Identifying 20% of inefficiencies at work

gytenis galkis

The Pareto Principle, named after the Italian engineer Vilfredo Pareto who developed the field of microeconomics, is the “law” that 80 percent of negative results are due to 20 percent of the inefficiencies. Identifying the inefficiencies that are making the biggest impact can lead to fast and tremendous improvements in efficiency across your organization.

Companies with poorly documented, out of date and difficult to access business processes face risks which may result negatively on the business. These issues can manifest themselves in various ways and include frustrated staff, missed deadlines, non-compliance, and missed opportunities, all of which result in poor business performance.

So what are the indicators companies should track on a regular basis?

1. By surveying employees identify the most time-consuming manual processes and introduce simple ways to automate them in order to free up time and minimise the risk of manually generated errors.

2. Complicated business processes can occasionally be difficult to understand and time-consuming to follow. This can lead to employee resentment, errors, and non-adoption as staff may cut corners. Classify top complicated processes within the organisation and search for ways in which these can be simplified/broken down into smaller steps.

3. Lack of quickly accessible information, whether it is processes or steps to complete certain tasks, product updates, price lists, catalogues, training material etc. Usually, there is no single point of access or “one version of the truth” available to all employees. Overcoming these issues by implementing more user-friendly chat or voice-based interfaces such as Amazon Alexa, Siri, or Cortana will result in simplified search.

4. Growing number of regulations to which organisations are obliged to comply in order not only to maintain their market presence but to avoid criminal charges. Today’s organisations must demonstrate their ability to communicate the rules and regulations to their staff along with the associated processes which must be followed to ensure compliance. In a gamified and user-friendly way continuously checking the level of employee awareness will keep all employees up to date and form the required knowledge foundation.

5. Companies operating in a fast changing or growing market, where mergers and acquisitions, new products and services are common, often struggle to update and publish revised processes to meet these new requirements. In these circumstances to minimise any negative effects on the business, it is essential for organisations to have an agile, easy to use system enabling these changes to be made quickly.

Identifying and fixing the biggest timewasters, streamlining the processes, and overcoming internal communication challenges will substantially boost employee morale and yield a positive impact on the bottom-line.

As a co-founder at Pulsetip - HR tech company - I am interested in a discussion on the most common business challenges and ways to overcome them.

Feel free to contact me at or +45 22 77 11 37

follow us