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
Combine small activities into composite activities
Eliminate unnecessary activities
Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow
If capacity is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources
Delegate and optimize your operations
Consider the division of a general activity into two or more alternative activities
Replace underlying resources with eco-friendly alternatives
Consider whether it is eco-friendly to let humans work over machines
Offer customers the possibility to serve themselves
First-contact problem resolution
Establish a one-contact resolution for customer issues
If capacity is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources