Engagement Best Practice: Case Studies
- The Department for Work and Pensions
- HM Revenue and Customs
- Ministry of Justice
- UK Border Agency
- IPS
Back to the floor initiative launched by the Department for Work and Pensions
Once a year all DWP senior colleagues are asked to go back to the floor to spend a week working with a variety of staff who directly serve customers. Over 200 senior colleagues did so in 2009-10. This frontline experience gives senior colleagues ideas on what works well for delivering great customer service, and allows them to gain people’s direct input for service improvements. The previous DWP Permanent Secretary, went back to the floor in each of the last 4 years of the scheme, and shared his experiences through a published personal diary. He said of the scheme “every time an SCS colleague goes Back to the Floor we learn something we can do better”. The initiative is well received by DWP staff with recent evaluation showing that they greatly value seeing senior colleagues experiencing their world at first hand.
Employee engagement surveys have shown a continuing need to motivate and engage HMRC staff. At the end of 2009, the department began developing an employee engagement strategy and recognised the need to include colleague segmentation to support the communication and embedding of a wider customer-centred business strategy. Focus groups and one-to-one interviews were held with staff at different levels and almost 6,000 people, in all grades and from a range of locations across the UK, completed an online survey. Drawing on the survey findings the results were used to establish what staff attitudes and motivations really were and provide a deep level of insight into the drivers of colleague engagement.
It emerged that initial assumptions that employee engagement levels might be adequately reflected, by aggregated scores on motivation or desire to stay in the organisation, were incorrect. Measuring engagement by people’s alignment with organisational objectives, or their willingness to ‘go the extra mile’, failed to do justice to the range of factors that influenced their behaviour. What was needed was to look beyond the results for the workforce as a whole and focus on the attitudes and motivation of individual employees.
Researchers were able to segment the workforce into five coherent, relevant and mutually exclusive groups united in their attitudes:
- committed enthusiasts (high engagement/high passion)
- frustrated enthusiasts
- dependable contributors
- quiet advocates
- disconnected (low engagement/low passion).
All of the segments have clear demographic characteristics such as grade, location, directorate or length of service. HMRC believe they are the only government department that has so far adopted this segmentation approach to explore employee engagement. Many departments use a linear segmentation model but in the current challenging climate it is not realistic to expect to drive people up the segments from highly disengaged to highly engaged. The five colleague engagement segments developed by HMRC are distinct, unique and mutually exclusive and encourage managers/leaders to take a bespoke approach to employee engagement.
The results mean that the HR department can help line managers to take a more tailored approach and focus their efforts where they will be most effective.
Ideas Street
Staff at the Ministry of Justice have been actively leading the way by suggesting how business can be done better through their participation on ‘Idea Street’, the Department’s online innovation website. Launched to all MoJ employees in September 2011, the site currently has over 1800 users who use their first hand knowledge and experience to devise solutions to everyday work problems so that that real value and better outcomes can be delivered in the Department and across the justice system.
Through their participation on ‘Idea Street’, MoJ employees have shown how money can be saved by reducing the time taken to travel to meetings and suggesting court and tribunal interpreter cost reductions. All these ideas have now been implemented and this success rests firmly on staff engaging directly with each other, sharing the detail of what may or may not work and pinpointing where opportunities may lie.
The ‘Idea Street’ concept is based around employees posting helpful ideas on the community site. With the support of other users voting for ideas which they think are workable and generating discussion around them, the ideas deemed most popular will move through 3 different stages – buzz, teaming and investment time. Once an idea makes it to ‘investment time’, an ‘expert’ will be identified by the Idea Street Administration Team to assess and evaluate the feasibility of the idea for implementation.
Participation on the site has also helped break down barriers across the Department with all parts of the Ministry – with the frontline and corporate offices coming together to share thoughts and views to strengthen the suggestions that are being posted on Idea Street so that they stand a better chance of being implemented.
To date, ideas ranging from having ‘paperless files’, instituting a directory of support services’ , ‘reducing the number of laptops’, ‘ courts sitting at weekends, ‘amending court and legal aid rules for divorce proceedings’ have been generating interesting discussion on the site.
With over 22 ideas now awaiting expert feedback and over 220 live ideas inviting votes and discussion on ‘Idea Street’, the potential for driving positive change in the Ministry through staff participation and leadership is considerable.
Improved Engagement at UKBA Regional Office for North East, Yorkshire and the Humber
The regional office of the UK Border Agency for The North East, Yorkshire and the Humber has recently seen a jump in staff engagement scores. The office took decisive steps following results from last year’s People Survey and managed to improve their staff engagement score by 9% this year, even in the face of continuing uncertainties for staff regarding major IT upgrades and movement of work into specialised hubs.
Steps taken to improve engagement included:
- Having each deputy director run ‘surgeries’ to open up lines of communication and seek ideas from the business as to what works well and what could be improved upon.
