Reducing Position Eligibility Review Time by 30%
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King County Retirement & Benefit Services is paving the way for process improvement in Government. Watch this 30 minute success story to learn how Kimberly Fleming is identifying and eliminating waste in a process to deliver more value – faster!
THE CHALLENGE
Kimberly’s team was tasked with creating value stream maps of processes within their department to identify waste. When presented with this challenge, Kimberly knew that Position Eligibility Worksheet was the perfect place to start looking. It was a huge pain point for everyone involved in the Retirement Position Eligibility program.
After reviewing the form with the 8 Wastes in mind, Kimberly was able to identify more waste than expected, so she decided to take a big step back and look at the entire process. She started by asking herself, “what am I actually required by law to do?”
She was ecstatic to discover, “It’s our responsibility to make the [eligibility] determination. We have to document it, and keep it, and we provide information from request. And that was it. That’s all the requirement there is.”
Jackpot!
THE DISCOVERY
Kimberly created a SIPOC of her process with a value-added flow analysis to capture the entire process and highlight any non-value add steps. She found that over 70% of the process steps were non-value add and that she was a bottleneck in her very own process!
Needless to say, Kimberly had identified a bad process so she set out to improve it.
THE IMPROVEMENTS
Since all necessary information contained on PEW forms was already stored in their new internal software, the Retirement Team was able to eliminate the form altogether. For the few inquiries that required information not housed inside their system of record, they created online queries to allow both the HR staff and their own team to find any missing information. Finally, they provided a process guide for all HR staff to ensure the department had an understanding of their new process.
Through these improvements, Kimberly’s team streamlined a bad process and saved valuable time processing as well as elimination of filing unnecessary forms – making everyone involved happier!
We asked Kimberly what advice she would give to a fellow Government employee seeking to start their own process improvement project. She told us:
“I would definitely say start [with the requirements] because when you’re focused on what you’re actually required to do, you have a whole new process you could be working in. You could have a whole new direction that something could be taken instead of, ‘Well, we’ve always done it this way.’”
Excellent advice, Kimberly!
With one major project down and a taste for process improvement, we can’t wait to hear more from the Retirement Team at King County!
Kimberly Fleming is part of the Retirement Team at King County in the state of Washington. She’s worked in Government for over 17 years and only dabbled in process improvement before her team’s latest project: Improving position eligibility by identifying & eliminating waste.
Nice job by Kimberly Fleming! I love that she challenged the the idea that things have to move slowly in government. And I love that the result was removing a form from the process completely. No need to fill it out, no need to file it and no need to archive it for 60 years! What a great example of what’s possible in any process anywhere.