Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat
Symbol of the Government of Canada

ARCHIVED - Quality Service - Benchmarking and Best Practices: An Update (Guide X)


Warning This page has been archived.

Archived Content

Information identified as archived on the Web is for reference, research or recordkeeping purposes. It has not been altered or updated after the date of archiving. Web pages that are archived on the Web are not subject to the Government of Canada Web Standards. As per the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada, you can request alternate formats on the "Contact Us" page.


4. A Systematic Approach

Why Is It Important?

As part of its quality services initiative, the Treasury Board Secretariat is fostering a government-wide use of benchmarking and best practices sharing. This section describes what is involved in "initiating", "supporting" and "sustaining" benchmarking and best practices sharing.[6] You should adapt the advice to your own department's situation.

What's Involved?

The success of benchmarking and best practices sharing depends on senior executive leadership. That leadership will foster a common understanding of what benchmarking and best practices sharing means and its implications for the organization. It will also produce commitment to the concept, thereby sustaining and supporting employees and managers involved in benchmarking and best practices sharing to generate continuous improvements. To do this, the senior executive team must:

  • engage (perhaps using a facilitator) in a free and open exchange on the subject of benchmarking and best practices sharing; and agree on what these are, what they can do, costs and expected benefits, and what executive decisions are needed to make them happen;
  • entrench benchmarking and best practices sharing in the organization's planning, performance processes and management practices;
  • commit the necessary resources to develop and train managers and employees to be involved in benchmarking and best practices sharing;
  • designate a member of the senior executive team to manage the initial efforts of the organization in implementing benchmarking and best practices sharing;
  • select an area, product, service, or system in the organization that is likely to benefit quickly from a benchmarking exercise;
  • determine how to promote benchmarking and best practices sharing throughout the organization by all practical means.

How To Initiate The Process

Establishing a context and a strategy statement

When benchmarking and best practices sharing are introduced into an organization, employees need to know where they fit within the existing quality and process improvement initiatives. Developing strategy statements helps legitimize their use.

Strategy 1:

To continuously improve client satisfaction and operational results by focusing benchmarking efforts on finding and implementing best practices in core business and work processes.

Strategy 2:

To share best practices throughout the organization to educate staff, accelerate continuous improvement, enhance communications and promote networking.

Creating the environment and setting expectations

For benchmarking and best practices sharing to take root, management must create an environment where there is a greater incentive to use the tools than to ignore them. This can be done by recognizing improved levels of client satisfaction and operational results from benchmarking and best practices sharing exercises. Embedding these process improvement tools in the annual business plan will also help ensure their use.

Providing management awareness training

Managers must know what benchmarking and best practices sharing are, so there is consistent implementation. Best practices sharing frequently means being involved with groups like the Interdepartmental Quality Network, the Ottawa Benchmarking Forum, or becoming used to accessing and contributing to departmental and other electronic best practices data bases. Competency in benchmarking can be obtained from training courses, seminars and conferences, articles and books, and networking with benchmarking practitioners.

Focusing activities

Most organizations designate a person or small group to ensure successful implementation of benchmarking and best practices sharing. This minimizes the risk that similar internal groups will ask the same organization for the same kind of information. Smaller organizations could assign this task to the person responsible for implementing the overall quality initiative. The group or person responsible for quality, benchmarking and best practices sharing should:

  • understand how best practices are shared, and the benchmarking process;
  • apply benchmarking and best practices sharing in a consistent manner;
  • establish and manage the user network;
  • establish contacts and a best practices data base;
  • provide training and technical support, as required.

Developing guidelines

Senior management should ensure that benchmarking and best practices sharing guidelines are prepared for managers and staff. These guidelines should become the standard procedures for implementing benchmarking and best practices sharing activities. The guidelines usually outline the "what" and "how" of benchmarking and best practices sharing. They should also include details about visit protocols, information sharing and the ethical, legal, and non-disclosure considerations related to benchmarking.

Establishing an internal network

Most organizations form formal or informal networks between their functional or cross-functional benchmarking and best practices sharing representatives. These serve to source and update activities in these areas. They also fulfill the need to disseminate information and requirements throughout the organization. They can also help spread the word on benchmarking and best practices sharing.

