Lubricating The Systemic Processes In Your Business

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All businesses run on a systemic basis. Without processes, guidelines, protocols, your business is unlikely to function correctly. At certain sizes, it will not function at all. This is why we hire employees, to become caretakers for certain processes and to keep their success regular under such stewardship. For instance, we cannot expect a CEO to come down to the mailroom and package the products themselves. Much in the same way we rely on our blood cells to transport oxygen around the body, a business leader must trust every node of employment under their care to correctly perform their job. Furthermore, the role of employment policies and procedures allows for quick and thorough replacement should they become unable to perform that task.

But these systems are not perfect, no matter how excellent our hired staff are. From time to time they need improving, optimizing and developing. In other words, lubricating the systemic processes within your business can help it operate like a well-oiled machine, avoiding problems from becoming worse, or preventing them outright in the first place. With that in mind, we’d like to recommend the following advice:

Reviewing Policies

It’s not enough to review policies after they have contributed to a calamity. For instance, if you find that staff aren’t obligated to report safety equipment failures for up to twenty-four hours, that’s an obvious hole that needs fixing. It can be worth working through your hiring practices. For instance, removing the first and last name, nationality and gender from all applications that are reviewed can ensure no subconscious social bias is ever-present when choosing applicants to interview. Little improvements like this can help you optimize your firm a little further.

Reviewing Results

Reviewing the results of policies can also be a great place to find inconsistencies or difficulties in your approach. To use an example, you may find that your cleaning services seem to clean your bathrooms less frequently or deeply than they used to, and from that point on finding a new service could be important. After all, office hygiene is paramount. It could also be that in an effort to improve your environmental impact, you recommit to recycling. Maybe you wish to buy red diesel drums from suppliers that care about their proper handling this time. Little adjustments like this are well within your powers to apply, and could offer a real beneficial result.

Streamlining Appropriately

Sometimes, streamlining departments or tasks can be a great idea. For instance, you may decide to carefully develop your HR department to be more front-facing, dealing with payroll issues as well as helping your staff more appropriately adapt to working from home. Perhaps enabling all meetings to be taken via conferencing software can also help you, especially now, but as a continued norm that saves time and energies in the future. These are two examples, but we’re certain you can find many more of them as you consider your own systemic setup, and how the firmament-shaking influence of 2020 has given its own opinion on the matter.

With this advice, we hope you can more easily lubricate the system processes found within your business.