A key finding is that working on business improvements requires the involvement of all staff to be successful. People working with your citizens on a daily basis know exactly what is happening when supplying services. Where can improvements be made without reducing the quality of the service? Or even better, whilst improving the quality of the service! Empowering staff gives you the best possible outlook for improved services built on people driven change.

Redesign the service first

Talking about cost savings almost automatically brings IT people to the table, pushing yet another new system or tool to implement, promising lower costs and higher speed. IT definitely brings opportunities in achieving cost saving goals, but step one should be to rethink the process! First improve, then transform and enjoy the savings as a result. Focus on processes striving for service quality improvement, as these could automatically lead to lower execution costs and customer satisfaction.

Continuous Improvement

Involving staff: YES. Digitise Services: YES. But not as a one-off. Change is a permanent factor and managing change aimed at continuous improvements needs to be second nature in the culture of your teams. Empowering your teams to continuously improve your primary services, with an agile IT infrastructure that easily adopts those changes, will help your council to successfully run management programmes with cost savings as a welcome result.

When staff are empowered to take the lead and services are redesigned or (partially) automated, how do we know if it works in practice? After implementation, make sure that you bring the teams back to the table again and ask them - how did it go in practice, where do we need to correct, and where do you see additional opportunities? You will be surprised by their answers!

At Engage Process we serve 250+ councils across the UK and the Netherlands. Contact us if you are excited to learn how you can benefit too. Email us at sales@engageprocess.com.