- Tailoring the approach for various business units so as to meet the unique needs of staff. For example, one unit established a ‘let’s talk’ action plan where weekly meetings were held by senior and middle managers and their teams, with set agendas including performance,
- quality, policy and HR.
- Introducing team communication whiteboards, including information on performance, quality, attendance and intelligence issues. This improved communications and brought messages to teams on a daily level.
- Providing training to some teams. Managers were given training on Business Intelligence and how to best support staff and weekly quality results were emailed to managers to feedback to staff at team meetings.
- Improving change management techniques. For example announcements of policy changes affecting a large number of staff, were presented verbally at whole-floor meetings by deputy directors with other senior managers present, thereby allowing staff to ask questions at an early stage
This year, the focus for engagement is already underway with an engagement plan being developed based upon the results of the staff survey 2011, with emphasis placed on continuing the upward trend.
MyFuture: Engagement in action
In 2010, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) underwent a series of changes following the end of the National Identity Service and the Comprehensive Spending Review which resulted in a large number of jobs being cut and staff needing to find work elsewhere.
In July 2010, following feedback at a ‘Town Hall’ meeting, the Myfuture initiative was set up with the aim of supporting staff in the redeployment network both in seeking work, and more generally. A group of people including redeployees and other IPS staff from across the organisation set about developing an online space on the IPS intranet for staff in redeployment, as well as plans for giving them a physical space where they could concentrate on job applications and preparation.
The online space, hosted on the IPS intranet, had four main areas: practical support, including access to job applications, financial advice and training; support for line managers to help them manage staff in the redeployment network; emotional support; and a social network for people to interact and share advice and experiences. Volunteers wrote guidance on job-hunting, writing applications and interview preparation, provided advice on where to go for support on a range of issues from financial to emotional, and set up a Skills Exchange Network so that skills could be shared to give colleagues a better chance to find a new job. The site could also be used to access learning: the Learning and Development team arranged training to help with job-hunting and skills development, and the HR Business Partner network arranged financial awareness seminars provided free by experts.
It was felt that it can be very difficult to concentrate on applying for other roles when you are working in an office environment, especially when people around you are busily doing work that you used to be involved in. One active member of the Myfuture team suggested that Myfuture could use the Identity Commissioner’s Office, left empty following the end of the Commissioner’s role. The area provided a relaxed space for people to search for jobs and prepare applications, training and development activities for small groups, and where people could meet for coaching and to compare experiences and share tips.
As time progressed and decisions were taken to make reductions in the size of other operational areas, such as the Interview Office Network and the Newport Passport Office, the Myfuture project responded by transforming itself into a virtual team; which consisted of people from various parts of IPS, holding bi-weekly conference calls to share information and ideas for events and services, that were then replicated at various locations around the country. This team also supported the set up of a centre in Croydon, through sharing all the existing materials and information they had generated with UKBA – this space was then made available to all Home Office employees in redeployment. Following the expiry of the lease on the Identity Commissioner’s office, the equipment from the London Myfuture centre was sent to the Newport Passport Office, and the team wasted no time in supporting colleagues down there with how to set up and run another Myfuture centre in Wales.
Myfuture gave people a supportive, positive environment, with guidance, advice and help from colleagues. Thanks to the tips on job-hunting, help on applying and interviewing as well as the ability to share the ups and downs of a difficult situation with others, those who lost their roles through restructuring or the end of the National Identity Service were able to look to the future and move on to jobs, sometimes using their skills and experience elsewhere in the Civil Service and sometimes leaving for new pastures. The Myfuture initiative helped IPS to manage the changes to the organisation, which involved significant reduction in staff, in a sensitive way so that staff who remained in IPS knew that colleagues had been treated with support and respect.
The commitment of the organisation’s leadership to Myfuture, and the approach that empowered the project group to develop the initiative as they felt appropriate, has also had a positive effect on perceptions of leadership as well as allowing Myfuture to understand and meet the needs of staff in redeployment, since many were involved in its development. Myfuture leveraged the skills and facilitated the transfer of knowledge that was already in the organisation, opening up to staff the developmental opportunity to coach and mentor colleagues. Also, among those providing support were senior civil servants which reinforced the commitment of leadership. Because staff volunteered their time and efforts to the group, and all involved were committed to using either free resources or those already available, there was little additional outlay but great benefit to all who used the Myfuture online and physical spaces.
Myfuture is a staff support system developed to give advice, guidance and support to staff in IPS. It began with a question to the Chief Executive from someone brave enough to ask ‘what about us?’, and developed thanks to the courage and hard work of a people from across the organisation. It helped individuals to find new jobs, and the organisation to manage the staff reductions sensitively as well as being taken on by other organisations for the support of their redeployment network.