That One Step in Your Process Could Be Costing £30,000 a Year
Updated: Sep 6
On paper, the process looked good. But one seemingly harmless step was potentially consuming more than 1,000 hours of staff time every year.
It was documented, the steps made sense and there were no obvious problems.
But one small step caught my attention:
Print form.
The printer was at a central print hub. Let's say it took 30 seconds to walk there and 30 seconds back.
Just one minute. Nothing worth worrying about, surely?
Except each person processed around 30 cases a day, printing a form for every case.
That changes things:
1 minute × 30 cases = 30 minutes a day
= 2.5 hours a week
× 10 people = 25 hours a week
× 48 weeks = 1,200 hours a year
At an employment cost of £25 an hour, that's potentially:
£30,000 a year
And that's before printer queues, interruptions, paper, toner or anything else.
Then I asked another question.
What happens to the form?
It gets filed.
So why are we printing it?
Does anybody use the physical copy?
Is it legally required?
Does the information already exist digitally?
How long is it stored?
What does that storage cost?
One innocent-looking box on a process map suddenly creates a lot more questions.
That's the important bit.
A process map tells you what happens. Good process improvement digs deeper into why it happens, how it actually happens and whether it still needs to happen at all.
Small tasks don't always look expensive. But multiply them by frequency, people and time and they can become surprisingly costly.
Don't just document a bad process. Fix it first.
