“How can we make our pharmacy teams more productive?”
It sounds like a reasonable question.
For pharmacy businesses across Australia, it is becoming an increasingly important one.
Pharmacies are operating in an environment where teams are managing growing workloads, changing customer expectations, increasing administrative requirements and ongoing pressure to deliver quality service efficiently.
So when productivity becomes a challenge, the natural response is often to look at the people.
Can the team serve customers faster?
Can pharmacists process prescriptions more efficiently?
Can staff handle more administrative work?
But perhaps there is another question worth asking:
What if our people aren’t actually the productivity problem?
Think About an Ordinary Day in a Pharmacy
Imagine a pharmacy team starting the day ready to get things done.
Before the first customer arrives, there are stock levels to check, orders to review and systems to update.
During the day, the team moves between dispensing, customer enquiries, stock management and administrative tasks.
A supplier needs to be contacted about an outstanding order.
A report needs to be prepared.
Information needs to be entered into another system.
A customer has a question that requires checking.
A pharmacist needs to complete documentation before moving on to the next task.
Individually, these activities may only take a few minutes.
But multiply those minutes across an entire day, a week and multiple pharmacy locations, and the time adds up quickly.
By the end of the day, everyone has been busy.
But how much of that time was spent on work that genuinely required their expertise?
Sometimes, Work Gets in the Way of Work
Productivity in pharmacy isn’t simply about how quickly someone completes a task.
It’s also about the environment and processes surrounding that task.
Manual data entry creates additional work.
Disconnected systems mean information needs to be entered more than once.
Unclear processes create unnecessary follow-ups.
Stock management can involve repetitive checking and reconciliation.
Administrative tasks can take pharmacists and pharmacy staff away from customers.
And repetitive enquiries can consume valuable time that could otherwise be spent on more complex patient or operational needs.
These inefficiencies may not always be obvious.
But they are experienced by pharmacy teams every day.
And when a small amount of friction is repeated hundreds of times, it becomes a significant productivity issue.
The Pharmacist’s Time Is Valuable
One of the biggest questions pharmacy businesses should consider is:
Are highly skilled people spending enough of their time on work that requires their expertise?
A pharmacist’s knowledge and professional judgement are incredibly valuable.
Yet there are many supporting activities around pharmacy operations that don’t necessarily require a pharmacist to perform them personally.
Administrative processing, data management, reporting, documentation, supplier follow-ups and other repetitive tasks may be candidates for better processes, technology or additional support.
This doesn’t mean these tasks aren’t important.
It means the business should consider who is best placed to perform them and how they can be completed more efficiently.
The goal isn’t to remove people from the process.
It’s to make better use of their time.
But Individual Performance Still Matters
Of course, productivity isn’t only about processes.
People still need clear expectations, appropriate training and accountability.
Pharmacy teams need to understand their responsibilities and deliver the standards expected of them. Managers need to address genuine performance issues when they arise.
But there is an important distinction:
Is someone struggling to perform, or have we created a process that makes good performance unnecessarily difficult?
Those are two very different problems.
If someone lacks the skills or capability to perform their role, training or performance management may be appropriate.
If the problem is excessive administration, duplicated data entry or inefficient workflows, the solution may have nothing to do with the employee.
It may be the process that needs fixing.
AI and Automation Can Help — But Start With the Process
AI and automation are creating exciting opportunities for pharmacy businesses.
Routine data processing can potentially be automated.
Information can be transferred between systems more efficiently.
Reports can be generated faster.
Customer enquiries can be supported through digital tools.
Administrative workflows can be streamlined.
But technology isn’t automatically the answer.
Before asking:
“Can we automate this?”
It may be better to ask:
“Why are we doing this this way in the first place?”
If a pharmacy has a five-step process that contains two unnecessary steps, automating all five may make the process faster.
Removing the unnecessary steps could make it significantly better.
Technology should support good processes—not simply make inefficient ones digital.
Outsourcing Can Also Remove the Friction
Not every pharmacy needs to solve every productivity challenge internally.
Some administrative and back-office activities can be supported by specialist external teams.
For example, pharmacy businesses may consider outsourcing activities such as:
- Data entry and maintenance
- Administrative processing
- Inventory and supplier support
- Reporting and reconciliation
- Document management
- Customer administration
- Data verification
- Routine back-office workflows
The objective isn’t simply to reduce costs.
Done properly, outsourcing can allow pharmacy teams to redirect their time towards activities where their knowledge, judgement and customer interaction create greater value.
Productivity Is Also a People Experience
Productivity and employee experience are often treated as separate issues.
They shouldn’t be.
Imagine repeatedly having to enter the same information into different systems.
Or spending time searching for information that should be readily available.
Or constantly chasing someone for an approval.
Or being responsible for a process that involves unnecessary steps.
These may seem like small frustrations.
But repeated every day, they can become significant sources of stress and disengagement.
Eventually, a business may describe someone as “less productive” without considering whether the way their work has been designed is making productivity harder than it needs to be.
Perhaps Productivity Starts With Removing Friction
The pharmacy industry will continue to evolve.
Technology will change. Customer expectations will change. Pharmacy services will expand. The role of pharmacy teams will continue to develop.
But one principle is unlikely to change:
People perform better when unnecessary friction is removed from their work.
Instead of always asking:
“How can we get more productivity from our pharmacy team?”
perhaps we should also ask:
“What is getting in the way of our pharmacy team being productive?”
Are pharmacists spending too much time on administration?
Are staff duplicating information across systems?
Could repetitive tasks be automated?
Are there processes that haven’t been reviewed in years?
Are people spending time chasing information that should already be available?
Could certain back-office activities be handled by a specialist support team?
And perhaps the most important question:
If we could remove one unnecessary task from a pharmacy team’s day tomorrow, what would it be?
That question could reveal more about productivity than another performance dashboard.
Because improving productivity in pharmacy isn’t necessarily about asking people to work harder, faster or longer.
It’s about removing the things that stop them from focusing on the work that matters most.
And when pharmacists and pharmacy teams have more time to focus on patients, service and professional expertise, everyone benefits—the team, the pharmacy business and most importantly, the customer.
