714-932-2284 • 866-443-1058
Staffing and Cost Management |
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Team Work Design : Staffing & Cost Management |
If you have to reduce cost due to budget – and this usually means staffing – the staff remaining must accomplish the same, or more work. This presents an enormous practical and motivational challenge to any organization. Permanent or temporary changes in staffing, due to business conditions, create staff dissatisfaction based on perceived or real imbalances in workloads.
Our goal is to address this need by defining how the work will get done while maintaining the motivation and retention of key people. Our Work Smart SystemÔ uses proprietary analysis tools to develop a tactical plan, which we can implement with you. Our approach combines the disciplines of operations, finance, and human resources. Our clients are typically senior managers in the marketing and sales.
Results (Start at the end)
Identify individual and team goals and priorities. Often, business objectives are clear, but priorities and alignment are not. It is important to determine performance metrics and goals for every function. This process leads to the identification of high / low impact function – separating critical from trivial functions and tasks. Once identified group and job priorities are easily defined. The final step is to analyze workflow drivers and restrainers to determine contingencies, resources and inter-function alignment around a common mission and production level.
Social (Address the social fabric of the group)
Identify team communication, problem solving, conflict resolution and decision making patterns. Our model is based on defining Four Preference and Five Functionalities. These are benchmarked to high performance team scores. A common approach to leveraging strengths and managing weaknesses builds team commitment necessary to the challenges of handling workload and achieving goals. Our research shows that a strong social network is a prerequisite to adaptability and sustained performance.
Work (Address process and performance)
Identify the most efficient flow and workloads. The true measure of a team is its ability to produce consistent results. Our Lean Flow model identifies disconnects, redundancies and slippages distinguishing between “line” related tasks and “staff,” related tasks. The redeployment of tasks in relation to flow and time will substantially increase team productivity. This requires the alignment of flow instead of the alignment of jobs. Our research shows that most teams are 40% efficient, but can achieve 70%+ by developing protocols and a repetitive “logic”.
After the analysis and plan, facilitation of the changes must be carried out in a concentrated effort to create initial successes while simultaneously “retiring” the old structures and job descriptions. This effort usually requires several months to sort out “unaddressed issues’ and to adapt to the details of the new / revised workloads. The ultimate goal is to maintain and increase motivation in the face of (usually) perceived work overload. The third party facilitation approach is always the most effective at this stage to address the conflicts, compensation and performance issues that inevitably arise when you are dealing with people under pressure.
Case Study:
A large global medical devices business faced with staff reductions during the launch of two new products, called on us to assist in them meeting delivery deadlines by improving “team work”. Based on our joint analysis we were quickly able to establish that project priorities were not clear, that functional responsibilities were distributed amongst too many functions, and that there was no mechanism to address these disconnects. Our first step was to facilitate the development of a hierarchy of goals – business and schedule. The second step was to work on interdepartmental communications, which was preventing productive dialogue and problem solving. The third step was to design and facilitate a cross function decision making systems and protocols to address deficiencies in schedule and cost. The result was a restructure, the elimination of low value work and the achievement of delivery goals.
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Call Debbie Holzkamp at 714-932-2284 or email at dholzkamp@hdspremierconsulting.com
to review your needs, this program and timing that works for you.
