How to Eliminate Unnecessary Business Processes

When Was the Last Time You Stopped Doing Something in Your Business?

Businesses are really good at adding things.

A new report. Another approval. An extra step in a process. A weekly meeting. A spreadsheet to track information that’s already being tracked somewhere else.

Usually, there was a good reason for adding it.

The problem is that we don’t always go back and ask whether that reason still exists.

Over time, businesses can end up with a surprising amount of work that’s being done for one simple reason:

We’ve always done it that way.

How Unnecessary Work Sticks Around

Most inefficient business processes don’t start out inefficient.

Maybe a report was created because a particular manager wanted to see those numbers every Friday. That manager left two years ago, but someone still creates the report every week.

Maybe an approval was added after one expensive mistake. Now every request requires three signatures, even though the original problem was addressed years ago.

Maybe employees enter information into one system and then copy it into a spreadsheet because, at some point, someone needed both.

Nobody intentionally decided to waste time.

The process just stayed.

And when something becomes routine, we tend to stop questioning it.

Try the “Why Are We Still Doing This?” Test

For one week, pay attention to the routine work happening around you.

When you notice something that seems unnecessarily complicated, don’t immediately change it. Just ask a few questions:

• Who actually uses this?
• What would happen if we stopped doing it?
• Why does this need an approval?
• Are we entering the same information more than once?
• Could this process have fewer steps?
• Is this solving a problem that still exists?

You may find that everything has a perfectly good reason.

You may also discover that no one actually knows why something is being done.

That’s worth knowing.

Don’t Confuse Familiar With Necessary

There’s a reason changing a process can make people uncomfortable. Familiar processes feel safe because everyone already knows how they work.

But “this is how we do it” and “this is the best way to do it” are two very different things.

That doesn’t mean every old process needs to go. Some extra steps protect the business. Some approvals are important. Some reports really are useful.

The goal isn’t to remove steps just for the sake of removing them. It’s to make sure the work you’re asking people to do still has a purpose.

Sometimes Saving Time Means Doing Less

When businesses look for ways to improve productivity or create more capacity, it’s natural to focus on how work is getting done.

Sometimes there’s a much easier answer:

Stop doing work that doesn’t need to be done.

Removing one unnecessary 15-minute task may not sound significant.

But if five employees do it every week, that’s 65 hours of work over the course of a year.

And that’s just one task.

When you’re looking for ways to save time, don’t just look at how the work is getting done. Take a closer look at whether all of it still needs to be done in the first place.

You might find some time hiding in plain sight.

Take a Broader Look at Your Business

Unnecessary processes are just one of the things that can be difficult to notice when you’re focused on running a business every day.

TEL Staffing & HR created the free Small Business Report Card to help you step away from the day-to-day and take a broader look at four areas of your business: People, Operations, Compliance & Protection, and Growth & Scalability.

It’s a quick way to identify what’s working well and where it might be worth taking a closer look.

Take a few minutes. Be honest. See how your business measures up.

Could Your Business Handle 25% More Business Tomorrow?

Most businesses want to grow.

More customers. More revenue. More opportunities.

But here’s a question we don’t ask nearly as often:

What would happen if you got 25% more business tomorrow?

Not six months from now, after you’ve had time to hire, train, plan, and prepare.

Tomorrow.

Would your business be ready for it?

Growth Has a Way of Finding the Weak Spots

When business is steady, it’s easier to work around things that aren’t quite working.

An inefficient process is annoying, but manageable. An employee can pick up the slack when something falls behind. A manager can jump in when there’s a problem.

Add 25% more work, and those little problems don’t stay little for long.

More business puts pressure on your people, processes, customer service, technology, and leadership.

That’s why preparing for business growth isn’t just about figuring out how to bring in more customers.

It’s also about making sure you’re ready to serve them when they arrive.

Ask Yourself These Five Questions

You don’t need a complicated growth strategy to start thinking about whether your business is prepared. Begin with five questions.

1. Could your current team handle more work?

If business increased tomorrow, who would feel it first? If your team is already stretched thin, growth may create burnout before it creates opportunity.

2. What would become a bottleneck?

Think about the work that already slows down when things get busy. A process that’s difficult to manage at your current volume is likely to become an even bigger problem when there’s more work moving through it.

3. Could you add employees quickly if you needed them?

Hiring when you’re already overwhelmed can lead to rushed decisions. Knowing which roles you’ll need next, and what you’ll expect from them, puts you in a much better position when the time comes.

4. Would your customer experience stay the same?

Growth isn’t much of a win if longer wait times, missed calls, delayed orders, or inconsistent service start costing you the customers you already have.

5. Does too much still depend on one person?

If one owner, manager, or key employee has to touch every important decision, there may be a limit to how much the business can grow before that person becomes the bottleneck.

You Don’t Have to Be Ready for Everything

Being ready for growth doesn’t mean hiring people you don’t need yet or building systems for a company three times your current size.

It means knowing where the pressure points are before more pressure arrives.

Try this:

Imagine that tomorrow morning you learn your workload is increasing by 25% and it’s going to stay that way.

What’s the first thing you’d be worried about?

Your answer is probably a pretty good place to start.

It could be your team’s capacity, a process that already struggles when things get busy, unclear responsibilities, or simply not having a plan for what happens when the next opportunity comes along.

Growth is a lot easier to manage when you’re preparing for it instead of reacting to it.

How Ready Is Your Business?

Growth is only one measure of business health. The strength of your people, operations, and compliance practices all affect how well your organization can handle whatever comes next.

TEL Staffing & HR created the free Small Business Report Card to help you take a broader look at four areas: People, Operations, Compliance & Protection, and Growth & Scalability.

You may already know where your business is strong. The more interesting question is whether there are areas you haven’t thought to look at yet.

Take a few minutes. Be honest. See how your business measures up.

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