Fired through automation
Recall what automation is. Take, for example, the definition from Wikipedia .
Automation is one of the directions of scientific and technological progress, using self-regulating technical tools and mathematical methods in order to free a person from participation in the processes of obtaining, converting, transmitting and using energy, materials, products or information, or significantly reducing the extent of this participation or laboriousness of operations performed .
I highlighted the key phrase in bold. Simply put, automation is needed in order to relieve a person from any duties. What is it - the release of man from duties? You've heard the phrase “relieved of duty”? This is a dismissal.
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If you are engaged in automation, then tell me honestly - how many people were relieved of their duties thanks to your work? Only here facts are important, not speculation.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the goal of automation, such as firing people, or reducing staff, or transferring it to other positions, is somewhat forgotten. Automation projects, in fact, most likely create new staff units that are filled by accountants, managers, programmers, administrators, economists, various kinds of operators, and so on.
There was, for example, at the factory a simple information system created by some craftsman. To work with it, the same craftsman who developed and accompanied it, and several users, was required. But an ambitious CIO comes to the company and says - that's all, it's time to finish this kindergarten, you have to go to a new level. And they begin to implement a large, expensive, complex ERP-system.
The cost of the product and the project implementation leave aside. Very quickly it turns out that our craftsman alone cannot cope with maintenance and implementation - we need new people, more modern, experienced and competent. Accountants who are accustomed to the old system are not suitable either - they get used slowly, data do not appear in a timely manner, it is necessary to expand the staff. If earlier it was enough to enter into the system ten kinds of operations, now there are fifty of them - although the result is, in fact, the same. The system requires complex setup - that's what the Methodist needed.
In services, like production and PDO, operators are now needed, no matter how they are called. Previously, one woman of pre-retirement age was coping, and now, in a new, more spacious office, three young girls are already sitting, and they are constantly bringing something and spreading somewhere.
If anyone gets fired in such a situation, then only our craftsman and a few older employees who failed to restructure themselves. Of course, putting in their place twice as many new people.
Greater automation is not a good time for staff cuts. It is much better to tackle this kind of automation in calmer times.
Consider how to organize this process, what to look for and what are the pitfalls.
“The work takes time allotted to it” - this is how this humorous empirical law is formulated. But, despite the share of humor, it works.
Parkinson's law should be remembered all the time when you are firing through automation. Otherwise, your project is doomed to failure. I had to see and do the automation myself, which led to the dismissal of employees. However, there are hundreds of times more cases when the Parkinson's law reduced the efforts of automatisers.
Everything is very simple. If a person has one hundred duties, he will fulfill them all day. If you have automated half of these duties, then the remaining fifty he will perform the whole day. Bring to ten - he and they will perform the whole day. A person will find a way to even one duty to perform the whole day.
Paradoxically, but at any point in time it will seem that the person is really busy and has no free time. If you have two accountants in front of you, you want (or you have a task) to get rid of one of them, and you have automated half of their work, then rest assured that accountants will find a lot of excuses and seemingly quite reasonable explanations for the fact that the two of them barely have time to perform their remaining duties .
In order to avoid the action of the Parkinson's law, you need to carefully prepare for the implementation of automation.
The essence of the training is to collect as much information as possible about the duties performed by people. Speech about collecting information is, in fact, a whole research project.
There are always at least three versions of the list of duties.
The first is what the worker himself will say. As a rule, he will tell you what he really does.
The second is what his boss will say. This version will be different from the first. First, some responsibilities will be added. The boss thinks that the subordinate should do this and that, and the employee will only learn about it from you. But after a conversation with an employee, you will have something to tell his boss - he will learn many new duties of his subordinates.
The third version is what is written in various job descriptions, processes, job profiles, department regulations, and so on. The papers, as a rule, set forth what the employee must do. Be prepared that the papers may contradict each other - this is normal, because they were composed of different people, at different times and with different goals. Do not be surprised if both the employee and the chief have eyes rounded when you tell about the read duties.
There are also auxiliary versions - related departments, internal consumers, higher management, etc. If time permits, study them.
Basically, you get two lists:
- What the employee should do;
- What the employee really does.
Comparing these lists, you will receive three new ones:
- Must do and do (DD);
- Should not do, but does (NDD);
- Must do but does not (dnd);
- Should not do and does not (nDND).
The last point seems to be superfluous, but then I will show that it is worth waiting for trouble from him.
So, a person does what is stated in the first two lists - both what should, and what should not. Of course, the automation of these duties and you will be engaged. And the worker, as these lists are reduced, will start replenishing them - in accordance with the Parkinson law.
As soon as the amount of work done is reduced to a dangerous minimum, the person will simply begin to do what he had not done before. First of all, take something from the list of DND. He doesn’t have to explain himself too much - the version will sound quite plausible. I didn’t do this before because I didn’t have time, but now I’ve been busy, thank you for the automation.
If you automate these newly arrived duties, or cross them out, then he will continue to drag from D & D to D & D until D & D is empty.
When there is nothing left to take from the DND, a paradoxical situation will arise - the person will take on duties from NDND. Simply put, begin to invent their own responsibilities. He will start actively helping his colleagues and domestic consumers, invent new reports and forms, gush out ideas, join cross-functional teams of some projects (including yours) and, finally, actively participate in public life - sing, dance and create a wall newspaper.
If the flow of replenishment of DD and NDD is not controlled, then it will grow infinitely.
It is easy to manage the flow - it is enough either to impose a moratorium on replenishment, or to apply an “isolator”. Clearly formalize DD and NDD, and prevent the appearance of new items in them. Of course, the moratorium should be reported, at a minimum, to the head of this person.
If there is an opportunity and time, then it is worth redoing all the pieces of paper from which you made lists. Do not necessarily do it yourself - you can put the head, or business process developers.
Alternatively, you can use the principle of "Bullet" from the section "Motivation". Announce to the employee that he can do anything, but only the work from the list is paid. The rest is optional. Typically, such an ad has a good effect on the inventors of duties.
Then you are faced with a logical question - what exactly should be automated from the list?
The first option is to choose based on your experience. If you know well the enterprise, and the processes and work of this person, then you can choose intuitively.
The second option is to calculate the formula. True, measurements will be required.
The main thing that needs to be digitized - the percentage of time to perform each duty. The measurement interval can be a day, a week or a month. A week is probably better, because during a particular day, not all duties from the list are performed, and a month is too long a term.
A fairly simple measurement method is a photograph of the working day. It is only advisable not to trust its compilation to the employee himself. First, he is a concerned person. Secondly, he has little experience for such work, and still have to redo him. Take a picture yourself, or ask helpers.
Photo of the working day is done simply - you need to write down on a piece of paper what a person does when he began and finished. Next, you need to perform simple processing - compare with lists of DD and NDD, group and calculate the total elapsed time for each duty. Well, the percentage of each duty to count.
Now you need to evaluate the proposed steps for automation, in the context of human responsibilities. Each item should receive two estimates.
The first is the complexity of automation. Any numerical estimate will do - and the hours, and points, and man-days are not important. The main thing is to have numbers. From the estimates obtained, it is necessary to calculate the percentage of each item.
The second assessment is the expected degree of automation, i.e. The percentage of time that a person can free up after a change is made in the information system. If the operation is fully automated and human participation is no longer required, the degree of automation will be 100%.
After receiving three estimates, we calculate the automation priority using a simple formula:
Priority = C * DV / T,
where C is the expected degree of automation, DV - the proportion of time for the performance of duties, T - the complexity of automation.
Since All figures are expressed as percentages, priority will also be relative. The higher it is, the higher will be the effect of automation on the release of a person from duties. You can choose and proceed.
In addition to the relative shares, it would be nice to have absolute figures on the time of duty, to avoid inflating transactions.
A person freed from duties can not only find new ones, but also inflate old ones, increasing the time of each transaction.
For example, earlier an accountant took two minutes to issue an invoice. When you freed him, for example, from the control of negative residues, he will issue an invoice in five minutes.
If you do not have measurements of “before” and “after” time, then you will not even notice how the transactions will spread and, according to the Parkinson's law, will again take up all the working time of the employee. Without numbers, you can not prove that the problem exists.
So stock up on numbers. It is desirable - before the target automation, aimed at dismissal, is learned by the employee or his boss. Both the “Process Meter” from business programming, log data, and statistics from a variety of programs that measure the time of people’s work will do.
Here is an example. The girl-accountant worked in the same company, and we had statistics on the time of transactions in her work. The girl went safely on maternity leave, and the boss quickly found a replacement. Everything is nothing, but the replacement did not cope, and took another one. Now the two girls did the work of one and, interestingly, they still could not cope and always complained that they did not have time. The chief asked the director for another bid, and he almost agreed, but remembered the statistics. Comparing the transaction data, we saw that two new girls are working more slowly than the old one. State did not inflate, although the reduction did not dare.
And then came the moment when all the numbers are collected, automation is done, a person, objectively, can be released. Of course, it's not you who decide his fate. But, in practice, it can happen like this: once you have successfully released him, your opinion should be heeded.
Therefore, I will outline some scenarios for you to choose from.
The first is just firing. Here, in general, there’s nothing to talk about. The financial result of your work is easy to calculate, and is a very impressive amount, especially if you count the year and do not forget to add taxes.
The second is a transfer to another department for a similar job. If the company is large, then in the balance of identical flows there are often distortions. For example, there are two supply departments - one for basic materials, the other for customized, complex or foreign trade activities. In one, everything is good, and it was there that you freed someone, and in the other - a blockage. If there are no fundamental differences in the requirements for competencies, then a transfer can be arranged.
The third is a transfer to another, albeit similar work. A typical example is the so-called order managers, or more simply, operators. They are both in supply, and in sales, and in dispatching services. Usually these are young, tidy and executive people who are quickly taught where to get information, what to do with it and where to send it. By reducing such a person in the supply, you can safely translate it into sales. Of course, if you need it in sales.
The fourth option I like the most is not to dismiss, but “not to recruit.” There is always a turnover in companies, someone retires, someone is on maternity leave, some simply quit on their own, and sometimes they go on promotion.
The result is one - the place is freed. If at this moment you have already performed automation, then it is enough not to take anyone to this place. Moreover, in this embodiment, you do not really lose anything. The former employee has already left anyway, and you can always find and accept a new one if there is a blockage.
Just don't take anyone and watch. The numbers you have. You know for sure that the remaining employees can cope with their work with the composition that they have left. Do not let them crawl and replenish the DD and NDD, and everything will work out.
This method can be combined with translations. For example, you released an employee of one department, but there is no place to transfer him - everywhere to the head. Well, we are waiting. After some time, an employee of another department may quit, and your “released” can be transferred.
From the translations, or rather, in general, their presence, as an entity in the company, can also be gained.
First, the work of an employee in different departments enriches his competencies and understanding of the entire map of business processes. There are such practices - for managers, though - when they are forced to work in each department in order to better understand the processes and cross-functional relationships.
Secondly, these same cross-functional connections are improving. It is one thing - closed units, cooking in their own juice, with their leaders, hidden rules and foundations. Quite another is, in essence, a project form of management, when an employee becomes a “free electron” and is attracted to where it is most needed at the moment.
Well and the main thing - the moral side of the question will not torment you.
The issue of automation for firing is subtle and complex. I must say at once - I do not know what is right here and what is not.
On the one hand, the person leaves. He has a family, liabilities, loans, plans. You do not need to have a lot of imagination to imagine what disastrous consequences a dismissal could be.
On the other hand, there is a business. If you climb to the very top, the business is also a person. One or several is not important. Yes, they most likely have more money than their employees. But this is their money. They did not set up a business in order to repay loans, implement other people's plans, or fulfill obligations.
And here it is a dilemma. Leaving an employee means the owner will pay him his own money. In our case - in fact, for nothing. Dismissing an employee means creating real, sometimes dangerous problems for him and his family.
Sometimes a mental experiment helps to resolve such a dilemma. Imagine that the owner is you, and the employees are all mandatory payments that you make on a monthly basis. Internet, electricity, parking, groceries, mobile communications, gasoline, etc.
And now, suddenly, you learn that you pay for the Internet twice as much as you need. Either the tariff appeared different, or the new operator came to your city, or you don’t need a wire anymore, a sufficiently unlimited mobile Internet. Of course, if the difference for you is small, then you can do nothing and leave everything as it is.
And if the difference is significant? Will you continue to pay the old operator twice as much just because you have been working with him for a long time, or do you feel sorry for him?
Or, for example, you learned that gasoline at your favorite gas station costs two rubles more than another, with the same quality of fuel, service and loyalty programs. Will you continue to refuel in the same place?
Everyone will answer these questions in their own way. In general, we are talking about small savings. Similarly, for a large enterprise, one worker is not a very noticeable burden. But do not forget that the amount can be calculated for the year, and viewed through the prism of its annual budget. Although, I repeat, everyone decides for himself.
You decided, for example, to switch to another Internet provider. And what will happen to the same provider? Especially if not only you, but all your neighbors will do the same? Is it possible that someone will be fired, to cut costs, or will the business go bankrupt? Do you care?
Most likely no. Businesses are constantly being created and dying around us. A year ago, there was a meat shop in the next house, in half a year the hookah room changed it, and a bakery moved in a month ago. Why are they closing? The standard answer is no business, no purchase. Who does not buy? If the store is next door to you, then you? Why not buy? Not necessary, or expensive, or not tasty? But you understand that if you don’t give this store money, it will close and all its employees will be fired? But you will not buy something. Hence, the moral side of the issue is not so important.
I repeat: personally, I am against layoffs. The mental experiment led only to increase the points of view. Everyone looks at employees and their dismissal differently, and this is normal. There is no single point of view, nor is there a correct one.
My personal, if you're interested: efforts should be made in order not to hire extra people, and not on their subsequent dismissal.
Hiring an employee is a responsibility. If you take a person, he relies on you, makes plans related to the income and prospects of your company, takes on obligations - the same mortgage. Therefore, it is better to think three times before hiring someone. And try to improve the performance of the current state.
Well, if it so happened that a person became superfluous, do not dismiss him, but transfer him.
To complete the picture, I will give both successful and unsuccessful examples.
Two accountants work in a warehouse, register operations for shipment, arrival, relocation, etc. Formally, one is an accountant, the second is an economist. They set the task - to automate so that it remains alone.
Looked at their responsibilities, it turned out very little. In addition to issuing primary documents, another standard for the accountant participation in the closing of the month, the execution of one-time instructions, such as a mass correction of transactions, well, and a large gray mass of "something else I sometimes do."
We introduce a moratorium - only arrange the primary organization, and everything connected with it. We ignore the gray mass - it turned out that there wasn’t much of it. We make some simple modifications for the primary organization - automatic filling and by templates, input on the base, paper shaken up (they sometimes needed manual adjustments before printing). For all the work - no more than a month.
The girl, who is an economist, was immediately dismissed. I was against, of course - the economist had something to do - but, for some reason, the option of leaving it was not even considered.
In the accounting, there were a few girls, but they were sitting in the office. The performed automation of the input of the primary organization reduced the time of transactions so much that the question of the dismissal of the remaining accountant naturally arose. The manager was determined, but this time I managed to complete the translation - I was just starting a project to restore order in the warehouse, and I needed an isolated person, this girl was useful.
By the way, then the manager was very happy that he hadn’t fired the girl - she had become a very sensible specialist. This is she - the one that worked faster than two new ones.
Then there was a bad example. Talked to office accountants, and found they had two low-hanging fruits for automation. The first is the closing of the month. They used batch accounting in 1C, which took a considerable amount of time during routine operations.
