Article on soft benefits in PM World Journal Volume XIII Issue IV (April 2024).
A key principle of benefits management is to identify what matters (an example is given in Figure 1) and determine if your project changes something that matters (preferably for the better). Many of the benefits that matter the most are soft benefits – improvements in morale, greater amounts of innovation, closer adherence to quality standards. Not everything relates to more profit or more savings, and chasing profit is a fool’s game – profit comes when the people side is right.