Sometimes, it seems like true workplace efficiency is an unattainable goal. Yes, it helps individuals and teams hit established milestones such as deadlines and budgets, but that's not seeing the whole picture. Keeping employees on track in the day-to-day sense frees them up to take on new challenges, plot out a path toward growth, and strive toward reaching their full potential.

Just how impactful is inefficiency on your bottom line? Productivity roadblocks account for up to 30% of a company’s lost revenue and 26% of wasted time. And you may have become so accustomed to these ingrained inefficiencies that you take them for granted and don't understand just how detrimental they are at a micro and macro level.

Consider your manual procedures, for instance. They can be time-consuming and lead to deviations from what really matters, as can clunky processes steeped in zero routines. Sometimes the work gets done; sometimes it doesn’t. And no one has any way of knowing or tracking the steps.

At this point, you might be ready to tackle your inefficiencies once and for all. That’s great, but you have to address the other efficiency snag that’s occurring right now: the massive labor shortage.

Is Improving Efficiency in the Workplace Realistic?

Recent government statistics show that the American workforce has a record 11 million job openings. And the shortfall of candidates is having a significant effect on efficiency across many industries, from manufacturing and wholesaling to finance.

As time goes on, we’re seeing shrinking teams trying to increase their productivity with limited resources. Naturally, any overworked departments will have trouble maintaining performance and morale, let alone efficiency. Add to this problem a lack of trained staff, and disarray seems almost unavoidable.

So how, then, are some companies improving efficiency in the workplace and employing bandwidth management even without an influx of new employees? In many cases, they’re focusing efforts on automation. Automating staffers’ routine tasks provides teams with consistent experiences while keeping efficiency standards high and their own personal and professional goals within reach.

How to Expand Bandwidth and Efficiency Through Automation

You can’t do much about the faltering labor market. Nevertheless, you can take a note from other successful organizations and apply a few practices toward widespread automation. That way, you can begin to chip away at inefficiencies little by little.

1. Lay out and streamline your processes.

Like yours, our company is small but mighty. On our way to better business continuity planning, we’ve found that identifying and streamlining processes helps tremendously. Taking this action allows your team to see which activities are critical so they can make sure they happen.

Fifty-nine percent of IT leaders surveyed by Salesforce say that automation saved their teams 11% to 30% of the cost they'd previously spent with manual workflows. So take the upfront time to review your workflows so you can figure out where to set automatic processes into motion. Delegating the necessary monotonous responsibilities to automation gives employees peace of mind that their routine day-to-day tasks are taken care of so they can tend to more high-level concerns.

2. Focus on results.

You might be surprised by how much concentrating on results can free up everyone from spending excessive time on extraneous and irrelevant responsibilities. When Accenture streamlined its systems en masse and moved to results-orientated processes, it shed around 90% of its prior workflows.

Are you worried about limited bandwidth and equally limited human capacity? Make sure all the activities your team engages in are associated with results so you can ensure your team’s tasks are driving the business forward. For example, if you're applying automation to a supply chain or production flow, stay abreast of the ebbs and flows of output. If production is up, take note and understand why. If it's going down, do the same. Stay aware of automation's impact on your daily efficiency to see whether it's really helping your team reach the goals it set out to attain.

3. Support processes through technology.

So many automated technological systems and solutions are on the market now. Your job is to find the right one to standardize your team’s work and to give you the chance to track and measure key metrics. Look into content management platforms (such as WordPress), HR solutions (like BambooHR), or a customer-focused resource (like Salesforce). Any of these can take days or weeks off of traditionally drawn-out processes.


Even if you’re sure you have a robust tech stack in place, you can always take another look at what’s available. Or you might want to speed up your digital transformation plans like more than half the companies surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers did during the pandemic. Of those that took a quantum technology leap in 2020, 86% said the change would become mainstream internally by 2021. No matter what solution you invest in, it can help employees find that balance between the things they have to get done and the ones they need to do to keep growing.

4. Communicate clearly and concisely.

Your team can only be nimble and drive results if they completely understand what they need to do — and by when. Try to be as concise as possible with all directives, including when giving constructive feedback.

One of the secrets to understanding how to motivate and reward your overworked staff is to give them the gift of transparency. Yes, your team might have limited resources and bandwidth. But that doesn’t mean they — and your organization — can’t thrive. A Forbes article showed links between strong employee-manager communication and retention. Consequently, putting a premium on openness makes sense.

Are you concerned with hitting 100% efficiency? Don’t be. Instead, strive to improve your efficiency levels piecemeal, starting with automation. In time, you’ll have tighter operations with or without a bigger staff.

Tony Martin is the SVP of operational excellence and innovation at Integrity Staffing Solutions, a full-service staffing agency that ranks in the top 2% of agencies across the country for quality service based on ClearlyRated’s “Best of Staffing” client survey. Integrity strives to generate opportunities for everyone to thrive by connecting great companies with great talent nationwide, helping those companies fill full-time, part-time, and temporary roles.