Empower workers for more decision-making authority
Give workers most of the decision-making authority instead of relying on middle management
Reijers, H., & Liman Mansar, S. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4)
In conventional processes, significant time is used to approve others' work. Granting employees autonomy can lead to streamlined operations and quicker workflows.
To streamline the insurance claim process, resources are empowered to make decisions in place of middle management, reducing approval bottlenecks.
To empower resources, gather information about their capability, productivity, collaboration, and utilisation. Based on this information, identify resources capable of making decisions and provide them with the necessary authority. Communicate the reasons behind the decision to empower resources and the expectations and constraints associated with the decision-making authority.
However, this approach might yield lower decision quality and miss obvious errors. When mistakes demand rework, costs may surpass the initial setup.
Foundational free Patterns
Consider automating activities
Elevate physical constraints by applying new technology
Establish standardized interfaces
Consider a standardized interface with customers and partners
Move activities to more appropriate places
Consider to deepen or broaden the skills of resources
Avoid shared responsibilities for tasks by people from different functional units
Expertise-based task assignment
Match tasks to experts' specialized skills for efficiency
Reassign tasks along the organisational hierarchy
First-contact problem resolution
Establish a one-contact resolution for customer issues
If capacity is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources