WFD Consulting's 'Team Effectiveness Process' Helps Marriott and IBM Reduce
Low Value Work and Improve Team Performance and Individual Work Life
Effectiveness
WATERTOWN, Mass., Sept. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent research of Fortune 500
by WFD Consulting, a management consulting firm with a focus on employee
engagement and effectiveness, has found that employees spend on average 20
percent of their time on low value, inefficient, or unnecessary work that does
not contribute to a company's business goals. This is taking a toll on
employees and companies as well, resulting in longer hours, overwhelming
workloads, work-life conflicts, stress, and burnout.
WFD Consulting has addressed these issues at the workgroup level in
leading companies through a powerful action-oriented Team Effectiveness
Process (TEP) that is reducing inefficiency and low value work and improving
team communication, morale and performance, as well as individual work-life
effectiveness.
"Our experience shows that engaging actual workgroups in a process to
develop a desirable and effective work environment is a powerful way to create
real organizational change," says Diane Burrus, TEP practice leader at WFD
Consulting. "Employees working in teams are in the best position to analyze
their own work processes and practices, identify inefficiencies that lead to
low value work, overtime, burnout and turnover and ultimately develop
practical, innovative solutions."
Typical issues teams address are poor planning and team communication,
excessive and poorly run meetings, spending too much time looking for needed
information, unrealistic deadlines, lack of coordination between departments
and lack of clarity about priorities. By implementing the Team Effectiveness
Process to identify challenges and develop solutions tailored to the team's
situation, employees gain precious time that enhances their quality of life --
on and off the job. Often teams identify problems that can be solved with
"quick wins" that can make a real difference to the individual, team and the
business.
The Team Effectiveness Process was utilized at Marriott International,
resulting in reduced time spent on low value work and enhanced work-life
effectiveness. By the mid 1990s Marriott, who had a deeply ingrained culture
of face time, was finding it difficult to recruit talented people for
demanding manager positions, and some of its best managers were leaving to
spend more time with their families. As a result of a Team Effectiveness
Process pilot program conducted in the Northeast, Marriott managers were able
to reduce their work by five hours per week with no drop-off in customer
service levels. Managers also reported less stress and burnout and reported a
definite change in the culture, with less attention paid to hours worked and a
greater emphasis placed on tasks accomplished. As a result of this process,
the percentage of managers who felt that the emphasis at Marriott was on hours
worked and not on the work accomplished, dropped from 43 percent to only 15
percent and the time managers spent on low-value work has been cut in half.
As another example, IBM partnered with WFD to develop a team based
process, which is being utilized as a global management tool to achieve both
business and personal payoff by reducing unnecessary work, as well as reducing
inefficient processes and practices at the workgroup level. This is
particularly important to IBM because internal global surveys have identified
work-life balance as one of the top factors in retaining talented employees at
the company, and workload and time spend on low-value work as key barriers to
work-life balance. As a result of the team process developed by WFD,
solutions are being implemented by workgroups around the world to reduce
workload and improve productivity and work/life effectiveness.
About WFD Consulting
WFD Consulting is a human resources and management consulting firm that
provides insights and action-oriented solutions for today's workforce. WFD was
founded twenty years ago on the belief that companies achieve extraordinary
results when employee, business and customer needs are aligned. WFD's
research, consulting, and implementation services enable clients to mobilize
the full richness, diversity, and potential of their employees, resulting in a
more resilient, committed, productive, and engaged workforce.
SOURCE WFD Consulting
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Related links:
http://www.wfd.com
CONTACT:
Chris Halcon, Peppercom, +1-415-438-9826,
chalcon@peppercom.com, for WFD Consulting
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