Increased staff satisfaction
Evidencing
Benefits Approach
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Key stakeholders
Disability & Dyslexia Support Service
The project was to review and redesign the processes that support applicants and students to access specialist expertise offered by the Disability and Dyslexia Support Service (DDSS).
The project team defined that they did not have a clear, agreed process to enable students to access the provision. Increasing student numbers and changing external requirements had resulted in a reactive service.
Objectives
Project Team
Month 4
Month 2
Month 4 - 7
Problem definition &
prioritisation workshop
Scoping phase & baseline data capture
Implementation supported by PIU
5 Day Rapid Improvement Event & training day
Post-improvement data capture
Benefit
Measure
Increased service quality through reduction in enquiry response time
Increased service quality - faster appointment offering
Increased service quality - reduction in appointment non-attendance
Increased customer satisfaction
Improved academic progress as a result of students accessing the service
Length of time from student enquiry to service response
Number of days between accessing service and appointment
Number of students who Do Not Attend
Track DDSS staff satisfaction scores
Track student satisfaction scores
Statistical correlation
between accessing the
service and academic progress
Manual entry on enquiry spreadsheet
System report of number of days between accessing service and appointment
Sample of DDSS appointment schedules
Staff survey; focus group feedback
Annual student survey; focus group feedback
System reports on academic progress
Increased service improvement
Increased service improvement
Track number of hours that improvement toolkit is used
Track number of further service improvements made by the DDSS team
System report of toolkit use
Manual tally of number of service improvements
The initial improvements are due to be fully implemented by the next academic cycle.
Post-improvement data collection is agreed and planned after this.
Impact of Approach
Lessons Learned
The team were keen to ensure that the service embraced continuous improvement, and agreed that this would be a way of ensuring that service improvements continue to happen beyond this project. We hope that this may be an approach that will be used in future projects.
Statistical analysis is required to evidence improved academic progression, this is not a common skill set. Will the project team be supported with this measurement?
This will be a joint activity between a couple of people in the project team who are comfortable with data analysis, with some support from PIU.
Having 11 team members meant that some people from the service had to be excluded. In order to consult with and inform these stakeholders, they were included at the scoping stage, one to one meetings were scheduled with people who were not formal project team members, and all staff were invited to the improvement brainstorming session and final presentation.
Project team
11
A smaller implementation task force was created, selecting 5 of the 11 project team members. This isn’t something that happens for every project, why choose this approach here?
Q
A
Improved academic progression is a very interesting benefit. Some departments may shy away from this and consider it too difficult to measure. Why is this project team pursuing it?
Collection Method
Next academic year
Students
DDSS Staff
Agree a clear and consistent standard for access to the service, including a prioritisation system
Implement data gathering to enable effective service management and improvement
Implement processes to enable service innovation and improvement in a proactive manner
We already have a baseline figure that shows that students with disabilities who access the service are more likely to perform on a par with their peers, having an existing baseline measurement helps us to track the impact of our changes. We think it is important to consider a wide range of benefits on a project-specific basis when undertaking process improvement activities.
About the Team
Service
Improvement
Access to Service Provision
Testimonial
Chief Financial Officer
University of Sheffield
"
This case study is an outstanding example of the work of PIU in achieving positive outcomes, which with careful planning and data collection were clearly identified in terms of measurable cost savings and user satisfaction. Also, by sharing with colleagues the details of the event, type of improvements and identified benefits, it becomes even more likely that the PIU approach is increasingly adopted.
"
Context
Task force
The creation of a smaller service improvement task force (5 people), with a clear modus operandi and lots of enthusiasm has been a key positive outcome of the project. It has helped to inculcate a culture of continuous improvement. Non-attendance
Very little data about the number of students who do not attend their appointment was collected in advance of the project. The reasons for a student not turning up to an appointment are multifaceted. The absence of baseline data and complexity of causes may make this a challenging measure of improvement.
At the scoping and planning phase of the project it was agreed how to measure the project benefits. Supported by the Process Improvement Unit (PIU), the project team and sponsor identified a range of service provision and service improvement benefits, with their associated measures and collection methods:
The approach taken was to plan the measurement of baseline and post-
Baseline
data
capture
Q
&
A
The team had a great deal of baseline data which already showed high
improvement data to ensure that the benefits gained from implementing
changes could be demonstrated.
@
The Process Improvement Unit is part of Corporate Information and Computing Services within The University of Sheffield. The unit was established in June 2012 and comprises of 2.5 FTE practitioners. We’re here to help the University run the most effective and efficient processes it can, so that more of its resources can be spent on learning, teaching and research.
Our remit is to facilitate process improvement projects and workshops, to run training in the use of improvement tools and techniques, and to help with the creation of a culture of continuous improvement in the University.
Case Study Contact
to ensure that changes to working practices were indeed improvements that
addressed the increasing demand on the service, while maintaining the high level of student satisfaction. Knowing that student satisfaction was already high gave the project team confidence about the service they were delivering and motivation to strive to make it even better.
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Evidencing Benefits
Case Study
Improving Access to the
Behavioural
change
The project team also recognised their own satisfaction could be a project benefit, in addition to student satisfaction, and established a number of service improvement measures which will enable them to be proactive in sustaining the new way of working.
It also meant that they challenged themselves to consider project benefits beyond student satisfaction and how to measure them. This led to identifying measures of increased service quality and improved academic progress.
levels of student satisfaction with the service. Therefore, the challenge was
Produced by Business Improvement Team, University of Strathclyde
Q
A
Q
A
11
Disability Liaison Officers
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Month 1
Timeline