Dr. Karl Blanks is Co-founder of Conversion Rate Experts. Yesterday, he talked at Conversion World 2015 about those projects that take us ten times longer than they should and how to fix that. He explained that a company can focus on worker efficiency or work-unit efficiency.
Worker efficiency is about maximising the time in which a person delivers value. To have the best worker efficiency means to have your employees constantly working on something, without them having to wait for somebody else to send more work their way. Think of a PPC specialist. They don’t usually work continuously. They have to wait sometimes: waiting for a budget to be approved, waiting for the designer to send them the creative materials for a campaign, waiting for Facebook to approve their new ad set.
Worker efficiency is the percentage of time that a worker spends delivering value.
If a business manager wants to improve worker efficiency, workers become the VIPs. The workflow must be designed in such a way that they are always working, always creating value.
To understand what work-unit efficiency is, you have to imagine the PPC campaign’s perspective. The campaign is worked on by an account manager or digital marketer. Then it waits for the copywriter and the designer to work on it and come up with the creative materials. Then it waits some more for the PPC Specialist to work on it and set up the ad sets. Although people worked on the campaign for a total of 5 hours, the campaign was launched after 5 days since the first person started working on it (a case of low work-unit efficiency).
Work-unit efficiency is the percentage of time that the work units spend receiving value.
If a manager wants to improve work-unit efficiency, work units become the superstars. As soon as one employee ended work on a unit, it moves to the next person that needs to add value to it, and so on, without the work unit having to wait for an employee.
So, here’s the problem:
To have an employee contribute their skills for a project (work unit) as soon as the previous person did their part, you need to have the employee ready to jump in as soon as the project is ready for them. That means that you need to have workers waiting around for their turn in delivering value in a project and that lowers worker efficiency.
Most companies focus on increasing worker efficiency because a worker that waits around for something is perceived as losing money for the company. All the work-in-progress projects tucked in the pages of a project management software aren’t just as visible, although those work units represent tied-up money that the company cannot use.
3 simple ways to improve your company’s workflow
Implement a Just-in-Time production strategy
Just as Toyota factories, create and deliver “only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed“. Create a detailed workflow chart and see where bottlenecks happen, where work-units need to be stored because there isn’t anyone to take them on.
Identify wasted efforts and stop them from happening
Many companies and many professionals are wasting effort on overproduction. Dr. Karl Blanks says companies are creating work that is better than what is needed or work that is scrapped because it isn’t any good. Or they create features the customers don’t care about.
If somebody on the team delivers bad work, train them or get them off the team. Otherwise you’ll keep redoing work on the project. If customers never use a feature, there is no need to invest your effort in improving it. If the client is happy with good work, you don’t have to be a perfectionist every single time. Deliver what it is expected.
Treat staff members as customers
When a team member delivers a work-unit to another, the latter is the customer. Think that this relationship exists throughout a company’s workflow. Always ask the customers what should be improved so their own work could be done more efficient.
Remember: Always do the simplest thing that could possibly work! (Obvious Adams)
