Benchmarking Staff Performance: How Staff Departments Can Enhance Their Value to the Customer.

• Author: Piotrowski, Craig

San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 1993. (218 pp)

Reviewed by Craig Piotrowski, administrative services vice president of Waukesha County Technical College in Wisconsin, and member of GFOA's Committee on Accounting, Auditing and Financial Reporting.

Benchmarking Staff Performance is an excellent book on benchmarking with an interesting focus on staff function. Major studies of companies and governmental entities have identified benchmarking as a frequently used practice of successful organizations. The author is a benchmarking/management consultant whose clients have included American Express, Honda, and Intel. This book is for govern mental and other entities that are planning to use benchmarking or need a fresh perspective on deploying it.

The book focuses on how entities can create value for customers through opportunities to productively leverage staff functions. In the United States, many believe stockholders are the legal owners of companies, while the Japanese believe employees effectively own companies; but customers are the true owners. To become a useful tool, therefore, benchmarking must focus on adding value for customers.

Organizations need to ask "What needs improvement within our operation to obtain optimum value for our customers (taxpayers)?" Staff functions should be supporting internal customers by providing timely and accurate service. Adding value for customers is the responsibility of every employee. Value may come from improvements in quality, productivity, or service. Measuring value is not only subjective, it is transitionary. Since it is dependent on human judgment, value is subject to constant revision.

Benchmarking is not a casual activity. It is not a magic wand that will solve all problems, and when an organization attempts to install another individual's or group's solution, it usually fails. Benchmarking is not an exercise in imitation. It yields data, not solutions. Benchmarkers must know how to obtain pertinent data and analyze them.

Benchmarking is an investigative process that seeks out high-performing operations to learn how they have achieved their exceptional results. It is not a difficult or mysterious process, but it requires hard work. Most importantly, benchmarking is a learning experience.

The value process model of this book has four key steps: 1) value planning, 2) data development, 3) evaluation, and...