NGA HR's New Lean Visual Management System Ensures Optimal Customer Support
As customers, we've all experienced the frustration of products not performing as they should. If you're trying to run a company or an HR department, finding your systems aren't working properly is not merely irritating, but can present a real danger to business performance and company reputation.
According to Customer Service Insight, reliability of products and services is paramount to customers, because their operations depend on it. Customers, they say, will invariably choose the most reliable offerings over those with the lowest price.
NGA HR has long realized this and has developed its own Lean Visual Management System (LVMS), designed to ensure any system issues are resolved, as far as possible, before they become a problem for the customer.
So, what is LVMS, and how exactly does it help your HR process performance?
Many organizations have a problem in understanding team performance because inconsistent methods are being used to measure it. Metrics are frequently defined at the local team level, making it difficult to compare similar services provided by similar teams, or even single teams supporting multiple clients.
In addition, it can be difficult for individual team members to understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture. This makes it challenging for leaders to understand where the areas of opportunity sit within their organizations.
The LVMS model enables teams to see very easily how they are performing through visual cues and provides a place to document the actions that are being taken to correct issues.
All eyes on the process
LVMS puts the focus on the process, rather than the team, promoting an improved overall customer experience with process owners having end-to-end accountability for the effective delivery of HR services.
Easily accessible and highly visual, LVMS takes its cue from the concept of lean management which, as defined by SearchCIO, is "an approach to running an organization that supports the concept of continuous improvement, a long-term approach to work that systematically seeks to achieve small, incremental changes in processes in order to improve efficiency and quality."
Principled customer service
It is this principle that lies behind the development of the LVMS and is the philosophy that NGA HR has applied to its customer service.
Just as Lean Six Sigma methodology relies on a collaborative team effort to improve performance, NGA HR's LVMS enables teams to spot any problems quickly and to put them right, often well before a customer has noticed there is anything wrong. It's based on the principle of teams coming together to analyze any issues and then deciding collectively the best approach to solving them.
However, LVMS is not just a piece of technology – it's an approach to quality assurance that involves all employees working on NGA HR customer account to come together daily to review targets, discuss any service issues, what can be done to resolve them and collectively plan their actions.
An example would be, for instance, if the system found that any calls from employees to the HR helpline are going unanswered. LVMS immediately highlights anything that is unusual or out of the ordinary on the visual dashboard as well as opportunities for improvement – much quicker than reading reams of notes - and the whole team can then combine their problem-solving skills to determine what steps need to be taken to resolve the issue and to stop it recurring.
The lean visual management dashboard technology allows a single shared view which flags up issues in a similar way to a red-amber-green traffic light system, meaning that NGA HR can deliver a smooth and efficient service to its customers.
Using measures selected from a global standards library, the board covers availability, a skillset matrix, operational measures, a radar chart and a PIO log, where everyday discussion and review of the measures helps the NGA HR team to resolve a Problem or Issue, or work on an Opportunity. All the measures are computed automatically and are easily accessible in the digital tool.
LVMS is designed as a collection of tools, people, and processes
These three elements work together to enable the business to ensure effective delivery of services. In combination, they provide information that is then translated to visual cues that, in turn, enable NGA HR teams to see how they are performing.
These tools support, for example, enhanced performance coaching; the skills matrix clearly identifies critical skills for the team analytics that help predict patterns; daily 'huddles' that provide a forum for real-time discussion; and a visual (digital) display board that provides clarity of performance and indicates where the focus should be.
An availability table helps everyone on the team understand who is in or out for the day, a light showing red meaning that a team member either has an unplanned absence or is not available, while yellow signifies that an absence is planned, or that an employee is out for half of the day.
This is intended to help the team adjust to cover critical needs, rather than to track attendance.
Highly visible metrics
The digital display boards (DDBs) allow all supporting team members to review critical metrics daily. Essential information, such as availability and subject matter expertise, are available at-a-glance on each board.
Dashboards collect data from the DDBs that is then summarized and displayed in various leader dashboards. Through this, leaders can monitor the situation and drive improvements to achieve organizational goals.
In addition to the in-team management of the process, key stakeholders can observe the performance of several processes. In the event of a noteworthy occurrence or a general need for communication to all teams, these stakeholders can create advices, and then send them to one or several process owners at the same time.
No barriers to success
A skills versatility matrix shows a list of various skills required for the team to be successful, as well as indicators to help identify the experts. Paired with the availability table, these two pieces of the visual display can quickly help with on-the-fly staffing adjustments.
The PIO Log provides a visual way to capture the problems, issues, and opportunities the team identifies to help them improve, or achieve the daily goals.
A ticket/case volumes chart is specifically dedicated to tracking the tickets the team monitors most closely, while the announcements component allows users to communicate information such as system changes, outages, and so on.
For example, if a system or standard work update occurred, or if the system must be taken down to upgrade it, those messages would be added to this area of the visual display to be sure that the entire team is informed.
Daily performance goals
The core of the visual display is the Daily Goals section. The most important metrics for gauging the successfulness of the team are listed here. These may look a little different from team to team, but the catalogue of metrics chosen align to Quality, Satisfaction, Efficiency, and Accuracy goals.
The Radar is a visual display of the metrics identified in the Daily Goals section with each goal corresponding to a ring. It is a performance dashboard evaluated by team leaders and shows everyday performance of measures. Customer instructions or updates are shown in the announcement section of the tool, allowing seamless and timely communication to all stakeholders.
The LVMS also facilitates management reporting - all relevant information can be viewed by management, allowing them a single shared view of the account, country, center, process or team performance. Beneath each Radar chart are communication and data elements to help the team stay engaged, including a list of Problems, Issues, and Opportunities being worked on by the team, ticket volumes, and announcements, along with advices.
Process owners can review the process daily performance by clicking on the measure chart to see the daily result, with supporting details about the measure. Once performance is understood, the status is coded as red, amber, or green on the Radar chart. Each ring represents a metric whereby each column represents a day of the month, to provide a monthly at-a-glance performance view.
In this way, NGA HR provides its customers with the assurance that their systems are being monitored continuously and that any problems are dealt with proactively and immediately, rather than relying on a client flagging up that something is wrong and ensures that service level agreements are complied with.
By using this approach, NGA HR ensures best practice in delivering a very high quality of service and excellent levels of reliability to its customers.
