4 areas employees "hack" company processes to get work done and what you can do about it

In any organization, a lack of process efficiency can lead to friction that can slow down work. In order to get the work done, employees are forced to find a way around existing (or lacking) processes.

Gartner’s 2020 Workforce Responsiveness Survey shows that two thirds of employees are “hacking” their work. They are doing this to overcome a lack of clear or quick prioritization, processes and support. The study also shows that these process circumventions waste time and create risk.

Where does this work friction occur and what can you do, as a manager? There are four top areas identified by the survey, to which we add solutions of our own:

1. Misaligned work design

• employees have to create processes where none exist

• the work processes are out of date

• the business unit structure is confusing for team members

How to adress it?

This is a textbook case for brainstorming. Aim to reverse the process efficiency assessment design, to get team members' buy-in. The ad-hoc process most likely took the path of least resistance. Start from the employee view and backtrack, looking at risks and compliance. Depending on the magnitude of the issue, include ongoing adjustments to work design as part of a reoccurring practice.

2. Overwhelmed teams

• employees struggle to find the right information for the job

• the volume of tasks keeps increasing

• difficulty occurs when trying to identify who can help do a good job

How to address it?

Don’t go for maximum capacity full-time mode. Instead, prioritize the highest impact tasks and invest effort proportionate to the task impact. Here’s where a streamlined implementation of the digital workplace strategy shines. Employees should be able to quickly find the right information and the right contacts on the company intranet or equivalent solution.

3. Trapped resources

• insufficient team budget

• no milestone adjustments of budgets along the financial period once it’s set

• team skills are not the appropriate ones to do the job

How to address it?

Prioritize mobility over stability. Give more autonomy. How long does it take to approve an expenditure? Is the budgeting approach the correct one? Have you considered alternatives (activity-based, value-proposition, zero-based)? Move resourcing decisions closer to the end user.

4. Rigid processes

• decisions take longer than they should

• sign-off for new ideas or approaches takes ages

• a specific bottleneck approver regularly delays work

How to address it?

“Go” instead of “No” as default. Let’s take the example of manager approval for employee travel which is out-of-policy (costs slightly more because of time, layover schedule, etc.). Usually, a notification is sent to the employee’s manager. The manager has 48 hours to decide. What happens after 48 hours if no decision is taken? Is the flight automatically rejected or automatically approved? Will the approval sit in the manager’s queue indefinitely? Analyze any escalation decision and make it “Go” by default.

Which one of these four areas employees “go around” processes to get work done is your favorite and which are the ones you’re guilty of?