Ongoing pressure for public sector efficiency
Between the challenging fiscal context and the significant demands across the state (see prison spaces, NHS waiting lists or court backlogs), public services are under exceptional strain. And we saw this challenge played out in the lead up to the Autumn Budget, with various Cabinet ministers successfully making the case for additional resources for their departments, funded by tax increases.
However, funding for public services remains extremely tight. Public services will (like business) need to pay the increased National Insurance contribution – typically at a cost of around 1% of total budgets. Pressure for wage increases also continues, even as commentators expect inflation and interest rates to continue to fall. And many of the increases are targeted at infrastructure rather than day-to-day service spending.
What’s more, financial pressures can be exacerbated by the effects of our ageing population and the need to modernise around emerging technology. Some important efficiencies can be achieved through things like demand management, better collaboration, and, of course, new AI tools – all topics we covered in previous blogs (1).
The role of process redesign in public sector productivity
Process redesign is an essential and sometimes overlooked pathway to efficiencies too. This is especially true for the public sector, where constant legislative change, regulatory requirements, and risk–first thinking can all result in processes becoming ever more complex over time. For citizens, this results in slower, less responsive services. For public sector staff, it means spending far too much time on burdensome and repetitive tasks that seem to add little value.
It’s because of this that we at Leapwise are passionate about what effective process redesign can do. All of our consultancy team have completed certified Lean Six Sigma training (one of the world’s best known process improvement approaches). But how exactly should you go about the work of process redesign? Here’s four tips from our experience working across the public sector.
4 tips for effective process redesign
There are 4 things to keep in mind when redesigning processes:
- Balance quick wins and big wins
- Avoid a siloed approach
- Win the trust of the frontline
- Build the muscles of continuous improvement
1. Balance quick wins and big wins
First, let’s start with the basics. Process redesign projects vary greatly in size: some are very small, while others are much more ambitious. Different projects will, naturally, need tailored timescales and resources, and can be expected to deliver different levels of benefit. But wherever a project falls on that spectrum, having a clear scope from the early stages is key: understanding what you can and can’t change, as well as what’s manageable in the time available.
With that understanding in mind, the next step is to identify which parts of the process are responsible for most cost or waste. Sometimes, it’s just a single area that’s ultimately to blame for the bulk of the delays in the process (though this varies enormously). This is where you should start first: strategically targeting the biggest contributors to process inefficiency and designing solutions that can boost standards dramatically. That’s ultimately what will deliver the most meaningful improvements for the citizens who use your services.
But there’s also great value to delivering ‘quick wins’ in parallel, if at all possible. Taking out the main sources of process inefficiency will often take considerable time and effort – there’s probably a reason why they’re so challenging. In some cases, indeed, there entirely driven by a government legislative requirement that has become outdated and unhelpful. However, if you can produce a successful ‘proof of concept’ by fixing a small but meaningful part of the process, you can smooth the path for future changes.
For example, imagine you’re working in a police force that’s aiming to boost performance around victim support. After some early process improvements, you’re able to get victims referred to support services 50% faster when they first report a crime. That’s a strong start! It hasn’t fixed the whole system, far from it, but it does show the benefits of committing to this kind of approach.
With the evidence of that quick win, it’s much easier to secure buy-in for the more challenging improvements to come, whether from senior leaders or sceptical frontline staff. It offers an effective starting point, with measurable evidence of early success to accelerate changes to come.
2. Avoid a siloed approach
Let’s focus again on that example – a 50% improvement in the time taken to refer someone to victim support services. Looking only at that part of the process, it’s obviously much more efficient. But imagine instead that you went even further and now refer victims 95% faster. What happens next? Now victims are passed on far more efficiently, can the support team get back to them quickly? Does they enough capacity to keep up with the pressure of more efficient referrals, or will it simply exacerbate the strain on already busy staff?
This illustrates exactly why process redesign doesn’t work well when approached in a siloed way. Optimising one step in a process – or even improving all the processes involving just one department – can be a positive in that one area, without delivering the right outcomes organisation-wide. This kind of unbalanced process redesign can create apparent areas of ‘hyper-performance’, where processes are incredibly efficient, simply by piling the pressure onto other functions in your organisation – a recipe for internal disharmony and division.
