Data Light bulb moment by Millie Smith (Head of people participation) 

By Millie smith (Head of People Participation)

Watch this 3 minute video of Millie tell her story of her data light bulb moment.

Earlier this year Millie Smith (ELFT’s Head of People Participation) faced what seemed like a huge issue that she believed would require a rework and review of the whole service user payment system.

Some service users had contacted Millie feeling very undervalued, they had been waiting a long time for payment for the work they had done. Millie herself felt very distressed that the processes were falling short of the pledge made to service users, that their time is valuable.

A chance discussion prompted Millie to seek out some data around the problem from finance, and when visualised on a control chart showed that the average time for a service user to be paid was 5.6 days (below). This demonstrated that the complaints received were incidental. Millie discussed the findings at the People participation working together group where service users confirmed this was an acceptable length of time.

Instead of a whole system overhaul, Millie needed to investigate these individual occurrences, resolve them quickly and reassure those affected this was not the norm but we would do better for them next time.