PEP in action 

Global Professional Services Company

This case study shows the significant increases in efficiency which can occur when PEP is implemented across the middle and senior management tiers of an organisation.

Background

Our client is an internationally known Professional Services organisation.

What was happening?

While our client was under no particular or immediate threat from its competitors, its regional management was concerned that its middle and senior executives were becoming bogged down in detail, and working harder than needed.

What were the client’s concerns?

The client’s management commissioned us to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their senior staff. They were concerned about the number of meetings that were occurring, as well as the amount of time wasted by them trying to find information - both paper and electronic.

Our approach

We designed a series of PEP workshops which were delivered across three sites over a 12-month period. Two hundred and forty middle and senior executives attended the three-day programs. The aim of the workshops was to improve the way that the executives “flowed” their work, maintained their information, and concentrated their effort on their important operational and strategic deliverables. We also targeted ineffective meetings.

Our results

We administered a pre- and post-questionnaire for each of the 40 programs. The pre-program questionnaire asked the participants to quantify the amount of time, in hours, that they spent in a range of work-related activities such as attending meetings, working on their email and planning. At the conclusion of each program, we asked them to identify which of these activities they had seen improvement in, and by how much.

The results, which are presented below, were stunning:

Across the organisation, better than 1.25 hours a day, per person, were freed up to be concentrated on their more important work.

Part of it certainly went into planning their work, with nearly a 50 per cent increase in this aspect. This meant that people had a better idea of what they were doing, and why, as well as sound understanding of how they were to achieve the time and quality outcomes needed by their organisation.

And perhaps the most important thing from the client’s point of view - as a result of doing PEP, the participants were getting more done, on time and to the required quality.

This case study provides information about the return on investment from the large scale implementation of PEP.

This 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.

“Compared with other training programmes PEP is very practical and very applicable. PEP doesn’t try to force you into a rigid way of doing things but helps you develop good practices that suit your style and nature of your own work. I am pleased to say, PEP is the most practical programme I have ever done – immediately applicable!”

General Manager, Human Resources, Vodafone.