That’s bad enough for people working in that overburdened team, but it also hampers the wider organisational ambitions of process redesign. When ‘hyper-performance’ in one area is counterbalanced by backlogs elsewhere, outcomes for citizens might not even improve – all that’s happened is that internal performance has become more variable.
In other words, that approach doesn’t deliver what service users actually need. They’re looking for more efficient processes in the round and siloed process redesign isn’t likely to deliver it. It’s a good example of why focusing on service user outcomes is just as important as removing waste – the impact on the customer is what really counts. The better way to approach process redesign is about looking end-to-end, mapping out all the stages, departments and dependencies involved, and then coming up with sustainable solutions that improve performance across your organisation.
3. Win the trust of the frontline
When you’re trying to redesign processes, it’s normal to encounter mixed responses from frontline staff working within the current system. Some staff might welcome the prospect of a redesign, especially if it’s perceived as a way to remove tedious, burdensome work and properly listen to their concerns. But it’s very common to encounter some resistance to change from others – this may be, after all, ‘the way things have always been done.’
Whichever set of responses you encounter – and it’s usually some mix of the two – winning the trust of your frontline is a key enabler to effective process redesign. Why? Well, first, because those staff are the closest to the work you’re focused on. They understand how processes really operate – what’s effective, what’s wasteful, and where practice deviates from the organisation’s standard procedures. They can offer informed insights into both the deep problems and the potential solutions you need. Winning their trust will make the early stages of process redesign far easier.
Even more importantly, winning trust is key because the frontline will ultimately implement any redesigned process. Where staff feel a sense of ownership or at least alignment with the project – best achieved by involving them early and often in the work – they’re likely to accept the new approach. However, even if you’ve identified all the right solutions, they’re unlikely to go well if frontline acceptance is poor. In that case, changes won’t stick and outcomes won’t improve either.
For all these reasons, having a clear internal ‘owner’ of your process improvement project is vital. This person can lead the constant work of building support, myth-busting about what the project actually entails, and soliciting insights from staff. When they are senior enough and properly empowered, the project owner can demonstrate that the way things have always been done isn’t the only way they can be done.
4. Build the muscles of continuous improvement
Even a one-off process improvement project that boosts efficiency is better than nothing. In the short-term at least, it could improve outcomes for those at the sharp end of any public service. But the real prize is much more ambitious than this.
Ultimately – and this is a key theme of our work at Leapwise – the goal should be for an effective process redesign project to be just the first step in a longer journey. It should act as a springboard, demonstrating the benefits of this approach for your organisation and encouraging staff to engage in subsequent improvement projects of their own.
This should ideally happen in two ways. First, those working in the original project area – the one targeted for process redesign in the first place – should take what they’ve learned and begin a cycle of continuous improvement. As that process encounters fresh backlogs or pressure and performance (inevitably) suffers, they should be continually reviewing processes and finding new solutions to boost efficiency.
But this logic also applies more broadly. Having helped some staff learn the skills of process improvement, the most effective organisations empower and encourage them to do this across many different teams, departments and functions in the future. In our hypothetical example above, the things police staff learned when redesigning victim support processes could well be applicable in the context of police vetting or firearms licenses. Building that culture of process improvement can deliver much greater benefits than any single project ever will alone. Doing this is, however, a much tougher ambition for any organisation – buy-in from senior leaders will be crucial.
Process redesign as a path to efficiency
With public services under considerable pressure in the coming decade, leaders must explore all plausible pathways to generating efficiencies. While new technology or AI solutions might attract more of the headlines, process redesign can be just as effective at delivering better outcomes. We measure the process improvement benefits we deliver in terms of cost saving, productivity improvements and efficiency gains – and it’s very common to see these all improve by 10% or more if you heed the four tips above. Process redesign is something we at Leapwise are passionate about – and why we invested in training all our consulting staff in the discipline irrespective of their areas of sector or service focus.
Please get in touch with our team to hear more about our process redesign work and the benefits it could offer to your organisation.
