Lean Case Study - The Focused Office

SECTOR: Government

I was working with some staff in the Human Resources department of a large government agency and asked them, “Who are your customers?”

They told me their customers were the staff working for the organisation who needed information or action from the team, and managers who wanted advice on recruitment. So far so good. But then, totally unprompted, the staff started to tell me about everybody else they worked for:

1. the local Job Centre and recruitment agencies;
2. job applicants and other members of the public seeking information;
3. staff working for companies providing outsourced services to the organisation;
4. the Health and Safety Executive, Inland Revenue and other government agencies;
5. any third party requesting information about staff;
6. subcontractors and suppliers;
   … and the list went on.

When I then asked, “How do you know if you are doing a good job?” I got complete silence. Is it any wonder that this group were so disillusioned? How could they possibly provide the service they thought they should be providing to all these ‘customers‘?

Depending on exactly which task they performed, they really only had two customers - the staff and the managers. Everything else they did was actually something they did for one of these customers.