Public Sector Show –ExCeL London

PPMA Open TheatresJune 27th 2017

Chaired by Karen Grave – Vice-President PPMA

CONTENTS

About PPMA

Case study 2: Workforce transformation – How do you build a 21st century workforce?

About PPMA (1/3)

The Public Services People Managers Association (PPMA) is the first choice association for people professionals in public services.

We provide an unrivalled community of specialist professionals who support each other.

The who:

• Membership comes from Local Government, Central Government, Blue Light, 3rd Sector and consultants

• Our community is highly qualified, passionate, committed and diverse public services HR and OD community.

• We play a critical role in influencing key decision-makers and stakeholders involved in people management and workforce issues.

The what:

• We focus our efforts on ensuring that workforce issues are at the forefront of the debate about the future content and shape of public services and particularly the HR & OD support required to support them.

• With key partners, we sponsor and support a number of programmes which develop HR professionals at various stages of their career; and we deliver National and Regional events. We also deliver an Annual PPMA Excellence in People Management Awards programme and run a highly successful annual conference.

• We lobby relevant bodies on behalf of our members and influence thinking and decision making on key issues affecting the organisations we work with and within.

About PPMA (2/3)

We offer our members, employers and partners a compelling value proposition

We offer competitive membership pricing

Insight - Relationships – Career Enhancement

Reach – Community - Influence

Influence – Knowledge - Community

We offer our Members

Our partners obtain

Our employers benefit from

Level Description Pricing*

Districts and Boroughs

For Two-Tier authorities and Borough Councils

£60 pa

County councils/unitary authorities/metropolitan boroughs

Includes authorities in Northern Ireland

First members (full) £100 pa

Then £75 pa per individual

Blue Light and Central Government

Includes 3rd sector organisations

£60pa

Non HR practitioner

For all non HR/OD professionals, but senior leaders with workforce leadership responsibilities, e.g., Director pf Adult Services

£60pa

About PPMA (3/3)

We have an ambitious business plan but that is underpinned by our core values.

Our business plan has 4 core themes.Our brand values set out the behaviours

that we believe will best help us deliver our Business Plan objectives.

We reinforce these in all work that we do in advancing our vision:

Listening

Talking

Promoting

Disrupting

Influencing

Sharing

Developing

Workforce transformation –21st Century Workforces

Delighted to introduce Neil Keeler, Group Manager People & OD, Southend on Sea Borough Council

Southend-on-Sea won both the 'Transforming the Working Environment' and 'Sustainable Transformation' prizes at this year's PPMA Awards.

Scope of our session:

• Transforming the workforce – The Southend Way

• 21st Century Public Servant research

• A look at Walk Tall - the eBook created in collaboration between the PPMA, Solace, the Local Government Association and the University of Birmingham

CASESTUDY2

Southend background

Southend achieved LGC Council of the Year in 2012 (an extremely rewarding outcome from the first 2006 ‘Inspiring’ culture change programme)

Local Government association peer reviewers left Southend reflecting on ‘the most impressive employee engagement’ they had seen ‘in over 25 years in local government’.

‘In awe of the breath taking culture’ they found here at Southend Borough Council this presentation explains how that transformative working culture was created

Two OD programmes were responsible:

‘At risk of failing’ in 2006 – the only way was up!

Council of the year 2012 - the pinnacle of success – now what?

Beginning again, this time from success – we still started by listening.

CASESTUDY2

The new programme

Our 2nd programme encouraged 2,700 suggestions from our people, focused within 5 areas, to help us improve further:

Behaviours

Capability

Leadership

Shared Purpose

Values

Engagement with our 2nd programme was overwhelming

We used Change Instigators to support the programme

These volunteer ‘change champions’ were used with great effect in the first OD programme

CASESTUDY2

Change champions

They acted as ‘narrators’ and ‘story tellers’. Credibly explaining the ‘heritage’ of the programmes and maintaining the continuity of our story, they were integral to culture change succeeding, as ambassadors, critical friends and in testing ideas

Operational people, from ‘front-line’ and ‘back office’ roles, often not in management roles, they demonstrated leadership.

