Staff lead work to make own offices ‘lean’

Jul 17 2009 by Mieka Smiles, The Journal

ABUSINESS support company is practising what it preaches. Business Impact UK has adopted the expertise it shares with its clients and used it as part of a lean office programme.

The main purpose of the business is to support clients by enabling staff to implement bottom-up business improvements.

By training and enabling staff in small teams, improvements in quality, cost and delivery are identified and realised.

Business Impact UK is running an internal lean office programme which is focused on providing an even better service to clients.

Business Impact UK director Jeff Thompson said: “The concepts of lean and continuous improvement can easily be adapted to suit the needs of an office environment and realise real improvements in the productivity of an administrative function.”

Staff taking part in the programme first attended sessions to develop their knowledge of the concepts they would be applying to their office as part of the improvement projects. Audrey Howells, one of the staff at Business Impact UK’s Team Valley head office, said: “We may not have been able to identify improvements before, but after taking part in sessions on the likes of continuous improvement, problem solving and Kaizen [a Japanese management concept], it is as if you look at the process with a fresh pair of eyes and can easily identify ways of making the processes more efficient.”

Members of staff worked as a team to identify and implement improvements to their office processes in the areas of quality, cost and time spent on tasks, all of which will have a positive impact on the satisfaction of the company’s valuable clients.

Staff are now putting their suggestions forward for further potential improvements they have identified using the skills they have gained while taking part in the programme.

Business Impact UK is now helping staff in a local museum to roll out a similar programme.

To find out more about how you could make your office processes more efficient with a programme such as this, contact Business Impact UK on 08003 161064.