What Does “Process Improvement” Actually Look Like in a Council?

1. Make the invisible visible

Most councils don’t have a process problem, they have a visibility problem.

When something gets stuck, people assume “the process is broken.”
In reality, it was probably never built properly in the first place.

Start by mapping a single process everyone complains about – maybe building consents, customer requests, or leave approvals.

And if you’re not sure what “mapping” actually means, we broke it down in Process Maps, SOPs & Automated Workflows: What’s the Difference?.

Once you can see your process end-to-end, the waste jumps off the page – double-handling, mystery approvals, endless email loops.

💡 Metric to watch: Average completion time.
At Glenelg Shire Council, one single process (Kerbside Waste & Recycling Request) was taking their team 430 hours a year. This process now takes 61 hours, which adds up to over 9 weeks of a full-time job saved on a single process.

2. Measure what matters, not what’s easy

It’s tempting to measure the things that are easy to count:
“How many SOPs did we write?”
“How many staff did we train?”

Useful, sure. But they don’t tell you if work is actually flowing better.

Here’s what to measure instead:

These are your true process improvement measures.
They turn “I think it’s better” into “I can prove it.”

3. Fix one small thing (fast)

The biggest mistake councils make?
Trying to improve everything at once.

Start tiny. Pick one pain point, like automating the approval chain for purchase orders or simplifying a customer request form.

Then track the before-and-after:

• 5 days down to 2

• 4 emails down to none

Small wins build momentum faster than any strategy document.

4. Stop measuring improvement by hand

Most teams start strong, until the “improvement spreadsheet” quietly dies three months in.
Someone forgets to update it. Another person moves departments. Suddenly, no one’s quite sure if things are actually better or just different.

That’s the trap. Manual measurement becomes its own workload.

Instead, make progress measurable by default.
When your workflows are digital, the data captures itself – how long each step takes, where requests pile up, and when things actually get done.

No extra forms. No new tracker. Just real visibility baked into the process.

When you can see performance in real time, improvement stops being a guessing game.
It becomes part of everyday work – transparent, automatic, and easy to act on.

5. Make improvement a habit, not a project

The best process work rarely makes headlines.
It’s the quiet habit of reviewing, tweaking, and celebrating small wins.

Skip the annual “process improvement project.”
Instead, build a culture where teams continuously fix friction.

Celebrate when:

• A process runs 20 minutes faster.

• A form loses three pointless fields.

• Someone says, “That was actually easy.”

That’s what real improvement looks like – less noise, more progress.