How many of your employees are indispensable? The only way you can answer the question is by knowing what everyone actually does. Or by asking a different question: how many of your employees are dispensable? Process auditing will answer these questions. AI stands ready to run with the results.
Jobless Employed
It turns out that there are lots of performance gaps out there. Emily Stewart talks about “the jobless employed” in an article for Vox with a scary title: “how some people get away with doing nothing at work.” Here are just a few of the situations she describes:
- “In theory, Nate works 40 hours a week in the operations department at a major fintech company. In reality, Nate works one hour a day at most.
- “One government affairs representative says she completes the work for her eight-hour shift in two to three hours each day.
- “Tom, who works in sales, appears to be a bit of an expert in getting paid for work he’s not doing.
- “Bobby, an engineer at a tech company who’s been sitting on his hands for about a year, says his supervisor seems really busy with meetings, so he doesn’t think he has much time to notice.
- “Remote work makes it easier to get away with not doing much because there’s no one looking over your shoulder to see what’s happening … (but) being in the office does not guarantee you’re working, either.”
What can we learn from these situations? Are they trends or exceptions? Have you looked carefully at your company to determine which they are? How many business processes are unnecessary? How many can be reinvented? How many can be automated?
Audit Time
It’s time for a performance audit. Remote workers should be the first target. Does anyone still believe that remote workers perform at the same level as those within earshot? Yes and no. For some tasks, performance can improve, but for others it falls. Young employees hoping for promotions should be in the office: physical facetime with their bosses is more valuable than screen time. But regardless if employees are remote or in the office, processes should be the filter through which leaders identify the jobless employed and whether or not the processes – and employees – are necessary.
But the real questions have to do with what employees are actually doing at home on Zoom. Bosses should audit the activities and processes that occupy all of their employees’ time (including their own). They should describe, assess and prioritize them. The processes provide a window into necessity. Can the processes be improved? Can they be reinvented? Can they be eliminated? Or can they be automated?
Audits & AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is front and center here. One of the most obvious outcomes of a performance audit is the number of processes that can be automated. In many ways, performance audits are AI’s greenfield, where opportunities for performance improvement are everywhere. Yes, this means that many processes will be “re-assigned” to machines, but it also means that many processes will be audited for their very existence. Process audits will expose processes for their contributions to corporate performance – if any – which directly connects audit results with the jobless employed.
What to Do
Step one is leading by inspection. Leaders should identify the business processes that can be described, improved, reinvented, eliminated or automated. They should also match employees with these processes.
The drill is straightforward. If processes can be eliminated, those responsible for the processes can be reassigned or let go. If the processes can be improved or reinvented, then assessments can be made about who improves and reinvents them, and if the improved/reinvented processes can be automated. If the processes are immediate candidates for automation, then companies can proceed to automate the processes (which will of course impact the employees who are now manually implementing the process).
The assumption is that there may be too many employees at your company that have either quietly quit or are jobless employed who contribute very little to corporate performance. Is the assumption valid? Do you know?
Conclusion
Process audits can be enlightening. Some leaders don’t want to know how many of their employees are jobless deployed or have quietly quit, but all of them should. The process audit is the first step. AI can optimize the results. Over time, process audits will become routine as the power and reach of AI, machine learning and generative AI grows. There’s no reason why everyone cannot start right now.
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