Optimise Organisation of Functional Services
After signing an agreement to reduce working hours without new hires, a major chemical firm had to achieve productivity gains at headquarters. The objective was to enable an effective reduction in working hours without damaging quality and deadlines whilst maintaining staff motivation.

Context
An Enterprise Constantly Seeking Productivity Gains
The objective was to identify sources of optimisation in each of the parent company's 23 profit centres, and for each of the numerous functions that make up these entities of extremely varied sizes (from 1 to 80 employees).
In addition, in this enterprise which is constantly undergoing reorganisation, optimisation of work processes have already been the focus of permanent efforts for some time. In this context, finding new productivity gains became a true challenge.

Task
Tailored Measures
To answer to the requirement of taking into account all situations, the working method was systematically adapted to the characteristics of each team. Three types of approach were set up:
For the biggest profit centres including employees with the same occupation or working on the same process, a "workgroup" arrangement was organised.
For entities with reduced staffing but with extremely varied tasks, analysis was carried out through individual interviews.
For autonomous staff working directly with the different European headquarters, a fully individual approach was proposed.

Operational Results
New paths to productivity were identified using an approach that had previously been under-exploited in the company - a participative approach based on time spent and working methods. The use of concrete operational tools contributed to the success of a pragmatic analysis and enabled the productivity gains identified to be quantified. At the end of the project, each entity had clarified directions for progress to enable increased effectiveness, quantified the time savings, and defined action plans with adequate implementation schedules.
The "autonomous" staff were able to reflect individually on their time management methods and to find solutions adapted to their situations using a "time management kit" designed by the consultants.

Prospects
Implementation
The results of the work were submitted to the heads of the profit centres for approval. Decisions were taken on the actions to be implemented.
The participative approach facilitated the implementation and appropriation of these actions: the joint co-ordinators of the workgroups piloted the implementation of the adopted solutions. In parallel, the other participants acted as relays for implementation within the different entities.