US Recession: Unlocking Capacity Is Key to Thriving During Economic Downturn, Says ActiveOps

More than half of businesses know they have capacity within their teams, but don’t know where it is or how to access it.

It’s time for US businesses to release ‘hidden’ capacity within their organizations, a new report from ActiveOps, a leading management process automation company, has revealed. Getting a true picture of real-time capacity within an organization will enable operations leaders in the US financial and banking sector to unlock time and resources that can be better spent, helping teams to do more with what they have during recession.

This comes as the new report, Are you recession ready? How to do more with less, reveals that 53% of US businesses know they have spare capacity within their organization but don’t know where, or how to access it. However due to a lack of insight into workload volumes and day-to-day operations, leaders are unable to make critical decisions or respond to spikes in demand due to a lack of operational agility. This could ultimately cause businesses to fall short of organizational objectives, costing revenue and profit.

Importantly, 52% of employees also believe that their business needs better forecasting and planning during a recession; indicating that a combination of better foresight and insights into day-to-day operations will be key to supporting employees and responding to customers when circumstances change rapidly.

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Other key findings of ActiveOps’ research include:

•  Two in five senior employees don’t have the information needed to improve productivity and efficiency
• 28% of employees can’t see when people are working
• 25% of employees lack intra-day insights to make timely decisions
• 91% of businesses are yet to begin recession preparations, and the further away an organization’s preparations are for recession, the more confident they felt that they have the information needed to make decisions to improve productivity and efficiency.

Building resilience and agility into operations will be crucial for organizations, particularly in the finance sector. Leaders will need to facilitate a culture of cross-team collaboration to support overworked teams, clear backlog and enable flexibility when the unexpected happens. In order to unlock capacity, leaders must have an accurate overview of capacity within their organization by analyzing the work teams and individuals are doing to understand where capacity is hiding.

As well as supporting internal teams, addressing the workload challenge and finding ways to do more with less while prioritizing employees, it is vital to maintain customer service. Leaders must not only source additional, existing capacity, but also prioritize cross-training and reskilling of employees to remove skills-based bottlenecks and make it easier for teams to borrow and lend resources.

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The ActiveOps’ report signifies challenges ahead for US businesses particularly in the finance sector; and surveyed 1,000 employees within operations teams across North America, UK and Australia. The US financial services sector is one of the largest and accounts for a total of 7.4% of US GDP.

Commenting on the findings, Richard Jeffery, Chief Executive Officer at ActiveOps said: “A recession is looming, and a trend we’re predicting is that businesses will need to optimize the resources, staff and solutions that they currently have, to boost organizational visibility and become more resilient.”

“Businesses need to know as much as possible about how work is done, how long it takes and how employees spend their time. This will enable operations teams to respond more effectively to spikes in demand, make the right decisions and keep things moving when recession bites. Investing in technology is key to this. Technology that identifies opportunities for improvement and enhances transparency can save time and resources by identifying efficiencies, prioritizing workloads and facilitating collaboration across teams. It will also support customer needs and employee demands throughout recession.”

“Now is the time to unlock your capacity and gain a better understanding of processes, to enable you to trim the fat while strengthening the muscle of your operations teams – and your business.