For those who do not know, a little clear. There is a month, and there are several thousand transactions in it - receipts, expenses, transfers, etc. When using batch accounting, each document depends on all the previous ones - primarily, at the cost of write-off. Technically, this means that when changing a document from May 15, all documents must be recast from May 15 to May 31. It is not difficult, but very long. And the changes needed to be made quite a lot. And every time - changed, and rewire. During the day, at night, synchronously, asynchronously - it does not matter, it is still long.
But then in 1C appeared advanced cost accounting analytics (RAUS), which removed the problem of reposting completely - it was not required at all. Changed any document - you just need to complete the month closing procedure, then it took 5-10 minutes.
This transition from batch accounting to RAUS yielded savings in terms of closure - approximately 7 days.
The second problem was the accounting and reconciliation of paper and electronic documents. In those days, electronic document management was not common, and there was only one piece of paper. The cargo came, the papers with him, the manager or the storekeeper takes them and drags the accountant. He drives in, and everything seems to be fine, but managers often lost papers. Well, not so much to lose, but could not find.
A piece of paper, for some reason, periodically required tax. The main problem, in fact, is the lack of information, which pieces of paper we have and which we don’t. Simple automation solved the problem - there was an account of the papers in relation to the electronic document.
So, according to the accountants, before the start of automation, the fuss with the papers took them 20% of the time. I didn’t remember about the Parkinson’s law then, I rushed to automate, the problem won, but, of course, they disappeared somewhere 20% of the time. I didn’t even bother to make the lists - neither DD nor NDD. Therefore, no one was fired or transferred.
Then there were the economists. It's easier with them - they have few transactions, mostly regular tasks, like reporting. Dates and number of reports are known, it remains only to automate.
The reports of economists are more complicated than those of accountants, and the main thing is that they were all executed not by any generally accepted standards, but in the way that is accepted in the company and conveniently to the recipients. Therefore, patterns and patterns were only in Excel.
The particular difficulty in automation was the quality of the data. Actually, the verification, or rather, the reconciliation of data from economists took the most time. They take raw data, insert it into an Excel, and drive it to check, reduce, analyze, etc.
The quality of the data was handled fairly quickly by applying the “Check on Write” and “Asynchronous Check” methods. Then drew reports - according to pure data, they are built quickly.
The time has come to make a decision. There were three economists, all plus / minus are equal. Without thinking twice, they decided not to fire anyone, but wait for the right occasion.
The case presented itself rather quickly - one of the economists quit, for whatever reasons. Were delighted and did not take anyone to his place. Observed - great, cope.
After a while, the second economist quit his job, apparently for political reasons - either he quarreled with someone, or didn’t share something, I don’t know for sure. Were delighted, did not take anyone in his place. Observed - one economist copes. So left.
There were several examples of the same type, when the automation performed and the availability of transaction figures saved us from an increase in accounting staff. The initiative “give me one more accountant” is not punishable, therefore, it was often shown by new accountants and old ones, having sustained some pause after the previous attempt.
Algorithm standard. The chief accountant comes, asks for a unit and brings some justification - usually without a single digit, just a set of sentences like “we have more work”, “the momentum is growing, we can’t cope”, etc.
Transaction statistics were kept constantly, so the check was quick. It always turned out to be the same thing - the number of transactions did not grow, sometimes it even decreased, the complexity of paperwork did not change either, and there were no significant changes in legislation and processes.Just the Parkinson's law is valid, and the time for the transaction is growing.
Sometimes they simply refused to expand, sometimes they chose a compromise - they did some automation to reduce the transaction time, but sometimes the decision was made political - to support the new accountant, then the staff expanded.
And finally, an example that is happening right now. There is a company that manufactures products to order. This product goes to other plants where it is part of the final products supplied to customers.
There are many orders, they are complex in calculations, and are always unique. As long as the enterprise existed, there were so many managers taking these orders. Actually, in accepting orders and related activities, and consists of all their work - to accept, enter into the system, issue an invoice, send into production, check the payment, write out the documents for shipment.
We have made them a self-service customer service, with an uncomplicated interface for customer plants. Those added a service to their systems - both 1C and php, and the devil knows how. The supplier in his usual system simply places an order to the supplier, as he did for many years, and the data automatically flies to our client, the order is calculated there in a second, the order is formed, with prices, specifications, production and shipment dates - in general, all the necessary information is created. You can even print an invoice for yourself.
The manager, in fact, is no longer needed. One or two to leave, for the general control and solution of controversial and emergency issues, and everything, the rest can be safely dismissed or transferred. But all friends are in place.
The reason is simple - we performed this project, working only with automation. Exactly the way most programmers do it - they got the task, they did it, they started it and they forgot it. No business programming chips, like processes, management systems, goals, etc. And they had to work like business programmers.
Well, what would seem? We also paid for this project.
The problem is that the client has not received any profit. He sat with managers without service, and coped with the flow of orders. Now the service is doing well, and the managers are still sitting. From the point of view of the manager and the owner, no changes have occurred. Only money wasted for development.
Actually, this example should well show the difference between programming and business programming.
Of course, we are not losing hope, and we are looking for ways in which our automation will fulfill its intended purpose — to free people. What and you want.
