Tell a team that you’re bringing someone into the business to look at AI and operational efficiency, and it’s reasonable to expect that some employees will have a concern they may not immediately say out loud:

Is this about replacing people?

There is enough discussion about AI replacing jobs for employees to make that connection. Whatever management’s intention, that perception matters when you’re trying to understand how a business actually operates.

That’s because some of the most useful information in an operational review comes from the people doing the work every day.

Employees often know where the process really breaks down.

Management can explain how a process was designed to work. Documentation can show how employees are supposed to use a particular system.

The reality on the ground can be quite different.

An employee might be entering the same information into multiple systems because those systems don’t communicate with each other. Someone may have created their own spreadsheet because the main system doesn’t give them what they need. Another person might spend part of every day formatting data correctly before it can be used elsewhere.

Over time, these workarounds can become part of the job.

From a management perspective, the process may appear to be working. From the employee’s perspective, keeping it working could involve unnecessary administration, duplicate work and a collection of manual steps that nobody originally intended.

Those are exactly the things I want to understand during an operational audit.

You need to understand how the job is actually done.

When I speak to employees about a workflow, I’m interested in the difference between the documented process and what happens in practice.

Where do they have to work around the system? Which tasks take far longer than they should? Where are they entering information that already exists somewhere else?

What do they have to do manually to keep work moving?

That requires candour.

If employees believe pointing out inefficiencies could eventually result in their role disappearing, they have a clear reason to be cautious about what they share.

That creates a problem for the audit itself. Decisions about process improvement, automation or AI are then being made using an incomplete picture of how the business operates.

Efficiency doesn’t have to mean removing people.

For many established businesses, I think there is a significant opportunity in looking at the work that makes people’s jobs harder than necessary.

If a skilled employee spends hours moving information between systems, correcting avoidable errors, or doing repetitive administration, improving that process can free up capacity for more valuable work.

Sometimes automation will be appropriate. Sometimes existing systems need integrating properly. In other cases, the underlying process may need redesigning before introducing any technology.

The objective should come from understanding the business problem first.

Staff involvement improves the diagnosis.

This is why I believe employees should be involved early when reviewing operational efficiency.

They need to understand why the review is taking place and why their experience matters. More importantly, they need to feel comfortable explaining where processes and systems aren’t working as intended.

The people closest to the work often have some of the best information about where time and capacity are being lost.

If you want an accurate picture of how a business operates, you need to make it possible for them to tell you.