Workplace Productivity
Inland Revenue
Overview
Inland Revenue is tasked with collecting revenue to meet New Zealand's public service and infrastructure needs, and ensuring that people receive their fair entitlement. Inland Revenue has 6,500 staff, dealing with high volumes of transactions, frequently involving complex matters. A good understanding of customer perspectives is imperative to Inland Revenue's role. Inland Revenue's Industry Partnership project, carried out between 2002 and 2006, involved a multidisciplinary team tasked with developing knowledge of industries, relationships with industry leaders, and more user-friendly and industry-targeted communications material. Many of the innovations from the project were adopted as 'business as usual' in 2006 through the establishment of the Customer Insight Group.
Productivity Challenge
Inland Revenue recognised that many owners of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), were not meeting their tax responsibilities. Often unintentionally, some customers would be incorrectly registered or producing incorrect returns. Where non-compliance was intentional, this would be driven by differing attitudes and even the businesses' own customer expectations around discounts for cash. The challenge for the Department was to encourage SMEs to meet their tax obligations voluntarily by better understanding their compliance issues and adapting to make it easier for them to understand and meet their tax responsibilities.
The Productivity Achievement
The project has changed and improved Inland Revenue's services and the way it deals with customers, resulted in correct tax being paid and saved many SMEs time, frustration and money by making it easier to understand and comply with tax regulations. The initiative has also had a positive impact on Inland Revenue staff in terms of their development and the way they are treated by the customer groups they worked with.
Key Lessons:
- Communication between industry, business and the Department is crucial to developing the right products and understanding the issues from a delivery and customer perspective.
- Organisational and managerial commitment is important for ensuring the trust and freedom to generate innovation.
- Organisational messages should be supported by actions
- Relationships (both internal and external) are important, but it takes time and resources to build trust.
- Investment in staff is crucial to realising the organisation's objectives.
The full Inland Revenue case study is available as HTML and PDF
For further information on Inland Revenue, please visit their website www.ird.govt.nz