{"id":347,"date":"2020-10-07T10:35:41","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T09:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/?p=347"},"modified":"2020-10-07T14:41:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T13:41:31","slug":"benefits-its-not-all-about-the-money-but-it-can-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/2020\/10\/benefits-its-not-all-about-the-money-but-it-can-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Benefits: It\u2019s not all about the money. But it can be."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/profile-pic-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/profile-pic-1.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/profile-pic-1-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background has-primary-background-color\">by <strong>Nora Harris<\/strong>, senior consultant<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Projects are\nall about delivering benefits. If what you\u2019re doing isn\u2019t going to improve your\norganisation, what\u2019s the point of the project in the first place? However, the benefits\ndriving a project are all too often lost in translation. In my experience, this\nis generally because people don\u2019t go far enough in interrogating their\nrequirements and capturing the tangible improvements they seek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>The first step\nin understanding benefits, and planning for their realisation, is to understand\nwhat category they fit into. Benefits can be broadly broken down into one of\ntwo criteria:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Financial \u2013 Making or saving money\nis an obvious aim and usually easy to quantify.<\/li><li>Non-financial &#8211; Saving time or\nincreasing productivity is equally laudable, but more difficult to quantify,\nand often confused with project outcomes. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>It is these qualitative, non-financial, benefits that\ntypically cause issues. However, if we keep asking \u2018so what?\u2019, it is possible\nto place a value on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"148\" src=\"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/bank-notes-1791583-300x148.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-362\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/bank-notes-1791583-300x148.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/bank-notes-1791583-768x380.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/bank-notes-1791583.jpg 891w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, let\u2019s take\nan example project. Let\u2019s say that a company has decided to replace its old\nservice desk software and has identified the non-financial benefit of\n&#8220;giving staff a better experience.&#8221; This is a desirable aim, but as\nanyone familiar with Axelos\u2019 benefits pyramid will know, \u201ca better staff\nexperience\u201d is not a benefit, but an outcome. The difference? Benefits can be\nmeasured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These\nmeasurements are often overlooked, especially where there are no immediate\nfinancial benefits to be had. In these cases, you need to drill down through\nthe details of the outputs and outcomes to articulate why they benefit the\norganisation and reach a measurable attribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, what are\nthe benefits to the organisation of staff having a better experience? To\nunderstand this we need to employ the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Five_whys\">five\nwhys interrogation technique<\/a>\nto get to the root benefit. From asking these questions we can reach the\nfollowing benefits:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Positive experience of the workplace\nis known to improve staff productivity. There are numerous studies to support\nthis, including this one from <a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2015\/12\/proof-that-positive-work-cultures-are-more-productive\">Harvard\nBusiness Review<\/a>.<\/li><li>Better experience of the tool means\nmore high-volume tasks\/activities can be completed in the same amount of time\nas before.<\/li><li>Better experience of the tool means\nlower-volume but arduous tasks take less time to do, giving staff more time to\ncarry out other work of higher value\/utility<\/li><li>Positive experience of the workplace\nmeans staff are less likely to leave. This saves time and money associated with\nrecruiting and training new staff. This also means that institutional knowledge\nis retained in the workplace, meaning time is not spend solving already-solved\nproblems.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These are all\nlargely non-financial benefits as they have the effect of causing the\norganisation to achieve more in the same or less time (improved productivity),\nand of avoiding the organisation spending its limited time and resource on\nunproductive activities (arduous tasks, recruitment and solving already-solved\nproblems).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But how do we measure better staff experience? Obviously, staff surveys are a valuable tool for taking soundings and measuring sentiment, but that doesn\u2019t measure the benefit of the project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead of\ntrying to measure the outcome directly (how highly do staff rate their\nexperience at work) &#8211; which can be tricky and subjective &#8211; benefits need to be\nmeasured more directly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Are\ntasks taking less time to do?<\/li><li>Are\nwe doing more tasks with the same amount of time and resource?<\/li><li>What\nis the staff retention rate?<\/li><li>How\nmuch time and money do hiring managers spend recruiting and training new staff?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>These benefits,\narrived at by employing the five whys, are much more straightforward to\nquantify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can apply\nthis same technique to most non-financial, qualitative benefits. Once you&#8217;ve\nidentified the time-saving, manpower-saving, or productivity improvement you\nexpect to achieve, you will be able to quantify its indicators more easily.\nThis makes a much better case in benefits realisation activities once the\nproject&#8217;s outputs are in use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is not to\nsay that measuring is always easy. These parameters may not be currently\nmeasured, making baselining challenging, but you can start collecting this data\nonce the project kicks off. As long as you persist, you&#8217;ll have the\nmeasurements required to assess if your benefits have been realised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through continuing to gather data on these more qualitative aspects, it will eventually be possible to turn some of these benefits from non-financial to financial. It\u2019s not easy embedding any benefits management methodology, especially in organisations that don\u2019t practice it well. However, the benefit of benefits is gathering momentum. Adopting a process doesn\u2019t mean your project is a success. Neither does implementing new software, organisational restructure or a multitude of other reasons companies undertake a project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Realising the whys of the project: That is your proof. That\u2019s how you understand your failures, find the reasons to amend your practices, and demonstrate your successes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Nora Harris, senior consultant Projects are all about delivering benefits. If what you\u2019re doing isn\u2019t going to improve your organisation, what\u2019s the point of the project in the first place? However, the benefits driving a project are all too often lost in translation. In my experience, this is generally because people don\u2019t go far [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}