How productive are your people?

• Position: Management Strategy - Panel Discussion

What's lacking when your department can't meet its performance goals? Are you really overestimating the workload you can process? Do your employees need a push? Or is it something else?

Yes, productivity is up, say the experts, by as much as 5 percent from last year in some areas. But are you buying it? Maybe the numbers are right, but many financial executives still have this itching feeling that their staffs aren't producing as much as they could. And it's not always due to long stops at the watercooler. Sometimes it's a plain lack of tools.

If you, too, believe your financial staff could be doing a little more - with the right equipment and some encouragement from you - read on for similar tales by some fellow shepherds.

GRACE: With so many firms delayering, downsizing and attempting to lower the cost of the treasury function - and at the same time going global - how are financial executives keeping their finance departments productive?

HAUPERT: Our treasury department is somewhat unique. It's very large because it includes about 30 people who, as an extension of our insurance program, perform code-checks and maintenance evaluations for elevators, escalators, boilers and other mechanical and electrical systems. Another large group on the treasury staff is involved in safety programs at airports, tunnels, and bridges and at the World Trade Center.

Having said that, one thing that comes to my mind when I'm thinking about their productivity is a comment one of my bosses made that I use when talking with my staff about productivity: Every time we spend money, we need to think about the average toll payer. That person is really the backbone of our revenues because he has to come up with the extra dollar when we need to increase tolls. So I try to measure everything in terms of how the average toll payer would see an expenditure. If one of our costs wouldn't pass muster with the toll payer, we try to eliminate it, scale it back or change it.

We're also under an order to cut staff by 1 percent a year, so that focuses us on finding ways to be more productive. We use the usual techniques, like better training, more automation and outsourcing. For example, we transferred many safety functions to our insurance brokers.

We've also created our own wrap-up insurance program. In the past, our $500-million-a-year capital program included sizable dollar amounts that went to contractors to supply their own insurance for liability, workers' compensation and builder's risk coverages. We managed the certificate control process to make sure adequate insurance was in force.

But it's a horrendous job to verify that all of these contractors and subcontractors have proper insurance, so we decided to buy the insurance for every contractor and to have our insurers issue the certificates. Of course, the contractor no longer included these costs in their bids. This program has worked well. Volume purchasing and getting rid of the many administrative headaches really have produced productivity improvements. Anyone looking at large construction programs should consider providing insurance in this fashion.

RUDNICK: We have a very small professional staff and finance department at Safety-Kleen. We recently increased to 2.5 from 1.5 people because we're finding it more and more difficult to grasp some of the treasury concepts and keep up with our daily work at the same time. Seminars do help. If we get two or three good ideas from a two-day seminar, I feel we've been very successful. We also use our commercial and investment bankers to keep us up to date on Changes in corporate finance. Of course, that helps form a positive relationship with them. Because the bankers know Safety-Kleen so well, they now come to us with ideas instead of our going to them with questions.

We also have hired a leasing consultant to assist us with our leasing projects, so we don't have to become leasing experts.

MATTHEWS: We find our insurance efficiency is easy to track because we renew our policies almost every year. We watch how our premiums change, and that's a good benchmark. We also emphasize safety, because every dollar spent on safety is at least a dollar less we have to spend on premiums.

Because the energy business is changing, we're having a tough time meeting all our development goals. For instance, in the past, payments have always been in dollars, but as we go into developing countries now, that's no longer the case and we have to locate a certain expertise to close deals.

LIVINGSTON: Usually the challenge is in delayering. A big company tries to be more like a smaller company. But a small company tries to do more with the same resources because it's growing. For smaller firms, I'm a fan of two productivity techniques: job swapping, as people take extended leaves or are out sick, and cross-functional teams.

In job swapping, the cross-training that people naturally get gives them more ideas about their own jobs. For cross-functional teams, the key is to involve a senior manager. Like job swapping, the cross-functional teams tend to educate people about how their work has an impact on other people's work. That's how we create savings, efficiency and speed.

SEEGER: Job-rotation projects are very, very effective for us, too. We put together...