Business Process Redesign for The Ministry of Manpower's Work Pass Division

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Message Business Process Redesign “The most important lesson we learnt from our customers was that being world-class is all about ‘values’. It made us ask ourselves how we could turn speed and efficiency into a holistic customer service experience that our customers valued.” - Penny Han, Director, Work Pass Division The Ministry of Manpower strives “to maintain a globally competitive workforce and a great workplace, for a cohesive society and a secure economic future for all Singaporeans.” Its Work Pass Division processes work passes for foreign workers, who make up about 30 percent of the nation’s labor force. The division, which assumed responsibility for issuing work passes (work visas) in the 1970s, has taken considerable steps to improve speed and efficiency since then. Today it ranks among the best performers in international benchmarking studies. In 2008, in the midst of its third round of Business Process Redesign for the Work Pass Division, the Ministry’s officials recognized that any future improvements would need to come from higher-quality policies, products, and offerings - including excellence in customer service. The Work Pass Division partnered with IDEO to achieve that fundamental shift. The resulting project was an intensive collaboration that spanned the whole spectrum of research, design, and prototyping. Governments often think in terms of policy, create a process, and then consider how to make the best of the customer experience. IDEO and the Work Pass Division flipped that logic on its head: The creative team first considered the target customer and the kind of experience that customer should have, and then designed internal processes and policies to support it. In arriving at the specifics of its human-centered approach, the team members asked themselves, “What happens when we look at the work pass process through the lens of the people [staff, agents, and foreign workers] who use it?” The team was inspired by partners and work pass holders who’d succeeded in the system, but looked even more closely at those who struggled to figure it out, challenged it, avoided it, and failed within it. Ultimately, the team identified and prototyped 40 opportunity areas, from which it selected 24 to implement. This “portfolio of innovations”- which is being rolled out over three years - is a comprehensive response to the Work Pass Division’s existing process and the needs of internal and external stakeholders. It comprises incremental, evolutionary, and transformational upgrades in services, interactions, spaces, communications, and staff training. The redesigned model captures a fundamental paradigm shift that looks beyond the sequence of functional processes (from applications to the cancellation or expiration of work passes) to cover the entire customer experience (from a foreigner’s decision to work in Singapore while still in his home country to engaging with him even after he’s left Singapore). The linchpin of this project was the design of a new service center, which had to be completed within the challenging timeframe of just three months. (This is the site where employment pass holders must submit their documents and register their fingerprints to obtain their work pass cards.) Designs for the ambitious space were sketched out based on the team’s research, because officials wanted its form and function to differ from traditional government offices. Concepts were roughly prototyped in the space, and then stress tested twice with one day’s full customer load. The new Employment Pass Services Centre opened in July 2009 in The Riverwalk building. The EPSC radically departs from the usual large-waiting-room-with-hard-chairs aesthetic and queue displays with row after row of alphanumeric characters. Instead, visitors book appointments online in advance, even before they set foot into Singapore and log their arrival at self-service kiosks. Employees call visitors by name (a departure from queue numbers) when it’s their turn. The center’s enrollment bars are modular (for scalability) and built in a square “doughnut” instead of the traditional straight-line or cluster-style counters, so that counters never seemed inadequately manned, even when staff needed to leave their stations during lunch or other breaks. Families conduct business in special “cabanas” with amenities that entertain kids while their parents register for work passes. In the spirit of ongoing innovation, the center was designed as an ongoing prototype that can continue to evolve - staff members hold weekly meetings in which they discuss ideas pinned up by visitors in a prototyping space. The Work Pass Division, which aims to be the best in the world at what it does, now benchmarks its consumer service against not only other government agencies, but also the top companies around the globe. Previously, the Work Pass Division struggled to serve at least 80 percent of visitors within 30 minutes. Now more than 95 percent of clients are served within 15 minutes - and 90 percent within 10 minutes - at the EPSC. Foreign workers say that they are impressed by how the governmental procedure has evolved into a customer service that truly puts people before process. http://www.ideo.com/work/business-process-redesign

“The most important lesson we learnt from our customers was that being world-class is all about ‘values’. It made us ask ourselves how we could turn speed and efficiency into a holistic customer service experience that our customers valued.” - Penny Han, Director, Work Pass Division

The Ministry of Manpower strives “to maintain a globally competitive workforce and a great workplace, for a cohesive society and a secure economic future for all Singaporeans.” Its Work Pass Division processes work passes for foreign workers, who make up about 30 percent of the nation’s labor force. The division, which assumed responsibility for issuing work passes (work visas) in the 1970s, has taken considerable steps to improve speed and efficiency since then. Today it ranks among the best performers in international benchmarking studies.

