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
Assign a responsible individual for handling each case type
Determine whether activities are related to the same type of case and, if necessary, distinguish new business processes
Elevate physical constraints by applying new technology
Minimize numerical involvement
Too many cooks spoil the broth
Consider whether activities may be executed in parallel
Consider the division of a general activity into two or more alternative activities
Offer a green alternative with the same outcome, utilizing different steps, resources, or partners, while retaining the previous existing process
Let customers interact with your organization whenever they want to.
First-contact problem resolution
Establish a one-contact resolution for customer issues
If capacity is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources