Expense approval process not LEAN, avoids "Culture of Accountablity" & demotivates employees. Why?

[PatrickPac]

Expense reports need to be initiated and submitted on time and correctly.  When an employee accepts the accountability, spends effort and performs appropriately, the expense approval moves to the next person (e.g. supervisor/manager).

If that next person does nothing,  the system automatically sends the report back to the initiating employee who then needs to spend more non-value-added effort to log in and resend it.   This goes against our principles of LEAN,  against our Roche "Cuture of Accountability" and reduces employee morale and engagement.  

What can be done to remove this burden from an employee who did thier job correctly and place the accountability on the approver?

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@PatrickPac the workflow step needs to be changed where if the approval time expires then the report moves the default approver's approver instead of sending back to the employee. That is what I would suggest and a lot of our customers actually do this. 

You make a good point that the employee did what they were supposed to, so why should they have to do more work because their approver didn't what they were supposed to.

Likely this change will need to be made by SAP Concur for your company.

I would also suggest you provide this feedback internally so that those who are the SAP Concur site administrators at your company can take this under advisement. 

[PatrickPac]

Hi Kevin, thanks for your response. I will definitely follow up, but am confused where to start. Which group might oversee the SAP Concur? Finance? IT? Any advice would be appreciated!