This is how you cut red tape

This is how you cut red tape

Our private lives are made comfortable in many ways by new technologies. We close loans and mortgages online, and banks and the government make confidential documents accessible thanks to DigiD. In the workplace, you sometimes see the opposite. If we want to do our work quickly and pleasantly, we are constrained by traditional HR processes, red tape and unclear supervision and control.

Tech creates more time

A lot has changed in recent years when it comes to payments. After dinner with eight friends, you soon receive a Tikkie. You soon book a hotel via Booking.com or Airbnb, and in Dutch cities you are in an Uber at the touch of a button.
When we get home after a long week of hard work, we order sushi online, turn on Netflix and, if necessary, quickly pay some bills over the phone. Thanks to these new applications and their convenience, we create time and freedom. Spotify, Netflix, Tinder, Whatsapp and even big mainstream banks understand that consumer behaviour is changing.

HR on the shovel

Many companies are happy to comply with this consumer desire, but forget that traditional bureaucratic processes in the workplace restrict the employee's freedom to do their job properly. The very organisations that want to innovate are best placed to think and consider how HR can be used strategically in innovation. HR is nothing more than a connection between an employee and his manager. In many organisations, this connection still presents a vague picture due to red tape, which not only obscures communication but also slows down processes. In the case of innovation, HR has a strategic purpose. After all, innovation impacts the entire organisation.
Consider questions such as: How do current human resources policies affect innovation? Should talent development be structured differently? Do employees get enough freedom from the organisation to work on innovative projects?

By what do you recognise bureaucracy?

Companies that want to innovate would do well to change HR processes immediately. The bureaucracy has to come out. HR was born out of the need for a traditional management style. But what do you recognise a bureaucratic organisation by?
Companies and organisations that:
❯ Standardise tasks, work with routine and focus on procedures.
❯ Eliminate personal handling of issues, but only check against regulations.
❯ Shifting responsibility to other departments.
❯ Taking responsibility only when they like the result.
❯ Archiving of paper documentation.
❯ Managers who put themselves first and not the company's mission.
❯ Registering higher absenteeism than automated companies.
❯ Make employees ask and sign permission for everything. In duplicate.

And how do you reduce bureaucracy and regulatory pressure?

❯ Reduce protocols and rules to a few understandable basics and common sense.
❯ Limit the board and avoid a tsunami of missions.
❯ Cut unnecessary tools and expensive ICT projects.
❯ Give employees more responsibility and the freedom that comes with it.
❯ Impose fewer rules and let employees steer themselves.
❯ Decentralise and give everyone the necessary responsibility to achieve the desired outcome.
❯ Keep eyes on the ball, not the players.

Competing in a tight labour market

A company's future hinges on attracting and motivating the right employee. If the competition offers better facilities, employees, especially young talents, are likely to move to the competitor. In a tight labour market, especially for technical staff, offering a good salary is not the most important thing. In fact, the young motivated employee does not necessarily want more money or permanent employment. Companies already pay well enough. Think more about freedom to perform a particular job, the right to more days off, flexible working hours, a mobile workplace, at least as little hassle and bureaucracy as possible. These workers prefer to look for a job with the same facilities, freedom and responsibility that their private lives offer.

Work happiness and innovation

Last year, over 2558 workers, 235 of them from the Netherlands, were surveyed on job happiness. Dutch people's happiness at work is at 72% (Happy Office 2018). This refers to at least one good day at work. But what exactly is a good day? According to respondents, they had the freedom to do their job in their own way and to pick up fun work in addition. It was also important that the work they did was meaningful. The mission was clear and the execution was fine.
Globally, the Dutch are happy at work anyway, with 34% saying they have a good working day almost every day. Work happiness not only leads to great colleagues, it also fuels innovation and creativity. Booking.com, Buurtzorg, Tony Chocoloney and especially SimpledCard are good examples of this.
SimpledCard frees organisations from red tape and bureaucratic processes by making business expenses and their processing faster, easier and more secure.