Engage People Using a Benefits Map

Businesses typically care about only three things: 1) Increasing Revenue, 2) Reducing Cost, and 3) Cost Avoidance.  But it isn’t always easy to connect the work to one of these three outcomes.

Reducing scrap.  Reducing lead time.  Decreasing accidents.  Making quicker decisions.  These are things it is easier to connect to our work.  These are outputs.

So how do the outputs tie to the outcomes?  That is where a benefits map can help.

The benefits map takes the deliverables of the work (on the left) and ties them to the outcomes (on the right) by way of the outputs (in the middle).

Properly designed work has known deliverables.  Getting to how theses deliverables are going to change known metrics connects them to the outputs.  Then it is working with the customer to think about how changing those outputs will create a better outcome for the business.

The last step is to quantify the benefit to the outcome.

There are two positives to this method.  The first is the team has to stop and think about how the work will benefit the business.  Just the awareness alone creates teams that more in touch with how they are affecting the business.

The second is the people doing the work become more engaged int he work.  They can see a visual of how they are making an impact.

Understanding how your work is helping the business is a key component in employee engagement.  The Benefits Map is a simple but effective tool to help engage people.