If you’re having trouble condensing your workflow and streamlining processes, there might be one main issue standing in your way: busywork. A new Asana survey shows that of 10,000 workers surveyed, respondents spend 58% of their days doing busy work – what they called “work about work.” This includes switching between apps, asking others for information, chasing down coworkers for status updates, and everything in between.

The key to keeping your team or organization productive is to ensure your processes are streamlined and uniform across the org. Let’s look into the best practices when it comes to streamlining processes.

What is a streamlined process?

You might already be familiar with the standard methods of streamlining workplace processes, as the definition isn’t that complicated.

Most workplace tools or apps like project management software are implemented for this reason. Ideally, you’ll take a process (a series of tasks that need to be done in a specific order to achieve an end result) and make it cleaner, more organized, and less time-consuming.

This can be done in any number of ways, such as assigning the process to one particular person or automating the process with code. Conducting process mapping can also help you do this effectively.

The Importance of Streamlined Processes

Many processes across numerous departments can be streamlined, and sometimes, a good workflow software will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Human resources can streamline processes for onboarding; operations leaders can streamline maintenance processes, compliance officers can streamline quarterly reporting; marketing can streamline follow-up emails; finance can streamline spend management — and much, much more.

Unfortunately, sometimes these processes that should be simple are convoluted by excessive, unnecessary tasks – which is why you’ll want to follow these tips to streamline processes and cut busy work.

1. Uncover the best practices that work for your team

These days, tech is everything when you’re looking to cut busy work. Luckily, the glut of workflow and business management software options can cater to even the most specific processes, or they can be good for general use and work across departments for an entire company. To find out how to streamline processes, you should examine the industry standards.

In particular, find out what productivity technology others in your profession are utilizing, from collaboration tools to a cloud contact center. Once you analyze those options, including the windfalls and pitfalls of the trendiest software, you’ll know where to go to find resources that make your job easier and not harder.

A few ideas for places to start:

• Gong – A great application and technological innovation to streamline your sales and marketing processes across the board. Gives everyone visibility into the pipeline and workflows.
• Hive – Project management and collaboration functionality that helps teams communicate regardless of remote, IRL, or hybrid work set ups.
• Zapier – This is a great place to start if you’re looking to hook up multiple tools to each other and create a process from existing apps in use. Zapier is a no-code/low-code automation expert, and you can even make automations between tools like Gmail and Excel.
• Copilot – AI has become a goldmine for helping to identify workflow improvements. Microsoft’s Copilot bills itself as an “everyday AI companion” that can help anyone streamline, organize, ideate and more.

2. Create several processes for variable work

Because workflows are living, breathing things, sometimes processes need to be tweaked or changed over time. Rather than just making one process to streamline your work, try making several.

While it seems like a lot of legwork, you’ll come up with exciting and inventive ways to cut some aspects out of your workflow, see where the repetition lies, and potentially rearrange or rethink process-hindering status updates. It’s always easier to outline a few different processes at first, and then cut down once you find the right few for your team.

For example, if you’re working on a Zapier automation to streamline intake from Gmail to Hive, try setting up two or more flows to see which works the best for your team.

3. Automation

What’s the most effective and most straightforward way to cut out busywork? Automate it! Like we mentioned above, tools like Zapier or even Copilot are incredibly easy to get started with. If you’ve got the right tech, you can trigger purchase orders to send automatically once a task is completed, install a code that sends out a marketing follow-up email blast, transfer information from one app to another, or any number of other essential tasks.

As long as you can identify which parts of the process are the most feasible to streamline and how you’ll accomplish it, anything’s is possible when it comes to automating tasks.

Looking for a great automation tool to streamline all of your work processes in one place? Check out Hive Automate, a no-code workflow builder that is built into the Hive project management platform. Talk about the ultimate work productivity suite.

5. Time your tasks

If you’re having trouble cutting busy work to streamline processes, you might be spending too much time on some aspects of your process and not enough time on others. If you feel like you’re stuck trying to figure out what stage to pare down next, try timing each task in your process and seeing which takes you longest. Then, consider if there are parts of that task you could be automating, delegating, or doing differently.

And if you do choose to delegate tasks to other team members, something as simple as utilizing Excel for employee scheduling can greatly optimize resource utilization, helping you maximize both quantity and quality of everyone’s work time.

Bonus – Hive has a time-tracking functionality that you can use to track time across tasks or projects, so you can better understand where your team’s effort is going. That will make it easier to streamline the RIGHT processes and maybe spend less time on the processes that aren’t as important.

6. Be time-sensitive

Streamlining processes can sometimes mean completely eliminating busywork, but it can also mean accomplishing tasks in the most timely manner possible to evade the busy work that might result from putting off the task.

We all know the feeling of delaying a task until it’s become larger-than-life, or has added additional busy work to your week.

If you have a free moment, try starting with a quick and easy task in your process and breaking down a larger task into more manageable bits. That way, you can realistically tackle things you’d usually put off either because they’re unexciting or repetitive.

7. Get feedback (it’s a gift)

Another great way to cut busy work is to get a fresh set of eyes on it and see if there’s busy work being done that you aren’t able to spot yourself. Ask a manager, coworker, teammate, or someone on a comparable team to yours to look at your process, see what you’re doing well, and what you could be doing better. You can also get feedback from those involved in the process with surveys or team meetings.

If you’re really struggling with setting up processes and workflows, there are consultants that can help you set up the best flow of work for you. We’ve got some amazing Hive consultants that we work with, and know that there are a variety of workflow experts that can guide you to the best process for your team.

8. Study the outcomes

A reasonable way to determine whether or not your process is working is to examine your outputs or outcomes and see if they’re satisfactory. Have your newly streamlined processes cut down on errors? Cut down on wasted time in meetings?

Once you’ve decided to streamline processes, it’s important to look at just how much they’re getting you.

If they meet your expectations in terms of quality, timeliness, or content, you’ll know that your process just needs a bit of fine-tuning. If they don’t, you can see which parts you find unsatisfactory and pull your team in for an overhaul of your process.

9. Create standards and templates

When streamlining your workflow, some steps might be eliminated. It is important to guarantee that the stages we knock out of the process don’t impact the quality of the project outcome. Templates and checklists can be of great assistance to standardize your workload, avoid errors and bolster operational excellence. 

Templates and checklists can also save time on onboarding and when cross-training your team. A step-by-step guide on how to complete a task can go a long way also to identify unnecessary steps and contribute to the overall process of streamlining your workflow. 

How To Streamline IRL

So, how do you streamline processes in real life? There are a few ways to do this, like we mentioned above. You can streamline processes with simple tools like Zapier, or you can dig into project management tools to ensure a fully baked workflow.

Below, we’ll outline ways to streamline business processes for your organization or team, using Hive. Do you have specific questions on how to streamline business processes that we didn’t answer here? Shoot us an email and we’ll get you set up with an intro call.

Hive: The Best Tool to Streamline Processes

Luckily, there are tools like Hive that will help you efficiently set up, execute, and streamline processes. Here are a few ways Hive can help: