According to Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index (2023), employed colleagues spend an average of 62% of their workday on routine and repetitive tasks. In a team of ten, this means that more than six people spend the majority of their week redoing what has already been done, searching for what should be easily found, and verifying what should be reliable from the start.
You see it in your team. The same checks come up every week. The same questions about the same files. The same errors corrected by the same people. And despite everyone’s effort, you feel like nothing is really moving forward. The problem isn’t your colleagues’ competence. It’s that the ways of working have never been laid out somewhere visible and followable by everyone.
Inefficient team workflows are one of the daily challenges faced by SME managers. If you want to explore other issues hindering your team’s performance, consult our comprehensive resource on optimizing Microsoft 365 for team leaders.
Our workflows are not documented, so you check everything
You go over your colleagues’ work to validate an order in the ERP, reread an important email in Outlook, or confirm a figure in Excel. This isn’t mistrust. It’s the only safety net that exists when the steps of a process reside in the head of the person executing it instead of being documented in SharePoint or a structured Teams channel.
Every check is an interruption that distracts you from your role as a manager. Instead of planning, developing, or leading, you spend your week ensuring basic operations are done correctly. And the larger your team grows, the more this verification role takes up your time.
A prolonged absence and no one knows how to do an important recurring task
A key colleague is absent, and suddenly, no one knows how to prepare monthly invoicing, how to process an urgent shipment, or how to consolidate data in the correct Excel file. Stress mounts, improvisation ensues, and errors follow.
In most SMEs, critical processes reside in the memory of one or two people. Nothing is written in SharePoint. No template is shared in a Teams channel. Procedures don’t exist in a format that someone else could follow. When that person is there, everything works. When they’re not, the rest of the team is left without guidance, and you have to fill the gap.
Dependence is invisible until it becomes costly
This risk is rarely visible in daily operations. It appears when a colleague goes on vacation, falls ill, or leaves the company. At that moment, the team realizes that critical knowledge was never transferred because it was never formalized. And the time needed to rebuild what existed in that person’s head is measured in weeks, not days.
The same errors recur month after month, if not week after week
A data entry error in the billing system. A report with incomplete data pulled from the wrong Excel file. A quote sent with outdated terms because the Outlook template hasn’t been updated. These errors are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a process that was never designed to be reliable.
When there’s no documented control point, no official template in SharePoint, no defined validation step, errors recur because the root cause is never corrected. We correct the result each time, but never the cause. And each correction consumes time that silently adds up over the year. The colleague who fixes the error loses 30 minutes. The one who discovers it loses 15 minutes reporting it. You lose time understanding how it happened and reminding everyone what should have been done. Multiplied by 12 months, this amounts to several full workdays spent on damage control instead of progress.
Three colleagues, three workflows for the same task
Ask three colleagues to prepare the same report, and you’ll get three Excel files with different formats, saved in three different places. One in OneDrive, one on the desktop, one in an email sent to oneself. Same task, same team, no common work method.
According to McKinsey, colleagues spend an average of 1.8 hours per day searching for information. In an SME where processes are not standardized, this search time explodes because each person organizes information in their own way. The new colleague joining the team spends their first few weeks understanding how everyone works, instead of following a common method documented in a shared space.
If you want to understand where to start to improve workflows in Microsoft 365, our article When Improving Workflows in Microsoft 365 Becomes a Management Priority explains how a manager can clarify and stabilize their team’s ways of working, using the tools they already use.
Your nickname is F.A.Q.
“How do we handle this case?” “Who needs to approve this?” “Where is the template for this report?” If your day is punctuated by these questions, it’s because the information is neither centralized in SharePoint nor accessible in a dedicated Teams channel. Everything goes through you.
Your role has shifted from manager to permanent reference point. Your colleagues don’t come to you out of laziness. They come because you are the only reliable source of information. And the more you compensate, the more the team gets used to operating this way. The day you’re unavailable, tasks slow down or stop. And while you answer these questions, your strategic priorities await.
Our workflows worked with 15 people, but no longer work with 25
Your team’s ways of working developed organically. When the company was smaller, everyone knew each other, and workflows existed in conversations and collective memory. With 15 people, it held up. With 25, it became a hindrance to growth. Each new person learns by observing others, and practices are transmitted without anyone checking if they are still good practices.
According to the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), operational efficiency means using resources optimally to produce expected results. When processes rely on memory instead of being documented, resources are wasted on checks, corrections, and information retrieval. And it’s you, as team leader, who absorbs the difference between what processes should do and what they actually do.
Lack of structure and work methods amplifies every problem you try to solve
Every error you correct recurs because no one has corrected the process. Every colleague who leaves takes away knowledge that no one took the time to document. Every new person joining the team learns bad habits as quickly as good ones, because there’s nothing written to differentiate them. And you spend your days compensating for a system that doesn’t exist, instead of leading a team that moves forward.
Microsoft 365 tools are in place. SharePoint, Teams, Planner, Excel. But without defined workflows to support them, these tools only reproduce disorder faster. The absence of a work method doesn’t remain stable. It degrades. The larger the team grows, the wider the gaps become, the more you compensate, and the less time you have to fix what’s causing everything else.
If you want to explore other challenges faced by team leaders daily, our comprehensive guide on optimizing Microsoft 365 for leaders provides a global overview.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to know if my team’s workflows are truly inefficient
A team’s workflows are inefficient when the manager spends more time checking, following up, and explaining than advancing their own priorities. If an unexpected absence is enough to paralyze part of operations, if the same errors recur month after month despite corrections, or if each colleague performs the same task in their own way, these are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of processes that rely on memory instead of being documented and shared.
Why does my team keep making the same mistakes even with Microsoft 365
Recurring errors in a team are not a competence issue, but the predictable result of undocumented workflows. If steps are not recorded anywhere in SharePoint, if the official template doesn’t exist, or if each colleague uses their own version of an Excel file, Microsoft 365 reproduces disorder instead of reducing it. Tools don’t correct what they don’t know.
Is it normal for everything to rely on two or three people in my team
Dependence on a few key individuals is common in SMEs, but it’s one of the most underestimated risks of lacking documented workflows. As long as these colleagues are present, everything works. The day one of them is absent or leaves the company, the time to rebuild what was never formalized is measured in weeks, not days.
What is the cost of undocumented processes in an SME
The absence of documented workflows costs in lost hours, not budget lines. In a team of ten where each person loses thirty minutes per day compensating for the lack of a common work method, over twenty hours per week disappear into information searches, recurring error corrections, extended onboarding for new colleagues, and checks that the manager performs instead of their true role.
If you want to understand where to start to improve workflows in Microsoft 365, our article When Improving Workflows in Microsoft 365 Becomes a Management Priority explains how a manager can establish clear ways of working in their team, using the tools they already use.