Automation is one of the directions of scientific and technological progress, using self-regulating technical tools and mathematical methods in order to free a person from participation in the processes of obtaining, converting, transmitting and using energy, materials, products or information, or significantly reducing the extent of this participation or laboriousness of operations performed .
I highlighted the key phrase in bold. Simply put, automation is needed in order to relieve a person from any duties. What is it - the release of man from duties? You've heard the phrase “relieved of duty”? This is a dismissal.
')
If you are engaged in automation, then tell me honestly - how many people were relieved of their duties thanks to your work? Only here facts are important, not speculation.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the goal of automation, such as firing people, or reducing staff, or transferring it to other positions, is somewhat forgotten. Automation projects, in fact, most likely create new staff units that are filled by accountants, managers, programmers, administrators, economists, various kinds of operators, and so on.
There was, for example, at the factory a simple information system created by some craftsman. To work with it, the same craftsman who developed and accompanied it, and several users, was required. But an ambitious CIO comes to the company and says - that's all, it's time to finish this kindergarten, you have to go to a new level. And they begin to implement a large, expensive, complex ERP-system.
The cost of the product and the project implementation leave aside. Very quickly it turns out that our craftsman alone cannot cope with maintenance and implementation - we need new people, more modern, experienced and competent. Accountants who are accustomed to the old system are not suitable either - they get used slowly, data do not appear in a timely manner, it is necessary to expand the staff. If earlier it was enough to enter into the system ten kinds of operations, now there are fifty of them - although the result is, in fact, the same. The system requires complex setup - that's what the Methodist needed.
In services, like production and PDO, operators are now needed, no matter how they are called. Previously, one woman of pre-retirement age was coping, and now, in a new, more spacious office, three young girls are already sitting, and they are constantly bringing something and spreading somewhere.
If anyone gets fired in such a situation, then only our craftsman and a few older employees who failed to restructure themselves. Of course, putting in their place twice as many new people.
Greater automation is not a good time for staff cuts. It is much better to tackle this kind of automation in calmer times.
Consider how to organize this process, what to look for and what are the pitfalls.
Parkinson's Law
“The work takes time allotted to it” - this is how this humorous empirical law is formulated. But, despite the share of humor, it works.
Parkinson's law should be remembered all the time when you are firing through automation. Otherwise, your project is doomed to failure. I had to see and do the automation myself, which led to the dismissal of employees. However, there are hundreds of times more cases when the Parkinson's law reduced the efforts of automatisers.
Everything is very simple. If a person has one hundred duties, he will fulfill them all day. If you have automated half of these duties, then the remaining fifty he will perform the whole day. Bring to ten - he and they will perform the whole day. A person will find a way to even one duty to perform the whole day.
Paradoxically, but at any point in time it will seem that the person is really busy and has no free time. If you have two accountants in front of you, you want (or you have a task) to get rid of one of them, and you have automated half of their work, then rest assured that accountants will find a lot of excuses and seemingly quite reasonable explanations for the fact that the two of them barely have time to perform their remaining duties .
In order to avoid the action of the Parkinson's law, you need to carefully prepare for the implementation of automation.
Training
The essence of the training is to collect as much information as possible about the duties performed by people. Speech about collecting information is, in fact, a whole research project.
There are always at least three versions of the list of duties.
The first is what the worker himself will say. As a rule, he will tell you what he really does.
The second is what his boss will say. This version will be different from the first. First, some responsibilities will be added. The boss thinks that the subordinate should do this and that, and the employee will only learn about it from you. But after a conversation with an employee, you will have something to tell his boss - he will learn many new duties of his subordinates.
The third version is what is written in various job descriptions, processes, job profiles, department regulations, and so on. The papers, as a rule, set forth what the employee must do. Be prepared that the papers may contradict each other - this is normal, because they were composed of different people, at different times and with different goals. Do not be surprised if both the employee and the chief have eyes rounded when you tell about the read duties.
There are also auxiliary versions - related departments, internal consumers, higher management, etc. If time permits, study them.
Basically, you get two lists:
- What the employee should do;
- What the employee really does.
Comparing these lists, you will receive three new ones:
- Must do and do (DD);
- Should not do, but does (NDD);
- Must do but does not (dnd);
- Should not do and does not (nDND).
The last point seems to be superfluous, but then I will show that it is worth waiting for trouble from him.
Replenishment duties
So, a person does what is stated in the first two lists - both what should, and what should not. Of course, the automation of these duties and you will be engaged. And the worker, as these lists are reduced, will start replenishing them - in accordance with the Parkinson law.
As soon as the amount of work done is reduced to a dangerous minimum, the person will simply begin to do what he had not done before. First of all, take something from the list of DND. He doesn’t have to explain himself too much - the version will sound quite plausible. I didn’t do this before because I didn’t have time, but now I’ve been busy, thank you for the automation.
If you automate these newly arrived duties, or cross them out, then he will continue to drag from D & D to D & D until D & D is empty.
When there is nothing left to take from the DND, a paradoxical situation will arise - the person will take on duties from NDND. Simply put, begin to invent their own responsibilities. He will start actively helping his colleagues and domestic consumers, invent new reports and forms, gush out ideas, join cross-functional teams of some projects (including yours) and, finally, actively participate in public life - sing, dance and create a wall newspaper.
