How to … Cut red tape

All organisations, whether in housing or other sectors, have to cope with red tape. It can be frustrating and time consuming in an era when businesses need to be efficient and tackle unnecessary tasks to stay competitive and keep operating costs down.

After comments about bureaucracy from our staff, Kingfisher Housing Association came up with the idea of holding a "red tape month" in which anyone could suggest ways to become more efficient.

As senior supervisor, I oversaw the exercise and communicated its progress to the other supervisors.

Collect suggestions in confidence
We thought some staff might be reluctant to point out items of red tape that had been introduced by their managers. So we put up large flipcharts in quiet places around the office where staff could write up their suggestions anonymously. Ideas were also emailed or discussed with the appropriate supervisor or myself.

Altogether, we got 62 suggestions of ways we could cut red tape, allowing us to save money and improve services to tenants. This shows the month-long red tape initiative was a hit with staff because that's more suggestions in one month than we've had in seven years of running our staff suggestion scheme.

Staff now feel empowered, as the majority of their suggestions have been implemented. They have seen that senior management really does listen and is willing to take suggestions on board.

The 62 suggestions were split between all the supervisors to analyse.

They then consulted with the relevant department and manager and, where possible, the person who raised the suggestion, to see whether it could be implemented or not.

Obviously, some staff were disappointed when their suggestions were not taken on board, but at times there were auditing or other key business reasons why a suggestion could not be put into action.

Ideas that staff came up with
The ideas from staff for cutting red tape were many and varied and, when we sat down and thought about it, most of them were obvious, really. They included:

• sending requests via email rather than filling in forms
  
• increasing the staff's ability to authorise items
  
• computer diaries that could be viewed by everyone
  
• streamlining the distribution of post
  
• moving the cash box to a more relevant department to deal with cash payments.

Communication
Communication was key to the red tape initiative. As staff had put in time and effort to come up with suggestions, we needed

to keep them informed of the project's progress.

We know that verbal communication between supervisors and their staff improved, but updates were also sent out via email.

Once the full list of red tape items that could be initiated had been finalised, an article appeared in our staff newsletter and on internal noticeboards.

We have also been keen to tell tenants and the media about our successes and savings in time and money.

The proof of the pudding
So far our red tape suggestions have been in action for about four months and everything has gone very smoothly.

We have calculated that, in all, 148 working days have been saved – approximately equivalent to one staff member working for seven months – with a total cost saving, including staff time, of a bit more than £40,000.

As time goes on, these savings will continue to multiply.

Even though the red tape initiative has finished, staff are so switched on to the idea that they are continuing to put forward suggestions that are being implemented even now, and we're looking at running another "red tape month" next year.

We've realised that we need to leave staff to get on with their jobs; they have learned that senior management wants to hear about unnecessary and bureaucratic procedures. They get more job satisfaction and it benefits the business.

We've proved it works here – the results speak for themselves. It could work for other organisations as well.