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The ANZ operation of a global organisation continues to slash the time employees spend on strategically unimportant work through a simplification project, but its HR director notes that every time an inefficiency is addressed, "something else rises to the top".

It's approaching three years since General Mills' local business started collecting data with a view to unlocking productivity through simplification, and Shontel Turner tells HR Daily she is still uncovering new inefficiencies, along with opportunities to address them.

The organisation has been using a tool called Beamible, which tracks the way people spend their time – including on strategic work, and on work they find "energising" – and fuels GM's data-driven approach.

As reported previously, the first areas the simplification project highlighted as having significant room for improvement included time spent on internal meetings, navigating the organisation, and completing administrative tasks.

Seasoned team members knew how to navigate various processes, but newer staff were perplexed, Turner says. "I think it was at that point in time that we really recognised: we've got a lot of key business processes that probably aren't documented"...