ORC International Case Studies
Helping shape the future of the CPS
Employing over 8,500 staff, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the
largest “law firm” in the UK with 94% of staff engaged in, or supporting,
frontline prosecutions. The structure of the CPS is unique and the
organisation faces the challenge of engaging and communicating
with staff spread across England and Wales.
Achieving goals
Engaging with its large, diverse and geographically spread organisation is essential to the CPS, to attain “Employer of Choice” status and achieve its overall aim to:
“Deliver a high quality prosecution
service that brings offenders to justice, helps
reduce both crime and fear of crime, and
thereby promotes public confidence in the
rule of law through the consistent fair and
independent review of cases through their
fair, thorough and firm presentation at court.”
(CPS Business Plan 2007-08; pg 6)
ORC International was appointed to help the CPS achieve its goals by designing and implementing its staff surveys from 2007 to 2010. We supported the CPS in developing all aspects of the project – branded “Help Shape our Future” – from a high impact pre-survey communications campaign to nationwide action planning events to ensure that the survey lead to change.
A combination of creative communications, user-friendly questionnaire design and multi-option methodology ensured that the survey achieved a higher response rate than previous years and enabled managers from across the organisation to get a real sense of the issues impacting upon engagement for their staff.
Getting the message across
In approaching the project it was important
to acknowledge that, for an organisation as
complex and diverse as the CPS, getting key
messages to the right people in a way that
would make business sense was a challenge.
We set up a survey microsite to act as a
portal for useful, actionable information
throughout the project process. The microsite
provided substantial value to the project in
terms of obtaining buy-in from a local level,
as well as raising the profile of employee
engagement and its importance across
the CPS.
It was critical to the CPS that maximum
value was gained from survey results to drive
organisational improvements. Previous surveys had not led to the level of interest
and change the organisation would have
hoped, so we were tasked with developing
an approach to reporting and action planning
that would engage managers and provide
them with tools they could easily use to
generate change.
Planning for action
To support the delivery of interactive
reporting outputs and easy-to-use manager
reports, we travelled all around the country
running a series of 16 action planning
workshops. In these workshops, key senior
stakeholders were given advice in how to use
results to best effect, and led through the
process of generating actions.
For further information, please contact Marketing on 020 7675 1151 or e-mail website@orc.co.uk
