ReThink Productivity Podcast
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ReThink Productivity Podcast
Chapter 6 - What can we stop doing to free up our people?
Sue and Simon discuss Chapter 6 - What can we stop doing to free up our people? from their book "Every Second Counts: How to Achieve Business Excellence, Transform Operational Productivity, and Deliver Extraordinary Results."
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Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. We're back with Chapter 6 from the book Every Second Counts, and today we're on what can we stop doing to free up our people? And, as ever, we're joined by the main author of the book, sue Hi Sue.
Speaker 1:Hi so I suppose the subtitle for this chapter is in a world where businesses are looking to differentiate themselves and add more value for customers, bringing in new services and customer offer elements are usually in the mix. This means business operations are getting even more complex, so finding things to stop doing is the main essence of this chapter.
Speaker 2:Any key bullets to start with sounds like it should be really easy, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:yep, that's straightforward. Yeah, let's just stop doing some stuff. The trouble is the reason why key bullets to start with Sounds like it should be really easy, doesn't it? Yep, dead straightforward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's just stop doing some stuff. The trouble is the reason why things and processes are there can be quite complicated and often linked to other things that you don't realise. So some of the challenge is unravelling that. The other thing is that very often businesses get stuff that almost becomes what I call a comfort blanket to them. So they've been at one time there's been an issue so they've had to do extra checks and things on it, and then it becomes something that becomes so embedded in the business that it can be really difficult to stop.
Speaker 2:So even if you do identify something that you don't have to do anymore, it can be really difficult to get people to stop doing them. There'll be times when we go into businesses and we'll be looking at processes and we'll find somebody that's doing some I don't know checking off all the stock that arrives or double-checking some refunds or all sorts of different things. It'll be, oh yeah, we stopped doing that five years ago but the team had it so drilled into them that it was important and it was essential to pass the audit and probably to gain your bonus. That actually just kept on doing it because it's hard for people to adjust from it being super important to, it doesn't matter anymore so best things to stop doing then?
Speaker 1:so in that, in that example, activities that do not directly impact how customer experience, um, or tasks that are not absolutely essential for how the business operates. So there's a customer bucket and a task bucket, but intrinsically they're both linked to customer, because this is about freeing up time to focus on the customer, which may mean you've got to then look at your rotas and reschedule people to make sure in the right place when your customers are, and or saving some money out the budget as well and it's not just.
Speaker 2:Not all businesses have customers directly in them. So for businesses that don't, that aren't directly customer facing. So somewhere like a warehouse, it's actually how you put more time into the things that your customers, your end customer, really values. So for a warehouse, you want to be doing lots of picking and getting stuff out the door.
Speaker 1:You don't want to be doing lots of stock counts and rebinning and moving stuff around to create space, for example so if we look at a couple of case studies that are in the book, first one, I suppose, relates to something that's been growing over a number of years, so the the rise of card and the decline of cash, although there's been a bit of a rebalance in the last couple of years. But most retailers have had it drilled into them around emptying tills, safe checks, banking, cashing up all those things for forever and a day. But that started to move to some slightly different thinking yeah.
Speaker 2:So when there's less cash, you just don't need to count your tills as often, and generally, unless you've got an identified risk or an identified issue in a, in a store or a site, you probably don't need to be counting it as often as you think. So a lot of businesses have just gone to reconciling once a week, so then they'll count all the tills, count the safe and reconcile it. You know, whereas other places that we see are still reconciling safe counts every you know, twice a day so kind of Small process time but relatively high frequency.
Speaker 1:If you've got lots of people moving on and off tills, if you've got cashier accountability, not lane accountability, that kind of stuff You've touched on stock. So this whole concept of checking items off because you may have lost something in the round.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and most businesses that are kind of customer facing will have their stock delivered from an internal distribution centre. So if you start checking stuff up at a store level, it's kind of only checking up on yourselves really. It's left hand and right hand. So if the store is short of it, then it's in the warehouse. If the warehouse is short of it, it's in the store. It's all still within the business, so it doesn't matter. That's different for things like direct deliveries. So if it's the first time it enters your business, then you'd want to do a check and I guess it could be quite confusing if you're in store. So why do I have to check that delivery and not this one? It's like you know it kind of. Unless you know the background to it, it doesn't always make sense to to not do the work yeah, and on the kind of routine of stock, then lots of counting yes.