If the flow of replenishment of DD and NDD is not controlled, then it will grow infinitely.
Moratorium
It is easy to manage the flow - it is enough either to impose a moratorium on replenishment, or to apply an “isolator”. Clearly formalize DD and NDD, and prevent the appearance of new items in them. Of course, the moratorium should be reported, at a minimum, to the head of this person.
If there is an opportunity and time, then it is worth redoing all the pieces of paper from which you made lists. Do not necessarily do it yourself - you can put the head, or business process developers.
Alternatively, you can use the principle of "Bullet" from the section "Motivation". Announce to the employee that he can do anything, but only the work from the list is paid. The rest is optional. Typically, such an ad has a good effect on the inventors of duties.
What to choose?
Then you are faced with a logical question - what exactly should be automated from the list?
The first option is to choose based on your experience. If you know well the enterprise, and the processes and work of this person, then you can choose intuitively.
The second option is to calculate the formula. True, measurements will be required.
The main thing that needs to be digitized - the percentage of time to perform each duty. The measurement interval can be a day, a week or a month. A week is probably better, because during a particular day, not all duties from the list are performed, and a month is too long a term.
A fairly simple measurement method is a photograph of the working day. It is only advisable not to trust its compilation to the employee himself. First, he is a concerned person. Secondly, he has little experience for such work, and still have to redo him. Take a picture yourself, or ask helpers.
Photo of the working day is done simply - you need to write down on a piece of paper what a person does when he began and finished. Next, you need to perform simple processing - compare with lists of DD and NDD, group and calculate the total elapsed time for each duty. Well, the percentage of each duty to count.
Now you need to evaluate the proposed steps for automation, in the context of human responsibilities. Each item should receive two estimates.
The first is the complexity of automation. Any numerical estimate will do - and the hours, and points, and man-days are not important. The main thing is to have numbers. From the estimates obtained, it is necessary to calculate the percentage of each item.
The second assessment is the expected degree of automation, i.e. The percentage of time that a person can free up after a change is made in the information system. If the operation is fully automated and human participation is no longer required, the degree of automation will be 100%.
After receiving three estimates, we calculate the automation priority using a simple formula:
Priority = C * DV / T,
where C is the expected degree of automation, DV - the proportion of time for the performance of duties, T - the complexity of automation.
Since All figures are expressed as percentages, priority will also be relative. The higher it is, the higher will be the effect of automation on the release of a person from duties. You can choose and proceed.
In addition to the relative shares, it would be nice to have absolute figures on the time of duty, to avoid inflating transactions.
Transaction inflating
A person freed from duties can not only find new ones, but also inflate old ones, increasing the time of each transaction.
For example, earlier an accountant took two minutes to issue an invoice. When you freed him, for example, from the control of negative residues, he will issue an invoice in five minutes.
If you do not have measurements of “before” and “after” time, then you will not even notice how the transactions will spread and, according to the Parkinson's law, will again take up all the working time of the employee. Without numbers, you can not prove that the problem exists.
So stock up on numbers. It is desirable - before the target automation, aimed at dismissal, is learned by the employee or his boss. Both the “Process Meter” from business programming, log data, and statistics from a variety of programs that measure the time of people’s work will do.
Here is an example. The girl-accountant worked in the same company, and we had statistics on the time of transactions in her work. The girl went safely on maternity leave, and the boss quickly found a replacement. Everything is nothing, but the replacement did not cope, and took another one. Now the two girls did the work of one and, interestingly, they still could not cope and always complained that they did not have time. The chief asked the director for another bid, and he almost agreed, but remembered the statistics. Comparing the transaction data, we saw that two new girls are working more slowly than the old one. State did not inflate, although the reduction did not dare.
And so…
And then came the moment when all the numbers are collected, automation is done, a person, objectively, can be released. Of course, it's not you who decide his fate. But, in practice, it can happen like this: once you have successfully released him, your opinion should be heeded.
Therefore, I will outline some scenarios for you to choose from.
The first is just firing. Here, in general, there’s nothing to talk about. The financial result of your work is easy to calculate, and is a very impressive amount, especially if you count the year and do not forget to add taxes.
The second is a transfer to another department for a similar job. If the company is large, then in the balance of identical flows there are often distortions. For example, there are two supply departments - one for basic materials, the other for customized, complex or foreign trade activities. In one, everything is good, and it was there that you freed someone, and in the other - a blockage. If there are no fundamental differences in the requirements for competencies, then a transfer can be arranged.
The third is a transfer to another, albeit similar work. A typical example is the so-called order managers, or more simply, operators. They are both in supply, and in sales, and in dispatching services. Usually these are young, tidy and executive people who are quickly taught where to get information, what to do with it and where to send it. By reducing such a person in the supply, you can safely translate it into sales. Of course, if you need it in sales.
The fourth option I like the most is not to dismiss, but “not to recruit.” There is always a turnover in companies, someone retires, someone is on maternity leave, some simply quit on their own, and sometimes they go on promotion.
The result is one - the place is freed. If at this moment you have already performed automation, then it is enough not to take anyone to this place. Moreover, in this embodiment, you do not really lose anything. The former employee has already left anyway, and you can always find and accept a new one if there is a blockage.
Just don't take anyone and watch. The numbers you have. You know for sure that the remaining employees can cope with their work with the composition that they have left. Do not let them crawl and replenish the DD and NDD, and everything will work out.
