TALENT: $3.1 Hidden Waste
The Business Unit was lean and efficient – a shining light within the global corporation. Yet behind the scenes it’s people were spending up to 37% of their time on activities (e.g. internal meetings) that added little or no value. It was a major drain on talent.
Pitstop Analytics™ put the bill for wasted time alone was put at $3.1 million annually – the equivalent of 23 leaders. But the opportunity cost was estimated at multiples of that figure. Harder to measure were the implications in terms of lost agility and innovation.
Tapping into an underlying frustration with long hours and endless internal meetings, leaders set an initial goal to ‘give people back up to 4 hours per week’. Recognizing that agility and innovation rested on improved cross-functional collaboration, the structural and cultural barriers identified were also to be addressed.
Data revealed a 41% of time wasted on poor internal collaboration
Here is a snapshot of the data showing a significant reduction in talent waste over an 8 month period.
The percentage of internal collaboration rated as effective increased from 47% to 69% over a period of 8 months.
Data revealed little change in the volume of internal collaboration (-2%), but the rate of poor collaboration was almost halved.
Improved internal collaboration boosted performance by up to 19% incl. task effectiveness, decision smarts, social health and development.
‘Frustration had been mounting for a long time with the amount of time spend in internal meetings. But it wasn’t until the amount of waste was quantified that the need for action really became clear’.
Chief Executive