Speaker 2:So there are businesses that love to do counts and there's been tests done. So there've been trials where they've set businesses up, done a an item level stock count, had some with regular counts, some with minimal interference, and the less you count, the more accurate your stock file figure is. And that's really why you do count is to keep your stock file figure accurate because that's what determines your availability, drives your order system and all the rest of it. So moving to just doing exceptions is by far the best way. So anytime you're doing routine stock counts there's usually a better way and just doing it in um when there's gaps and that sort of thing is a much better way to do it so kind of.
Speaker 1:The more you can, the more you corrupt to some degree yeah within, within reason, clearly and tricky in the current climate of high shrink and volatility of suppliers and and um deliveries okay and the more crowded your stock room is, the more stock you've got in place, the harder it is to count accurately.
Speaker 2:So it can be really difficult if you've got stock in two or three different locations on your stock on your shop floor which you might well have it's a promotional or you've got it in impulse sites and all that sort of thing. You might have some on top stock. You might have some in the warehouse. You have to try get it right. It's quite difficult in that situation and if your stock room's crammed so you've got brown cardboard boxes behind other brown cardboard boxes, it's just really difficult to get right yeah, and then we've got things like um paper, audit data, that whole.
Speaker 1:Let's call it the admin bucket.
Speaker 2:Yes, anywhere that you've got paperwork is a good place to look to say can we stop doing this? The challenge with paper is it stays locally, so there's no visibility of it centrally. So then if it's worth anything, somebody's got to go and check it locally. So either digitise it or stop it would be the best thing.
Speaker 1:And on that digitisation point there's a kind of general I'd call it a myth that we just digitise stuff and it makes it more efficient. I mean, reality tells us and timings tell us it's actually quicker to write on a piece of paper for some people than it is to sit and type in a PC, because they're not touch typing every day. So to some degree that can become slower. And if a system forces you through a defined process where before you've been able to circumvent that because it's paper or it's not um, you're not driven through it the correct path, it can feel slower but actually downstream the data is more accurate, it means that you can make better decisions, etc, etc. So sometimes you'll get feedback that these things take longer, when actually that in the short term might not be a bad thing because overall accuracy grows and increases and it does depend how you implement things.
Speaker 2:So it's always better to be able to scan a barcode than have to type something in. And we do see systems where people have to type things in and duplicate it, which you wouldn't want to do. And then you get the challenges like wi-fi connectivity. So if you are going to digitize something, have you really got the network in each of your sites? You know warehouses can be really difficult to get good coverage in, just because when you've got perhaps an awkward shape building with lots of stock in, it's really hard to get a good signal anywhere. But signals dropping out is a major cause of delay in some businesses, and it can be the same in stores where you've got some downstairs basement that's in thick concrete and really hard to get you to. Yeah, people have got stock down there.
Speaker 1:And before again back to just digitising slightly before we close, I think the key is, before you digitize, to rationalize and review the process so you're not just lifting and shifting the piece of paper. You're really challenging why maybe it's still got things that were introduced in covid cleaning or extra checks that have just lived there, or stuff that's been added in through different departments health and safety security for for one-off events or moments in time that have just become the norm and make it really heavy and clunky but have no real value from a colleague, customer, commercial impact, health and safety impact anymore.
Speaker 1:So digitizing is good but make sure you're digitizing the right process, not just the the current process yeah so before we finish, um any other bits that you want to close on for chapter six around things we can stop doing to free up time for our people I think having a look around for things that you can stop is a really good thing to do on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:So it's something to challenge yourself in your operation. You know, can you find one thing every month that you can stop? Even if you don't find those things, forcing yourself into that mindset lets you identify things that you wouldn't have seen before, and if you can find something that you can stop doing, that's relatively easy. It becomes a quick win that adds value and it can set a tone for how we want to do things within the business.
Speaker 1:So if you can get into that mindset of what can we stop, it can really make big differences and I think I'd add to that it's much easier and we're much better at finding things we can start doing and adding in and belt and bracing stuff and making sure it's it's all 100% than stopping things. And you know, there was some information I was reading the other day about some businesses abroad where they challenged themselves for every one thing that went into the business they had to stop doing two. You know a minimum if you had one thing in, stop doing one thing and at least you're in a relatively neutral position. If you can stop doing two or three things, then clearly you're growing that opportunity to redeploy labor or to save some labor as well. Yeah, so we'll be back in a few weeks with chapter seven, which is I've added new services, how can I make them more efficient? So a good follow-on from chapter six. Thanks again, sue, and we'll catch up soon. Bye.