This method can be combined with translations. For example, you released an employee of one department, but there is no place to transfer him - everywhere to the head. Well, we are waiting. After some time, an employee of another department may quit, and your “released” can be transferred.
From the translations, or rather, in general, their presence, as an entity in the company, can also be gained.
First, the work of an employee in different departments enriches his competencies and understanding of the entire map of business processes. There are such practices - for managers, though - when they are forced to work in each department in order to better understand the processes and cross-functional relationships.
Secondly, these same cross-functional connections are improving. It is one thing - closed units, cooking in their own juice, with their leaders, hidden rules and foundations. Quite another is, in essence, a project form of management, when an employee becomes a “free electron” and is attracted to where it is most needed at the moment.
Well and the main thing - the moral side of the question will not torment you.
Moral issue
The issue of automation for firing is subtle and complex. I must say at once - I do not know what is right here and what is not.
On the one hand, the person leaves. He has a family, liabilities, loans, plans. You do not need to have a lot of imagination to imagine what disastrous consequences a dismissal could be.
On the other hand, there is a business. If you climb to the very top, the business is also a person. One or several is not important. Yes, they most likely have more money than their employees. But this is their money. They did not set up a business in order to repay loans, implement other people's plans, or fulfill obligations.
And here it is a dilemma. Leaving an employee means the owner will pay him his own money. In our case - in fact, for nothing. Dismissing an employee means creating real, sometimes dangerous problems for him and his family.
Sometimes a mental experiment helps to resolve such a dilemma. Imagine that the owner is you, and the employees are all mandatory payments that you make on a monthly basis. Internet, electricity, parking, groceries, mobile communications, gasoline, etc.
And now, suddenly, you learn that you pay for the Internet twice as much as you need. Either the tariff appeared different, or the new operator came to your city, or you don’t need a wire anymore, a sufficiently unlimited mobile Internet. Of course, if the difference for you is small, then you can do nothing and leave everything as it is.
And if the difference is significant? Will you continue to pay the old operator twice as much just because you have been working with him for a long time, or do you feel sorry for him?
Or, for example, you learned that gasoline at your favorite gas station costs two rubles more than another, with the same quality of fuel, service and loyalty programs. Will you continue to refuel in the same place?
Everyone will answer these questions in their own way. In general, we are talking about small savings. Similarly, for a large enterprise, one worker is not a very noticeable burden. But do not forget that the amount can be calculated for the year, and viewed through the prism of its annual budget. Although, I repeat, everyone decides for himself.
You decided, for example, to switch to another Internet provider. And what will happen to the same provider? Especially if not only you, but all your neighbors will do the same? Is it possible that someone will be fired, to cut costs, or will the business go bankrupt? Do you care?
Most likely no. Businesses are constantly being created and dying around us. A year ago, there was a meat shop in the next house, in half a year the hookah room changed it, and a bakery moved in a month ago. Why are they closing? The standard answer is no business, no purchase. Who does not buy? If the store is next door to you, then you? Why not buy? Not necessary, or expensive, or not tasty? But you understand that if you don’t give this store money, it will close and all its employees will be fired? But you will not buy something. Hence, the moral side of the issue is not so important.
I repeat: personally, I am against layoffs. The mental experiment led only to increase the points of view. Everyone looks at employees and their dismissal differently, and this is normal. There is no single point of view, nor is there a correct one.
My personal, if you're interested: efforts should be made in order not to hire extra people, and not on their subsequent dismissal.
Hiring an employee is a responsibility. If you take a person, he relies on you, makes plans related to the income and prospects of your company, takes on obligations - the same mortgage. Therefore, it is better to think three times before hiring someone. And try to improve the performance of the current state.
Well, if it so happened that a person became superfluous, do not dismiss him, but transfer him.
Examples from practice
To complete the picture, I will give both successful and unsuccessful examples.
Two accountants work in a warehouse, register operations for shipment, arrival, relocation, etc. Formally, one is an accountant, the second is an economist. They set the task - to automate so that it remains alone.
Looked at their responsibilities, it turned out very little. In addition to issuing primary documents, another standard for the accountant participation in the closing of the month, the execution of one-time instructions, such as a mass correction of transactions, well, and a large gray mass of "something else I sometimes do."
We introduce a moratorium - only arrange the primary organization, and everything connected with it. We ignore the gray mass - it turned out that there wasn’t much of it. We make some simple modifications for the primary organization - automatic filling and by templates, input on the base, paper shaken up (they sometimes needed manual adjustments before printing). For all the work - no more than a month.
The girl, who is an economist, was immediately dismissed. I was against, of course - the economist had something to do - but, for some reason, the option of leaving it was not even considered.
In the accounting, there were a few girls, but they were sitting in the office. The performed automation of the input of the primary organization reduced the time of transactions so much that the question of the dismissal of the remaining accountant naturally arose. The manager was determined, but this time I managed to complete the translation - I was just starting a project to restore order in the warehouse, and I needed an isolated person, this girl was useful.
By the way, then the manager was very happy that he hadn’t fired the girl - she had become a very sensible specialist. This is she - the one that worked faster than two new ones.
Then there was a bad example. Talked to office accountants, and found they had two low-hanging fruits for automation. The first is the closing of the month. They used batch accounting in 1C, which took a considerable amount of time during routine operations.
