Australian Government department
This case study provides information about the return on investment from the large scale implementation of PEP, and how PEP can be used across an organisation to improve efficiency and effectiveness at bith individual and team levels.
The case study demonstrates a conservative return on investment from PEP of around 10:1, that is, each PEP group returned around A$90,000 in savings to the organisation.
Background
The client is one of the Australian Government’s biggest agencies. It has over 22,000 employees. PEP has been implemented in the department since 2001, and in 2004, PEPworldwide was one of only five companies placed on a Standing Offer Panel to assist the department with its efforts to streamline and improve its administrative activities.
The department’s situation
Australia’s increasing overseas involvement in various theatres of activity around the world is putting pressure on people within the department to deliver under tight deadlines and to respond to ongoing change processes. Staffing and administrative costs restrictions are a continuing reality.
Their key concerns
The client had a number of concerns including:
- staffing numbers and the administrative budget
- needing to ensure that its people continued to meet their ongoing workloads with no decrease in quality or timeliness
- that there would be inevitable pressures on staff as their work increased, or the focus of their work shifted, driven by external forces, and
- that pressure on costs would continue, with training and development budgets under particular notice.
Our typical clients in the department have been members of the Public Service’s Senior Executive Service (2nd level managers), who have seen PEP as an opportunity to align the work of individuals in their teams more closely with the strategic direction of the organisation.
They also expressed the view that their people do not have sufficient time to do important work, being over-laden with administrative tasks such as email and paperwork. They say that their teams seem to be severely impacted by constant change and can miss deadlines.
These senior managers personally found that they:
- often felt unsupported in managing their own workloads and saw the same happening to their people
- sometimes found it hard to keep track of their own work and the work they have delegated to others
- recognised that they and their people have too much information and couldn’t readily access it for research or to respond to, say, parliamentary questions, and
- often complain they have too much work and too few people.
Desired outcomes
Any development activities that are undertaken by the department’s staff must
- address practical issues in the workplace
- give a demonstrated return on investment, have lasting effect, and
- contribute to the its overall effectiveness.
PEP implementation
PEP has been delivered in many areas of the department over the last five years. Approximately 900 people have participated in 107 programs.
Our results
We survey our participants before and after each program. A key question in the Post-PEP survey is:
Think of the most important parts of your job. As a result of doing PEP, what is your estimate (in hours per day) of how much more time you are now spending on what’s important?
Participants report spending between one and three more hours per day on important, high impact activities.
The average across the department is 1.4 hours per day spent on activities that have a greater impact on team and departmental goals.
They gained this time from efficiencies in handling email and paperwork, as described later.
Return on investment
Salary benefits
If only 25 per cent of the 900 people (evidence indicates that the percentage is significantly higher than 25 per cent who have participated in PEP programs over the past five years maintain permanent work habit changes incorporating the PEP principles, that represents 78,750 hours saved through PEP initiated improvements.
At a notional salary of A$55,000 per annum per person (~$28 per hour), this equates to over A$2.2 million saved per year.
This represents a return on investment of more than 10:1
Information handling savings
Pre-PEP reports for participants indicate an average of 10 hours per week spent handling paper and email before doing PEP.
After PEP, participants report better than 40 per cent (four hours/week) improvement in handling paper and emails.
For 900 people working 48 weeks in a year, this represents 172,800 hours.
Again, if only 25 per cent of those hours saved are maintained by improved work habits, at an average salary of A$28 per hour, the 43,200 hours saved (25 per cent of 172,800) contribute to the total savings by over A$1.2 million a year.
These “saved” hours are now able to be targeted at the most strategically important activity. Some of our previous clients have used this improved efficiency to offset staff cuts in a downsizing environment.
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