How To Support The Process

Identifying champions and process owners

Most organizations need champions for major change initiatives. The champion's role should go beyond sponsorship to one of advocacy by challenging the leaders of the organization to aggressively pursue the use and resulting benefits of benchmarking and best practices sharing.

The champion should also be an advocate for focusing benchmarking activities on the organization's key ten to fifteen business processes. The champion should ensure that the key business processes are identified, prioritized, and benchmarked against the best processes of industry or public service leaders. Experience shows that the highest payback comes by applying benchmarking and introducing the best practices of industry leaders to these processes. In addition to champions, each process is usually assigned a "process owner". Senior level process owners are in the best position to commission teams to implement benchmarking studies on behalf of process clients/customers.

Commissioning teams

Experience shows that benchmarking teams function best with six to eight people. It is necessary that all team members should know the process being examined, however some team members should have operational experience. To maximize innovation, teams should also have at least one "blue sky" thinker and/or someone familiar with present and future information technology tools and techniques. Team members should possess analytical, research, problem-solving, process improvement, and project management skills. Teams should use an accepted benchmarking process model and protocols in order to ensure project success.

Providing team members skills training

Over and above team skills such as project management, problem-solving, and process improvement, team members need to understand:

  • what benchmarking and best practices sharing are;
  • how they fit into the quality process;
  • what the benchmarking process and protocols are;
  • who to partner with (benchmarking);
  • how to gather and process information;
  • how to plan and manage a best practices sharing or benchmarking study;
  • how to implement process change.

Following an accepted benchmarking process

There are a number of well tested multi-step processes that have supplied their users with successful results. Experienced practitioners understand the need for consistent, replicable results derived from a standard way to conduct studies. A standard process ensures credibility in comparison and consistency in results.

How To Sustain The Process

Executive management roles and responsibilities

Executive management roles and responsibilities include:

  • advocating the importance of benchmarking and best practices sharing;
  • integrating benchmarking and best practices sharing with current management practices;
  • focusing benchmarking and best practices sharing on strategic business and work processes;
  • commissioning benchmarking teams;
  • using leadership and employee involvement to foster organizational learning through process comparison, either internally or externally;
  • building high-level contacts with potential benchmarking partners through corporate memberships, councils, associations, etc.;
  • leading, sponsoring and providing resources for benchmarking and best practices sharing initiatives;
  • championing breakthrough changes;
  • rewarding and recognizing results from benchmarking and best practices sharing.

Middle management roles and responsibilities

In addition to some of the roles and responsibilities shared with executive management, middle managers must:

  • provide resources for benchmarking training and facilitation;
  • champion and participate in benchmarking and best practices sharing;
  • follow a structured approach to benchmarking studies;
  • coordinate benchmarking initiatives across functional and cross-functional processes;
  • monitor the progress of benchmarking and best practices sharing projects;
  • inform executive management of progress and results.

Team leader roles and responsibilities

Benchmarking team leaders must:

  • understand and follow the accepted process and protocols;
  • form teams with the skills needed to complete studies successfully;
  • keep sponsors and champions informed about team progress;
  • document and disseminate the results of benchmarking throughout the organization;
  • lead or be a team member of "new" process implementation teams.

Communicating successes

The sharing of best practices and case studies expands and intensifies buy-in and commitment to continuous improvement and benchmarking, recognizes achievement and stimulates others. Showcasing success stories can be done in many ways, including:

  • reporting results in business plan reviews;
  • creating formal benchmarking/best practices data bases;
  • including them in employee newsletters and management meetings/updates;
  • reporting results at internal/external seminars;
  • organizing formal and informal reward and recognition events;
  • using an internal network of benchmarking sponsors, champions and team members.

Introducing benchmarking and best practices sharing is an important change for many federal government departments. Therefore, managers have to structure an initiative, get the buy-in and commitment from leaders, and make sure a communications strategy is planned before actually getting into the "how-to" aspects of the process.

Get Involved!

It is through the active involvement of leaders and employees working together to learn about, share and implement best practices; and using a systematic improvement approach, including formal benchmarking, that organizations learn, improve, and achieve excellence. Good luck in your journey of exploration, discovery, development, and evolution. This Guide will be revised as we continue to share additional knowledge, tools, techniques, and practices.

BE AWARE - COMPARE - SHARE - GET THERE