In 2008, in the midst of its third round of Business Process Redesign for the Work Pass Division, the Ministry’s officials recognized that any future improvements would need to come from higher-quality policies, products, and offerings - including excellence in customer service. The Work Pass Division partnered with IDEO to achieve that fundamental shift. The resulting project was an intensive collaboration that spanned the whole spectrum of research, design, and prototyping.

Governments often think in terms of policy, create a process, and then consider how to make the best of the customer experience. IDEO and the Work Pass Division flipped that logic on its head: The creative team first considered the target customer and the kind of experience that customer should have, and then designed internal processes and policies to support it. In arriving at the specifics of its human-centered approach, the team members asked themselves, “What happens when we look at the work pass process through the lens of the people [staff, agents, and foreign workers] who use it?”

The team was inspired by partners and work pass holders who’d succeeded in the system, but looked even more closely at those who struggled to figure it out, challenged it, avoided it, and failed within it. Ultimately, the team identified and prototyped 40 opportunity areas, from which it selected 24 to implement. This “portfolio of innovations”- which is being rolled out over three years - is a comprehensive response to the Work Pass Division’s existing process and the needs of internal and external stakeholders. It comprises incremental, evolutionary, and transformational upgrades in services, interactions, spaces, communications, and staff training. The redesigned model captures a fundamental paradigm shift that looks beyond the sequence of functional processes (from applications to the cancellation or expiration of work passes) to cover the entire customer experience (from a foreigner’s decision to work in Singapore while still in his home country to engaging with him even after he’s left Singapore).

The linchpin of this project was the design of a new service center, which had to be completed within the challenging timeframe of just three months. (This is the site where employment pass holders must submit their documents and register their fingerprints to obtain their work pass cards.) Designs for the ambitious space were sketched out based on the team’s research, because officials wanted its form and function to differ from traditional government offices. Concepts were roughly prototyped in the space, and then stress tested twice with one day’s full customer load.

The new Employment Pass Services Centre opened in July 2009 in The Riverwalk building. The EPSC radically departs from the usual large-waiting-room-with-hard-chairs aesthetic and queue displays with row after row of alphanumeric characters. Instead, visitors book appointments online in advance, even before they set foot into Singapore and log their arrival at self-service kiosks. Employees call visitors by name (a departure from queue numbers) when it’s their turn. The center’s enrollment bars are modular (for scalability) and built in a square “doughnut” instead of the traditional straight-line or cluster-style counters, so that counters never seemed inadequately manned, even when staff needed to leave their stations during lunch or other breaks. Families conduct business in special “cabanas” with amenities that entertain kids while their parents register for work passes. In the spirit of ongoing innovation, the center was designed as an ongoing prototype that can continue to evolve - staff members hold weekly meetings in which they discuss ideas pinned up by visitors in a prototyping space.

The Work Pass Division, which aims to be the best in the world at what it does, now benchmarks its consumer service against not only other government agencies, but also the top companies around the globe. Previously, the Work Pass Division struggled to serve at least 80 percent of visitors within 30 minutes. Now more than 95 percent of clients are served within 15 minutes - and 90 percent within 10 minutes - at the EPSC. Foreign workers say that they are impressed by how the governmental procedure has evolved into a customer service that truly puts people before process.

Transforming Singapore's national system for processing foreigners' work passes into a world-class service experience

In 2008, in the midst of its third round of Business Process Redesign for the Work Pass Division, the Ministry’s officials recognized that any future improvements would need to come from higher-quality policies, products, and offerings—including excellence in customer service. The Work Pass Division partnered with IDEO to achieve that fundamental shift. The resulting project was an intensive collaboration that spanned the whole spectrum of research, design, and prototyping.

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Project date: 2011