Why documenting and automating processes is critical when employees are on the move

While your staff churn rate may be rising, your intellectual capital needs to stay put if your business is to survive and thrive in FY2023.

Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, as the American crooner Billy Joel famously observed in his 1976 hit, Say Goodbye to Hollywood.

This financial year, business owners across Australia may find themselves experiencing their fair share of farewells.

Although the much-vaunted ‘great resignation’ may be less of a thing in this country than in others, plenty of Australian workers will be looking to their options.

Rising inflation and the anticipated series of interest rate hikes will add urgency to the search for better pay and conditions, and those who receive reasonable offers are likely to decamp, on as little notice as their employment contracts require them to provide.

Replacing them may be challenging, given we’re currently experiencing a skills crisis which is seeing employers across numerous industries crying out for qualified and experienced staff.

In No silver bullet for skill shortages, an October 2021 article penned by EY senior leaders Mark Barnaba and Johnathan McMenamin, the authors flagged the fact that the skills deficits were structural and could only be fixed by a string of labour market adjustments.

Draining the corporate memory bank

If replacing departing employees is the first hurdle you’ll need to overcome in FY2023, getting your new starters up to speed is likely to be the second.

Even if the nature of their duties is fairly straightforward, it will inevitably take time for them to learn the ins and outs of how things are done in your business.

This exchange of knowledge often occurs informally; tips and tricks for everything from filing expense claims to ordering the catering for meetings passed from old hands to rookie recruits. That system works well enough if the old hands are on hand to do the training, and to answer the questions that inevitably arise when new employees begin to tackle the less common aspects of their roles.

But if they’ve already left the building, you may run into difficulties.

Having to figure things out for themselves, make mistakes and correct them can be time consuming and stressful for new starters. It’s a drain on productivity and may have a negative impact on your customer service and experience to boot.

Transform your processes

The solution? It’s two-fold: ensuring all that institutional knowledge is in a centralised repository where it’s easily accessible by all; and replacing inefficient manual processes with modern, automated digital alternatives.

Your first step should be to map the workflows that keep your operations ticking over. Not just the obvious ones, but the simple everyday processes that it’s all too easy to assume everyone already understands and follows.

Secondly, you should identify opportunities to streamline and automate those processes, thereby making your organisation less reliant on the intellectual capital that currently resides in the heads of employees past and present.

Doing so should also result in greater productivity and fewer instances of human error. Employee satisfaction may increase, too, if your team is relieved of the burden of repetitive tasks that neither interest nor challenge them, and can instead devote their attention to higher-level duties that add value to the enterprise.

Tools to make the task easy

In the past, undertaking process automation was an expensive affair, courtesy of the fact that doing so necessitated the hire of highly paid ICT professionals. That’s no longer the case.

Today, digital process management technology and user friendly, low- and no-code process automation tools can be deployed by employees with little or no specialist training.

That means change can be enacted expeditiously and economically, without the need for extensive capital investment; a boon if you’re looking to act quickly or lack the resources to devote to a major ICT transformation initiative.

Safeguarding your enterprise

In FY2023, Australian workers who are looking to change jobs are unlikely to find it difficult to do so. While staff churn can be disruptive and expensive, capturing your organisation’s intellectual capital and automating your processes will help ensure a smooth transition for new employees.

If maintaining productivity and a high standard of customer experience are important to you, it’s likely you’ll find it an exercise well worth doing.

Christian Lucarelli is the vice president sales APAC at Nintex

Shandel McAuliffe

Shandel has recently returned to Australia after working in the UK for eight years. Shandel's experience in the UK included over three years at the CIPD in their marketing, marcomms and events teams, followed by two plus years with The Adecco Group UK&I in marketing, PR, internal comms and project management. Cementing Shandel's experience in the HR industry, she was the head of content for Cezanne HR, a full-lifecycle HR software solution, for the two years prior to her return to Australia.

Shandel has previous experience as a copy writer, proofreader and copy editor, and a keen interest in HR, leadership and psychology. She's excited to be at the helm of HR Leader as its editor, bringing new and innovative ideas to the publication's audience, drawing on her time overseas and learning from experts closer to home in Australia.

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