Highlight the advantages of benchmarking
Advantages of benchmarking
Benchmarking is a powerful management tool because it overcomes paradigm blindness. Paradigm Blindness can be summed up as the mode of thinking, “The way we do it is the best because this is the way we’ve always done it.” Benchmarking opens organizations to new methods, ideas and tools to improve their effectiveness. It helps crack through resistance to change demonstrating other methods of solving problems than the one currently employed, and demonstrating that they work, because they are being used others.
The advantages of benchmarking include:
- Provides a systematic approach to the assessment of practice
- Promotes reflective practice
- Provides an avenue for change in clinical practice
- Ensures pockets of innovative practice are not wasted
- Reduces repetition of effort and resources
- Reduces fragmentation/geographical variations in care
- Provides evidence for additional resources
- Facilitates multidisciplinary team building and networking
- Provides a forum for open and shared learning
- Is practitioner led, so gives a sense of ownership
- Accelerates quality improvement