ORC International Case Studies
"You make the difference" at Nottinghamshire County Council
Nottinghamshire County Council (NCC) is the eleventh largest local authority and one dedicated to delivering excellent customer service. Ensuring that colleagues are fully engaged is central to this commitment, and in 2008 NCC commissioned a survey to identify current levels of engagement; understand what obstacles were preventing employees from performing their best; and discover what support mechanisms were required in order to deliver excellent customer service.
Mick Burrows, Chief Executive, and
senior managers of the Council became
very involved in the survey, taking the time
to encourage all employees to participate
by highlighting how much value is placed
on their views, embodying the Council’s “You make the difference” campaign.
Paving the way for action
Following the survey, we gave an action focused presentation to the Corporate Leadership team. Core findings in the survey were highlighted, adding further value and insight to the results as well as paving the way for action from the top level of the organisation down.
The Chief Executive made the pledge that managers and staff would be involved in the creation of the action plans produced on the back of the survey. As a result of this pledge, we were invited to take the main stage at the NCC’s leadership conference, where we facilitated an action planning workshop with 100 managers from across the Council. With the core aim of investigating the areas identified as driving engagement, we provided support and challenged participants to think laterally about the issues at hand, both celebrating successes and delving further into the improvement areas.
Maintaining momentum
A common problem with action planning
is the difficulty in maintaining momentum
to ensure that the impetus is continued.
We provided a detailed report summarising
the discussions from the leadership event
to ensure that full action plans could
be developed.
NCC developed its own
Corporate Employee Survey Action Plan
and departmental managers were
subsequently tasked with developing local
action plans and feeding back to the
corporate leadership team. An Employee
Engagement Community of Practice was
formed, with the role of working closely
with departmental managers and
developing the corporate understanding of
employee engagement, to ensure that it is
fully embedded in the Council and work is
aligned with business plans and other
corporate strategies.
For further information, please contact Marketing on 020 7675 1151 or e-mail website@orc.co.uk
