Going with the Flow Part II: The Devil in The Details
In the first installment of the Flow series, I discussed the Navgar platform from the position of being a “newbie”, setting things in motion when you are overwhelmed by infinite possibilities. I presented a framework for using Navgar to fight the largest fires plaguing your organization. Now, with active flows in operation (with appropriate monitoring and control functions) addressing the deepest pain points, we can transition focus and mindset. Instead of addressing areas of persistent panic we can shift gears to uncovering and consideration of lower priority but still vexing problems affecting your organization: Are there working processes existing to your organization that just require fine tuning to be operationally effective? While any of the following may be chugging along and performing a useful function, are there optimization opportunities that can boost contributor or organization health?
Employee Onboarding: Onboarding typically involves numerous manual tasks and decentralized paperwork, leading to delays. Many of the enterprise platforms marketing a solution of centralization are laborious to set up and adjust as needed, making them in fact a part of the problem they seek to address. Almost anything they do can be done in Navgar, where all other work is happening. Simply map out the existing onboarding process to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Build your flow, taking into consideration the desired automated task assignments, and centralized onboarding documentation. You will need to provide training and resources for HR staff and new hires to ensure smooth adoption but this is minutes instead of hours. As you continuously gather feedback from new hires and HR staff, you will iterate and refine the onboarding process over time. By creating a well conceived onboarding flow in Navgar, you will be streamlining document submissions, task assignments, and training modules for new hires, and coordinating functions of the business for rapid success.
Approval Processes: In their current state, you've likely encountered lengthy approval chains with manual handoffs, causing delays in decision-making and bureaucracy to pile up. Let's streamline these processes by first evaluating existing approval procedures to pinpoint bottlenecks and unnecessary steps. Once you've established clear rules and criteria for approvals, minimizing subjective decision-making, and speeding up the process, any future hiccups will become more apparent in the Navgar platform, making it easier to address them head-on. Next, ensure that employees are trained on the new approval process, providing ongoing support and feedback for continuous improvement. You will soon find yourself with streamlined approval workflows with automated routing, predefined rules, and reduced approval layers, enabling faster decision-making and improved efficiency. Can you say “YES” to that??
Expense Reimbursement: Most of us are willing to tolerate the hellscape of grotesquely inefficient expense reimbursement processes because it’s our money at stake. At best, you can expect manual expense submission, paper receipts, and lengthy approval cycles, resulting in delays and administrative overhead. I once struggled with a platform that demanded submissions specific to the penny - even when dealing with conversion of foreign currency and vowed “Never again!” Again, there is an evaluation of the existing process to identify inefficiencies and pain points (and the response from the chorus is “ALL OF IT!”), intelligently implement workflow in Navgar that automates approval workflows based on predefined rules, and importantly provides real-time visibility into reimbursement status. Post training and go-live of the new system, the key metrics to monitor are: Turnaround time and employee satisfaction to measure the impact of the new system.
Performance Reviews: I won’t beat a dead horse about Human Resources platforms, my point has already been made. They’re cumbersome, inefficient, and hinder the great work that the pros in this profession do every day. That said, I’ve heard many times that the processes themselves may be a bigger problem: the performance review process may be manual, time-consuming, and subjective (one sided), leading to inconsistencies and dissatisfaction among employees. If this is a problem in your organization and you are in a position to do something about it, I suggest an overhaul. Evaluate the current performance review process to identify pain points and areas for improvement (or scrap completely and start over). Build performance review flows that align with your organization's goals and objectives. Train managers and employees on how to use the new system effectively and encourage ongoing feedback and communication throughout the year. Navgar will allow you to build an automated performance management system that allows for continuous feedback, goal tracking, and performance evaluations based on predefined metrics and objectives.
The examples above are useful examples of Flows that were consciously created and probably formally exist in your organization but may be opportunistic for improvement. Are these the exciting disasters you can hero cosplay for and save the day with a miracle transformation? No, but a thorough review of business processes will undoubtedly uncover some diamonds in the rough and allow you to move the needle inch by inch to a meaningful scale.
