it was ready and only needed to be sent or printed, they still had to navigate through six (!) different screens, selecting “No” on each, to reach their goal. It is easy to see that having to complete such an arguably unnecessary sequence of tasks several times a day guarantees frustration while also wasting costly working time. In practice, this “extra” activity took sales representatives approximately 1.5–2 minutes per quotation. Since they might issue 5–10 quotations a day, the system frustrated users just as often. At this volume, the cost of 1.5–2 minutes of working time per quotation may still seem negligible. However, if the company employs 10 sales representatives, each issuing an average of 5 quotations a day, that amounts to 50 quotations in total. The daily time lost is then 75–100 minutes. Over a week, this adds up to 375–500 minutes, or 6.25–8.33 working hours. Based on 40 working weeks a year, the total reaches 250–333 working hours—a noticeable amount, particularly when expressed as full-time work, as it effectively represents 1.5–2 months (!) of wasted working time. Naturally, we can also assign salary costs to this figure to see how much those extra 1.5–2 minutes cost the company each year. Not to mention that, in any role, time allocated to administration comes at the expense of core professional activities—in this example, selling. While a sales representative is handling administration, they are almost certainly not selling anything.
What comes next?
Another dimension of the problem is that, in such cases, the next step is not necessarily clear to the employee. Why should a sales representative have to “figure out” what to do next? Why does the system not provide the next value-creating task, such as a scheduled phone call or another customer follow-up that could also contribute to their personal professional success? An advanced workflow solution can help avoid this problem while also delivering the following benefits: ● An intuitive, simple, easy-to-use interface without unnecessary activities or clicks ● Clear, visually presented priorities through dashboards and task lists ● Well-defined goals that employees move closer to as they complete their tasks ● Automation of repetitive tasks, freeing up time otherwise spent on administration and other low-level activities ● Support for higher-level tasks that generate greater returns for the company while improving employee satisfaction by enabling people to do meaningful, valuable work ● Support for collaboration between organizational units ● Automatic generation of required documents and the highest possible level of automation for document-related administrative processes. This is where the connection between a properly planned and executed workflow implementation and employee satisfaction becomes clear: a workflow system built on carefully considered, well-designed business processes makes day-to-day work simpler, faster and less frustrating. Looking at its secondary effects, we can also see that automating repetitive tasks reduces labor costs by drastically cutting—or eliminating—the time required to complete individual tasks. This makes the return on investment measurable from this perspective as well, while effectively complementing other employee retention initiatives and helping sustain their relevance over the long term.