For those who do not know, a little clear. There is a month, and there are several thousand transactions in it - receipts, expenses, transfers, etc. When using batch accounting, each document depends on all the previous ones - primarily, at the cost of write-off. Technically, this means that when changing a document from May 15, all documents must be recast from May 15 to May 31. It is not difficult, but very long. And the changes needed to be made quite a lot. And every time - changed, and rewire. During the day, at night, synchronously, asynchronously - it does not matter, it is still long.
But then in 1C appeared advanced cost accounting analytics (RAUS), which removed the problem of reposting completely - it was not required at all. Changed any document - you just need to complete the month closing procedure, then it took 5-10 minutes.
This transition from batch accounting to RAUS yielded savings in terms of closure - approximately 7 days.
The second problem was the accounting and reconciliation of paper and electronic documents. In those days, electronic document management was not common, and there was only one piece of paper. The cargo came, the papers with him, the manager or the storekeeper takes them and drags the accountant. He drives in, and everything seems to be fine, but managers often lost papers. Well, not so much to lose, but could not find.
A piece of paper, for some reason, periodically required tax. The main problem, in fact, is the lack of information, which pieces of paper we have and which we don’t. Simple automation solved the problem - there was an account of the papers in relation to the electronic document.
So, according to the accountants, before the start of automation, the fuss with the papers took them 20% of the time. I didn’t remember about the Parkinson’s law then, I rushed to automate, the problem won, but, of course, they disappeared somewhere 20% of the time. I didn’t even bother to make the lists - neither DD nor NDD. Therefore, no one was fired or transferred.
Then there were the economists. It's easier with them - they have few transactions, mostly regular tasks, like reporting. Dates and number of reports are known, it remains only to automate.
The reports of economists are more complicated than those of accountants, and the main thing is that they were all executed not by any generally accepted standards, but in the way that is accepted in the company and conveniently to the recipients. Therefore, patterns and patterns were only in Excel.
The particular difficulty in automation was the quality of the data. Actually, the verification, or rather, the reconciliation of data from economists took the most time. They take raw data, insert it into an Excel, and drive it to check, reduce, analyze, etc.
The quality of the data was handled fairly quickly by applying the “Check on Write” and “Asynchronous Check” methods. Then drew reports - according to pure data, they are built quickly.
The time has come to make a decision. There were three economists, all plus / minus are equal. Without thinking twice, they decided not to fire anyone, but wait for the right occasion.
The case presented itself rather quickly - one of the economists quit, for whatever reasons. Were delighted and did not take anyone to his place. Observed - great, cope.
After a while, the second economist quit his job, apparently for political reasons - either he quarreled with someone, or didn’t share something, I don’t know for sure. Were delighted, did not take anyone in his place. Observed - one economist copes. So left.
There were several examples of the same type, when the automation performed and the availability of transaction figures saved us from an increase in accounting staff. The initiative “give me one more accountant” is not punishable, therefore, it was often shown by new accountants and old ones, having sustained some pause after the previous attempt.
Algorithm standard. The chief accountant comes, asks for a unit and brings some justification - usually without a single digit, just a set of sentences like “we have more work”, “the momentum is growing, we can’t cope”, etc.
Transaction statistics were kept constantly, so the check was quick. It always turned out to be the same thing - the number of transactions did not grow, sometimes it even decreased, the complexity of paperwork did not change either, and there were no significant changes in legislation and processes.Just the Parkinson's law is valid, and the time for the transaction is growing.
Sometimes they simply refused to expand, sometimes they chose a compromise - they did some automation to reduce the transaction time, but sometimes the decision was made political - to support the new accountant, then the staff expanded.
And finally, an example that is happening right now. There is a company that manufactures products to order. This product goes to other plants where it is part of the final products supplied to customers.
There are many orders, they are complex in calculations, and are always unique. As long as the enterprise existed, there were so many managers taking these orders. Actually, in accepting orders and related activities, and consists of all their work - to accept, enter into the system, issue an invoice, send into production, check the payment, write out the documents for shipment.
We have made them a self-service customer service, with an uncomplicated interface for customer plants. Those added a service to their systems - both 1C and php, and the devil knows how. The supplier in his usual system simply places an order to the supplier, as he did for many years, and the data automatically flies to our client, the order is calculated there in a second, the order is formed, with prices, specifications, production and shipment dates - in general, all the necessary information is created. You can even print an invoice for yourself.
The manager, in fact, is no longer needed. One or two to leave, for the general control and solution of controversial and emergency issues, and everything, the rest can be safely dismissed or transferred. But all friends are in place.
The reason is simple - we performed this project, working only with automation. Exactly the way most programmers do it - they got the task, they did it, they started it and they forgot it. No business programming chips, like processes, management systems, goals, etc. And they had to work like business programmers.
Well, what would seem? We also paid for this project.
The problem is that the client has not received any profit. He sat with managers without service, and coped with the flow of orders. Now the service is doing well, and the managers are still sitting. From the point of view of the manager and the owner, no changes have occurred. Only money wasted for development.
Actually, this example should well show the difference between programming and business programming.
Of course, we are not losing hope, and we are looking for ways in which our automation will fulfill its intended purpose — to free people. What and you want.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/442948/
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