Case Study C02: Regional Administration Productivity Reviews
Large NSW Agency
Situation
Across NSW about 500 staff (salary cost $30m+) support key operational staff. They deal with tasks that include legal support, financial management, human resources and rostering responsibilities.
Administrative functions were partially centralised in a previous review. A second more rigorous independent review was required.
Objective
To improve processing and lower the administrative burden for key staff to enable them to meet their core mission better. To do this the project had to determine ways to:
- Eliminate as many errors as possible
- Decrease cycle times
- Improve productivity
- Enhance staff satisfaction in the regional offices.
Method & Approach
We visited a sample of 12 regional offices and interviewed administrators, their managers, and their customers. We collected data from existing sources, databases, interview and observation.
After consulting and analysing the information gathered, we identified:
- Duplication, redundancy, bottlenecks and timewasting in form completion and information transfer
- Lack of SOPs, performance standards and benchmarking
- Ways to improve staffing based on workload predictions
- Key issues affecting morale and performance
- Opportunities to improve standards, supervision, training and morale.
Outcomes
In a single 20 day project we:
- Identified savings of $8.5m pa (organisation constraints reduced realised savings)
- Provided a topline one year Return on Investment of 280:1 for annual savings
- Demonstrated how workload could be reduced 15-20% by eliminating duplication and developing SOPs at benchmark standard
- Created workload and staffing models for key roles
- Identified key uses of technology to enhance productivity
- Rationalised forms and shadow systems
Commentary
A Best Practice Workshop resulted from this project. It involved regional representatives who developed SOPs and benchmarks that eliminated further duplication and addressed many morale-damaging inefficiencies, increasing ROI.