Process as a work resource for employees

Written By Matt Spears

Can you help me succeed?

I am not the biggest sports fan in the world, but I live in Georgia which means football, specifically college football, is always a topic of conversation. The competitive nature of football is not limited to gameday. Even during the off-season there is still competition, namely for recruits. Each program has dedicated staff who work tirelessly to recruit the best high school players to their team.

It is common for coaches to meet with the recruits and their family members in their home. These get-to-know-you sessions are intended to build trust and intimacy between the coach and the player in hopes that he will choose to play football for the coach’s program. During the recruiting process, there is also great emphasis placed on the recruit’s visit to the school. Usually, this visit is scheduled when the team will play an important game and is intended to highlight how dedicated the school and its fanbase are to the football team.

As influential as these intimate meetings and campus visits can be to a recruit’s decision, perhaps more important is the team’s history of producing professional NFL players. Most top recruits have dreams of playing professional football and want to play for a coach and program that has proven he can produce NFL talent. Consider the University of Alabama. Over the last two decades, no college team has yielded more first-round NFL draft picks than Alabama. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that they consistently generate top-ranked recruiting classes. The best players want to play for a team that will help them be their best.

In business too

This same mindset is true in business. The most talented employees want to work at an organization that is committed to helping them be their best. According to a recent Harris Poll, 70% of US employees say they are at least somewhat likely to leave their current company to join a company known for investing in employee learning and development.[1] Thus, we can see organizations must work to recruit and retain talent – and part of that formula is a commitment to employee success and development.

So, how can organizations do this? How can they help their workforce develop and be successful? I think answering this question starts with understanding what it means for an employee to be successful. Although a comprehensive understanding of employee success is out of the scope of this particular blog post, I think we can agree that employee success includes the consistent generation of customer value. To generate consistent value a worker needs to know what the conditions of satisfaction are (what is expected of them) and they need to have the skills, resources, and capacity to meet those expectations. To prevent opening a can of worms related to employee training, development, and resource management, I would like to narrow this discussion specifically to worker resources.

“It’s on the portal…”

Historically, organizations have sought to provide resources to their workers in the form of procedure manuals that contained a plethora of business knowledge – from policies, to guides, to procedures, etc. In more recent decades, these manuals have been largely moved online, resulting in a digital “portal” where employees can search through many varieties of information, data, and resources. Unfortunately, without proper maintenance and ownership most portals will degrade into a repository for outdated, stale, and disorganized content that is used infrequently by the workforce. Consider a recent survey from Simpplr Research where 41% of respondents identified “low employee usage” as one of the largest intranet challenges in their business.[2] Whatever organizations may seek to do regarding the question at hand – how to provide helpful resources to maximize the success of their workforce – we can certainly say they must aim to avoid the “low usage” trap as described in the survey above.

Context is king

What comes to your mind when you hear the term “business process”? I imagine for many people the image conjured up is something akin to a complex diagram with all sorts of shapes and symbols fit only for a trained business analyst. While many business processes do take this format, not all of them must. Processes can actually be a fantastic way for organizations to distribute helpful knowledge to the frontline workers in their business. All it takes is a bit of rethinking the traditional “business analyst” process use case.

I am convinced that one of the reasons the “digital portal” often fails in an organization is due to a lack of context. Sure, these portals contain a lot of information albeit oftentimes outdated. However, I would argue that the outdated content is a symptom and not the root cause of low usage. This information is often presented to the end user without the necessary business context, such as: When do I need this information and how do I use it? This is where business processes come in. Processes describe how an organization produces value for its customers. Processes are naturally action oriented – do this, in this order, using these resources. Because processes systematize the responsibilities and actions required from the workforce, they are a natural framework for distributing business knowledge (forms, guides, policies, training resources, etc.) to the workforce. When used in this way, processes can become the tool that makes sense of your business knowledge.

In this process example, the user can see clear process instructions for “Purchase Goods” and the required business knowledge (Vendor Quote Request Form)

In this process example, the user can see clear process instructions for “Purchase Goods” and the required business knowledge (Vendor Quote Request Form)

Increasing worker engagement with business knowledge

With processes bringing much-needed context to your business knowledge, the low-usage trap of the traditional “digital portal” can be avoided. Through processes, workers are not simply gaining access to guides, forms, policies, training resources, etc. They can see clearly how and when those resources should be used in their day-to-day. This combination of business knowledge and process instructions will prove to be a useful resource for the workforce, resulting in higher engagement versus when both are separate.

As we have discussed above, employees value when organizations work to make them as successful as possible. Part of this formula includes providing workers with the knowledge resources needed to perform their jobs. Using processes to bring much-needed context to business knowledge will result in a resource that is eminently useful to the worker, increasing their chances of success. And successful employees, given appropriate opportunities to grow and challenge themselves, are less likely to leave an organization resulting in lower attrition. Furthermore, in job climates where the worker holds the leverage in the job search, organizations with a clear strategy and resources for employee success have an advantage in recruiting the best talent to their business.

Now what?

So, how are you providing the resources your staff needs to be successful? If you have not already, I suggest you consider utilizing processes as the framework for organizing and disseminating that information to your workforce. As I have mentioned before, processes can serve multiple purposes. Remember that processes are for everyone in an organization, not only the business analysts or IT professionals. A functional process framework that houses business knowledge and information can serve as a valuable resource for your workers, helping them achieve success and longevity within your organization.

Matt Spears
Previous

Is it a process?
Next

Prioritizing with a decision matrix