The Winmark Compass Report

Every department head faces pressure to carefully control budgets and to provide evidence that their function is contributing to the organisation efficiently and cost-effectively. The spotlight is on resource optimisation by assessing staffing levels, reviewing and renegotiating supplier costs. Increasingly function leaders are exploring opportunities for automation, outsourcing and external knowledge that will make them more agile and efficient.

But how do you find a suitable benchmark?

It can be difficult to find a standard against which to measure headcount and financial spend relative to your peers and other key functional departments. This report investigates the relative size and spend of key departments, and also provides a benchmark of the perceived maturity of departments and the split of staff according to seniority. While every department has its own unique demands and characteristics, the data provides an important context and a useful yardstick for leaders embarking on performance improvement or cost savings initiatives.

The research was conducted with 166 organisations. It measured staff headcount, running costs and stage of maturity for the following departments: Finance, HR, IT, Legal, Marketing, Operations, Procurement and Sustainability. Differences are highlighted between five departments with a sufficiently large samples to make comparisons: Finance, HR, IT, Legal and Sustainability.