Personnel and capacity audits are usually approached after management has felt that the organization is not operating effectively. Especially in large corporations where there is a high level of administration, auditing is a common tool. Just the word audit raises concerns. When employees hear a personnel audit, they are withdrawing and expecting organizational changes. Add the word "capacity" and the fear grows as fast as bamboo. Everyone knows that to keep one hundred percent performance full 8 hours, a whole month he can not. Personnel and Capacity Audit according to the Own Way Methodology is rather an analysis that helps employees and managers to find the optimal way of their own performance and set the effective capacity of the individual and the team.

Saying 3 words “personnel and capacity audit” immediately appeals to those who go out of the wheel. No matter how positive you try to communicate audit, be aware that people will perceive it as a threat. After all, it is necessary to save, be effective and the biggest costs are usually in the wages of workers.

Objectives of personnel and capacity audit

Everything starts with goals, why we do audits. It is not just one goal, but there can be many more goals. See an example of what they might look like:

  • Discover inefficiencies - non-compliance, unnecessary activities, unproductive discussions…
  • Find bottlenecks - where we lack the capacity, where there is no substitution, sudden accumulation of activities…
  • Align competencies with work activities - find and assemble activities to deliver better results with minimal energy….
  • Reconcile competences with work activities - reveal where qualifications need to be added or where competence is not sufficiently utilized,….
  • Help people save time - discover operational blindness and show new approaches
  • Tune strengths into work activities - assemble activities so that employees enjoy what they enjoy / have, and still have the opportunity to develop
  • …. and many others….

You will immediately see that each goal will lead to different results. The first goals will always be more fearful than those at the end of the list. In any case, it is good to remember from the beginning what the audit raises and before the first talk about the audit, so be prepared procedure and method of communication.The goal of the methodology used by Own Way is to teach employees how to manage their own capacities in accordance with the strategy and intentions of the organization and the manager. Our philosophy is:

“Everyone has strengths. Let's do activities where our strengths stand out. ”

Everything depends on this philosophy - goals, chosen procedure of auditing and communication and consequently also acceptance of employees and achieved results. If you push hard on performance, fear can cause you not to discover a whole range of nonsense activities. The staff simply hide them from you. This should not happen to the manager. Attention external auditor has limited time and access to data.

Sense and audit procedure

The audit can be performed in different ways. The results are derived from them and I have to say that the atmosphere in the organization. Early on, decide whether you want a single view of your chosen objective of the audit, or you are with the results of the audit months and sometimes years of work. My opinion is that a one-time look is wasted money and capacity. The audit timeframe is very important; auditing for only one day or week activities (business day snapshots) may not make sense. Snapshot working day is appropriate where every day repeating the same actions and need to really simplify or eliminate the risk of overloading too organism. A typical example can be repeated production, which is to this type of audit appropriate. Conversely, using day shots for the work of designers or service workers is not very appropriate. From experience I know it is best to choose a time horizon of one year. Mapping work on one job for one year can be done in about 2 hours.

The results will also affect these variants progress of the audit:

  • External auditors - a group of auditors will read data, job descriptions, processes and for selected jobs to audit the specified time range. What they find and recommend is very dependent on methodology, auditors' experience in the audited organization, and listening ability. The external auditor is usually a bit of an intruder and cannot know everything.
  • External Partner - The partner will help you to show how to tune your organization, how to set up capacities, how to work with competencies, and from the initial strategy you do “shadow management” to get the best out of the agreed process. Participates in audits and evaluation of results. Employees see that analyzes are made by superiors and they can correct strategy and progress in line with current changes.
  • Managers trained in methodology - managers undergo training on suitable methodology, are equipped with model models and put everything into practice themselves. If necessary, they shall request consultations or have their first results commented.
  • Managers and employees work together to optimize the work model - right from the training, the external trainer teaches them how to work with their own capacities. They all work on their own activities and analyze them immediately. Then they have several weeks to implement the agreed changes and retake the training to evaluate the results.

Personally, I prefer the last procedure. It is least aggressive and each employee optimizes his / her own activities with the participation of his / her supervisor. Conflicting activities are corrected immediately and a change in competences and workflows is agreed. I applied this procedure to more than a hundred people. With a good attitude you will find that those who really want to work can instantly make a change and see you as a helper and not an auditor who cannot understand your work in a day.

Than the audit, the model of effective job position

When managers work together with their team, they create an effective job model instead of auditing. The model should be prepared after months and for the whole year. The model includes capacities, seasonality of work, risk points, occupancy, center of gravity of the job position towards competencies, etc. With the right procedure, workers themselves see what is holding back, where they have blinkers. Together with an experienced auditor, sorry rather a lecturer, they optimize their own activities. The manager monitors the strategy of team and company development. The model can also contain sequences of activities - flows of effective order, case, etc. In addition, the manager and employee can update the model very easily every month. They will find out what is most disturbing to their work or where they have insufficient capacities and I can take action immediately. You can now understand that you can use the model to incorporate a new worker. He knows from the beginning how many cases he should handle and how long it will take to process. Just turn around

personnel and capacity audit for an optimal model of work tailored to the abilities of employees.

The aim is certainly not serving 100% capacity every second of working hours, but exploit the potential of employees. Already survey in the US in the year. 2010 has shown that a strong pressure on goals and performance have devastating effects and leads to poor performance and burnout. After hundreds of analyzes at THP, we have an average annual savings of 150 hours with our methodology. Calculate how much space you can get for a new activity with a 10-member team. In addition, workers adjust their activities themselves to make them work well. You will never succeed with an audit.

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