Business strategy

Reducing staff stress by improving workflows

The company uses office procedures based on traditional office software. But, examining those procedures shows that there are significantly better ways of handling the tasks, with the potential to reduce staff time and stress (amongst other things).

The guiding principle is that the status of any activity in the workflow should be obvious. Implementations that follow from this principle involve all aspects of workflow. The key (at least to the IT aspect) is to utilize software that can underpin the workflow, generating documents as required and reporting on stages in the workflow.

There is a natural reluctance to making drastic changes for fear of disrupting normal operations, so improving the procedures must take place incrementally and over a long period, building confidence as we go. It is occurring.

Of course, the benefits go far beyond reducing staff stress!