By deciding to take this course you have taken the first step towards addressing the problem of managing your organisation’s resources in an efficient and effective manner so that costs are reduced and waste is minimised.

There are four sessions.  Sessions A and C can be summarised very concisely as follows:

Work is about converting resources into outputs.  These resources are capital, materials, information, energy, equipment, time, finance and people.  It is in the optimum management of resources that efficiency is achieved.  The manager desiring improvements in efficiency must therefore identify the resources at his or her command, and find ways of getting the best from them.

Although Session B is not central to this theme, it is very relevant, and you should find it informative.  It deals with ways of measuring and analysing work processes: productivity, work study and some of the latest thinking about how to improve the efficiency of organisations.

A story which illustrates the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness is that of a surgeon who was said to have improved his efficiency by completing more operations in a day, only to reduce his effectiveness as all his patients die.

All organisations would like their employees to be more efficient because efficiency is normally equated with profitability. 

Effectiveness, on the other hand, has to do with how good you are at achieving what you set out to achieve.

Session D highlights the risk to profitability caused by failure to control waste.  You are shown how to identify sources of waste in your work processes, and develop an action plan to reduce it.

One misplaced fear is that increased efficiency leads to job losses.  The argument is that fewer people will be needed to perform the same tasks.  In fact, the opposite is generally true.  When efficiency goes up, an organisation becomes more prosperous, is able to expand its sphere of activities, and so more people are likely to be needed.