Help your employees to effortlessly increase their effectiveness

 

Managing in a Downturn - How Process Mapping can help

Process Mapping

When the economy takes a downturn, budgets are inevitably squeezed. A recruitment freeze may be imposed or headcount reductions, leading to redundancies. The staff that remain find themselves under more pressure to complete their work. This is especially true if they are also required to assist any temps that have arrived, to teach them how to perform their new roles.

Departing staff take all of the knowledge in their heads with them. In many cases, the extent of this knowledge that is lost to the company only becomes apparent when someone realises that something that 'always used to happen' suddenly stops working.

One way to ensure that this doesn't happen in your company is to document your key processes. Having a graphical representation of 'who does what and when' will ensure that you have a reference point for everyone.

This is particularly relevant to Marketing, Sales and Finance departments who may not have their processes documented as formally as their colleagues in Operations.

A simple extract from a process map is shown below. These can be produced in various formats, colour coded or b/w and are not expensive to produce.

process reviews

Inputs and outputs for each part of the process are identified and key documents can be attached to each task, including images, if required

Each task can be split out in to sub-tasks, with 'drill down' to see the details

This process mapping technique can be applied across an organisation, to individual 'end to end' processes or to simple 'one team' activities. It is a remarkably clear method of visually identifying the key parts of a process, breaking them down in to smaller parts and allocating responsibilities.

When a process is not working properly, for whatever reason, it is a much simpler task to refer to an elegant diagram and get to the root of the issue, rather than trying to understand what is happening without supporting documentation.

Reasons to consider graphically documenting your key processes:

 

Some practical, costed 'real life' examples - how much could you save?

If you would like to find out more about our cost-effective process mapping service, please contact us:

e mail: info@ef-ef.co.uk
Tel: 07766 56 52 35
Tel: 02380 135922