News

The What, When, Why & How Of An Efficiency Study

The What, When, Why & How Of An Efficiency Study

13th August 2024

What…is an Efficiency Study?

An Efficiency Study does what it says on the tin. It reviews processes and colleagues within a business to understand how time is spent and whether things are as efficient as they could be.

A diagnostic Efficiency Study assesses individual teams to create a snapshot detailing how time is spent. By plotting colleague time and comparing it to a business’ demands (depending on the sector, that could be customers, calls, packing etc), a review outlines when downtime is occurring and creates an insight into how well the company’s resources are matching demand, as well as how efficiency varies by team and site.

When…did Efficiency Studies begin to play a part?

Efficiency studies were developed when work measurement experts realised there was a benefit in looking across a whole team of people. Even in a factory setting, for example, where the whole team is doing the same job as part of a production line – how they are deployed, motivated and work together affects the overall productivity of the team.

Efficiency studies look wider than one person carrying out one process – they create a picture of how work is done across the team for a whole shift and on different days.  

As the technique has been deployed outside consistent and controlled workplaces – and has been used in hospitality, retail, warehousing, contact centres and more – it creates an accurate view of how much variability there is across the operation being studied. For example; 

  • How does the overall pace of work per team vary during a shift? And how does the pace of a day shift vary compared to a night shift? 
  • How does efficiency vary by day of the week? Are weekends and other busy times adequately resourced, or is productivity capped by a shortage of planned hours? 
  • How does efficiency vary between sites? That can be comparing distribution centres, shops in different types of shopping locations, restaurants in the same group operating with a different fascia, or comparing franchise sites with owned and operated sites

Why…are they useful?

Equipped with the insights generated from an Efficiency Study, you can then confidently streamline your processes; not only does this mean day-to-day operations run much more smoothly, it enables you to invest resources where they add most value, creating savings and opportunities to reshape how time is spent in your business. 

Establishing a baseline helps you track progress in the future and creates an opportunity to benchmark your operation versus comparators in ReThink’s benchmark database. An enlightened approach that adds an external perspective and allows you to look at your operation in a new way.

By taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of your business’ processes, an Efficiency Study is useful to highlight how teams are using their time overall, and helps identify where wasted time can be turned into minutes that are well-used or helping to save money. 

How…we do it at ReThink

Our business improvement consultants visit your site(s), making observations in order to create an Efficiency Study. They carry out observation circuits every five minutes, noting how your colleagues are spending their time and allocating it to one of three categories:

  1. Directly supporting customers or carrying out other tasks that add value
  2. Carrying out essential tasks
  3. Identifying tasks that don’t add value

As trained expert observers, our analysts also note the opportunities that can be harder to spot in the data. Combining observations and analytics allows us to surface insights that are actionable and make a difference.

Using this information, we then analyse and use our expertise to spot sales opportunities and streamline processes, in addition to delivering context and practical next steps.

For more information on this topic, as well as what the study covers, why you should do it and the key trends we are seeing, listen to our dedicated Efficiency Study podcast episode (listen below).

How can we help you?

Our Efficiency Studies are diagnostic tools that make a big difference. Discover how they can be applied to help your business. 

Contact our team today.