1. People aspects, an undervalued
area in the procedures of
business process management

2. People aspects, an undervalued area in the
procedures of business process management
The conference paper by
Juhani Anttila
Academician, M.Sc. (Electrical
Engineering)
International Academy for Quality
Aalto University, Department of
Industrial Engineering and
Management
juhani.anttila@telecon.fi
Kari Jussila
M.Sc. (Physical Electronics),
M.Sc. (Economics)
Aalto University, Department of
Industrial Engineering and
Management
kari.jussila@aalto.fi
These pages are licensed
under the Creative Commons 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
(Mention the origin)

3. Main parts of the presentation:
1. People’s role in business processes; The historical development in
the course of time
2. Organization-wide management of business processes and people
performance
3. Process-structure dichotomy and a management dilemma
4. Human work in business processes
5. People aspects in process performance measurements, evaluations,
and improvements
6. Profound knowledge-based development
7. Conclusions
People aspects, an undervalued area in the
procedures of business process management

4. An age-old topic: People aspects in business
processes
The oldest business processes were the work of farmers and craftsmen.
Also the ancient collaborative group work was carried out as human processes.
- An example: An ancient bronze casting process in about 1500 B.C.

5. People in business processes
• Work of farmers and craftsmen, and the ancient collaborative group work
• Taylorism, Fordism and the scientific management mechanized the human work
• A counter-reaction to pay attention to human factors, from theory X to Theory Y and Z
• The emergence of HRM discipline and applied as organizations’ HR function
• Today’s business management doctrines implicitly recognize people aspects and
business processes but not handle them explicitly as integrated topics
• Many IT solutions make the work of people in processes more complex and difficult
rather than simplified their work
• Human processes forced to operate according to formal flow diagrams, and even
supported by computerized management systems. I this a new Taylorism?
• Global business networking and ecosystems emphasize human aspects due to the
requirement of more flexibility, tacit knowledge, and creativity of empowered people
• Interactive IT, e.g. social media and cloud services, reinforce individual and non-
routine work against orthodoxies of tightly scripted business processes
• Organizations and society require inclusive growth for enhancing collaborative
cooperation of people

6. Managing business processes and people
aspects at four levels in an organization
A P
DC

7. Corporate-wide normative process management
Leadership language and common practices:
Establishing and maintaining the fundamental and normative process concepts,
principles, visions, and general process management methodology, and people
policy
(“aiming at corporate culture for process approach”)
Shared meanings, and learning and communication:
Achieving the same understanding and awareness on the organizational
business process approach, and people roles in business process management
among the leaders and workers

8. Strategic vs. operational process management
Operational daily process management is fundamentally divergent from
strategic process management but they must be consistent with each
other in an organization:
Strategic management relates to the
whole business (all processes as a
business system) and to the major
process transformations in order to
enhance business performance.
Strategic target: Top-down drive
Responsible persons: Business
leaders of the corporation and
business units; experts’ help may be
used
Operational management relates to the
everyday operations carried out by the
individual processes in order to fulfill
current needs and expectations of the
organization’s stakeholders.
Operational promise: Bottom-up reporting
Responsible person: The process owner
with the support of the relevant business
leader

9. The responsible business leader of the
organization’s strategic process management
Business leaders are generalists
and strongly acting individuals
with firm personal awareness
and strong organizational
positions.
They do not necessarily
communicate with experts who
are specialists and deeply
knowing individuals with low
position-based authority.
Business leaders know the right
things, and experts know the
best means to do things right.

10. Process owner and unit business leader
for the operational process management
Tasks of the process owner:
• Updating and maintaining the process plan
• Managing interfaces with other processes
• Promoting learning and cooperation
• Acquiring tools and other means and
ensuring their effective use
• Maintaining relationship with the customers
• Controlling process performance and
rectifying problems
• Managing performance improvement
• Acquiring resources from the organization or
outside
• Communicating with the business leaders
and customers on the needs, performance
and improvement of the process
• Initiating recognition and rewards to the
process people
• Planning and controlling process budget
Tasks of the unit business leader:
• Bearing accountability of the whole
business and the whole system of
business processes
• Monitoring the operation and
performance of the process
• Supporting processes, e.g. relating
to the resources and improvement of
the process performance
• Acting as superior of the process
owner, e.g. conducting
performance evaluation
A challenging question:
How to manage with
the conflicts of interest?

11. Process-structure dichotomy in human work and
the consequent process management dilemma
A process means productive doing or activities for a certain purpose by living
beings, or by mechanical or automatic means with certain existing structures.
Trade-off decisions:
• Freedom / Control
• Awareness / Instructions
• People / Systems
• Proactive / Reactive
approaches
• Variety / Discipline

12. Process variety and the management of
business processes
Process variety is closely related to human work in business processes.
The law of “Requisite variety”
(Ashby) requires that the
management must be higher
than the variety of the system
or process being managed.

13. Work, a personal and collaborative human
process
Thinking, imagining, seeing, listening, hearing, and feeling are natural human
processes, and they are always present at business processes.
- All process workers and business leaders are factually knowledge workers.
Their work creates value to the work or business partners through making
interpretations, judgments, and decisions based on various data and information.
- Tacit knowledge is more significant than the explicit knowledge.
A challenging work concept for business process management:
“An activity that produces something value for other people” (O’Toole)
“Human work include the following elements: (1) creativity (joy of thinking), (2)
physical activity (joy of physical work), (3) sociality ( joy of sharing pleasure and
pain with colleagues)” (Nishibori)
Well-being and inclusive growth are big challenges to organizations’ business
processes as well as in the processes of the societies.

14. A human being in a business process
A person is directly involved in business process activities through his/her
whole physical (somatic), mental, and spiritual nature, and related capabilities
and capacity.

15. A Win-Win human interaction in work or
customer connection of business processes
Rational, non-rational (emotional), and irrational human-to-human interactions
between work partners and customers are essential for creating mutually net value.

16. People performance measurements and
evaluations in business processes
Workforce and leader performance measurements:
Focus: Work environment and people engagement, segmented according to the
diversity of people addressing key individuals, groups, segments, and processes
with current levels and trends
Measures and indicators: People capability and capacity, working climate,
including health, safety, security and work services and benefits, people
engagement and satisfaction, and workforce and leader development
- Human activities related measurements are difficult and
sensitive. The performance is often hidden. or not at all possible
to reach with direct and superficial measurements.
Strategic and operational process performance evaluations:
- Strategic business self-assessment models: (a) Evaluations based on
maturity models and (b) evaluations based on performance excellence
models
- Operational process evaluations and auditing

17. People performance improvement and
development in business processes
“HR integration” process provides professional HR solutions to organization’s all
business processes. HR experts of the HRM department are the key persons in
the process and customers in organization’s all other business processes.

18. Heuristic Vee approach for business process
development based on profound knowledge
Using heuristic Vee methodology for analyzing and synthesizing a process
development initiative and establishment from the viewpoint of people
performance in the business processes.

19. Conclusions
People's aspects should be seen in organizations particularly integrated with the
business processes management:
- Performance of people squarely becomes actualized only in the operational
business processes, and concequently
- Quality of stakeholders and the business results will be achieved.
It is necessary that both people's aspects and business processes are consistently
considered within
- Corporate-wide normative scope
- Strategic business focus of the organizational business units
- Operational activities of the business processes
- Individual human activity and recognition
All this requires profound knowledge and the sound theoretical and conceptual
basis, and an integrated multidisciplinary managerial approach.