WHAT A CHANGE
The Challenge
Wisework had been instrumental in the early stages in a several initiatives including helping staff to adopt home working. HCC saw the need to build a more comprehensive approach and launched a major organisational development programme, “The Way We Work” designed to be focused on its people and maximise its resources, ITC and buildings. It adopted a participative style designed to engage all staff in its development and design.
The Solution
Under a Framework Agreement, Wisework was engaged to run a series of pilot training workshops, firstly for the departmental and team managers who would be moving to the Apsley campus offices at King’s Langley, and secondly for their teams. The former focused on the key skills required by managers to manage their teams who might be working at different times and in a variety of locations throughout a normal working week. The team workshops enabled staff to work together to identify problems, derive solutions and establish new working patterns and styles best suited to helping them achieve their operational, customer-focused and personal targets.
A transition workshop was then run to enable HCC’s HR and other specialist staff to take over the training programme. This was then integrated in the Council’s overall management training portfolio and used as part of the induction into TW3 for other departments as they moved to new office accommodation combined with a range of flexible working options. These include team workspace in offices, short-use drop-in touchdown centres in key buildings, working at and from employees’ homes and mobile working as well as contractual flexibility, eg. part- and term-time working, job-share, flexible working hours. A manager’s toolkit was developed covering flexible and remote working team management guidelines and best practice.
The Benefits
TW3 is now an integral part of the Council’s daily operating regime embedded in its People Strategy; underpinned by a single set of uniform, cross-organisational policies and procedures. It supports the Council’s objectives for efficiency and productivity gains and has enabled a large percentage of the Council’s buildings to be vacated. There have been significant gains in reduced operating costs, increased retention of key staff and skills and improved services delivery.