Their integrity, authenticity and passion for improvement defeated accusations of ‘this is just an HR initiative’ or ‘this programme won’t actually change anything’.

They sieved through the thousands of suggestions, identified work streams, goals and interventions to move performance forward, again.

Obtaining political and senior leadership support was critical, especially in a time of deep budget pressures

CASESTUDY2

The Southend Way

Three key culture change themes emerged, embodying aims critical to our ongoing success:

Resilience and Growth

Engaging Leadership

Focused Performance

These themes and supporting workstreams became the Southend Way

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Resilience and growth

Ensuring our people were engaged, strong, flexible and ‘developed/grew’ at a rate greater than that of the change, was critical:

Take Time To Think – stopping ‘the hamster wheel’ to reflect and review. Access our award winning coaching programme or new action learning groups. Workshops on Systems

thinking, the 21st Century Public Servant and external speakers the MD of the Metro

Bank talking to us about ‘creating fans not customers’ were used as provocateurs

Your talent, our performance – the workforce development cycle and how performance management supported individual’s development were reviewed. A new learning management system is being with new systems to monitor and support L&D

Be more business-like – Supporting services to reduce costs (£56m 2011-15 in the context of a £124m revenue budget), also improving income becoming more entrepreneurial

Productive, healthy working lives – Introducing a new resilience programme using a holistic resilience profiling tool showed our commitment. Public health colleagues contributed with Mindful Employer status adopted – staying healthy both physically and mentally was critical

CASESTUDY2

Engaging Leadership

Engaging Leadership had been critical to previous successes. A new leadership development programme using a 360 feedback tool challenged leaders again

‘Downsizing’ risked devastating our employee engagement, four critical workstreams sought to ensure that didn’t happen: Courageous conversations – leaders would need to challenge previous

practice, addressing the ‘elephants in the room’ addressing difficult issues Change & transition – courageous conversations would focus on change, and

critically supporting transition – ensuring our people successfully adapted and managing the impact it would have on them were priorities for leaders

Coaching, feedback & recognition – leaders needed to develop and grow our people, coaching higher performance in a developmental way

Solutions, innovation and creativity – enabling our people would to create innovative solutions to not only maintain our services, but improve them

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Focused performance

The final theme needed to wed changing business strategy, to our people. informing what needed to be different and how. Arguably this was the most challenging theme. It needed to encourage:

Clarity & consensus on our priorities – SBC was re-aligning reduced resources whilst ensuring those in greatest need were supported. A new conversation with our community titled ‘Our town our future’ started identifying key outcomes for the

More targeted & effective in our outcomes – Every service or relationship has been reviewed, ensuring our focus is impact/outcome not procedure. Coaching to outcomes was key - not the process and bureaucracy on the way!

Collaborating, negotiating & improving partnerships – Partners were involved extensively in both programmes

Stopping non-priority activity – SBC like all other UK councils is pressured to stop some services. Innovative practice, increasing income, wider use of volunteers and closer partnership working have all been used to minimise service closures

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Values were embedded in performance

Identified in our first culture change programme, our values were reviewed in 2011 and firmly re-confirmed as relevant

Programmes promoting ‘Doing the right thing’ and team ‘Values’ workshops were introduced

Acting as ‘a safety valve’ to the emerging risks that occur in a much busier yet downsizing organisation, they ensured how we worked was sustainable and our behaviours were the ‘right’ ones

Our people repeatedly expressed that if in changing the council, we left behind our values and everything they represented, then we would have not succeeded

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So what? Our outcomes…

Our 2015 LGA independent and external Peer group review noted the following:

“The Council has a track record for achieving – it has a ‘can do’ attitude”

“Enduring and purposeful senior management leadership – winning MJ Senior Leadership Team of the year

2016”

“Successfully managed £66m of reductions (from 2011/12 to date) with minimal negative impact on services”

“Managed a complex political administration offering stability through change”

“Delivered critical service improvements e.g. new waste contract saving £22m over 15 years and achieving

improved outcomes”

“Some truly amazing achievements through effective partnerships – University & college The Forum, Stobarts

and the Airport, local businesses and the Hive etc.”

“Creating a clean and prosperous Southend: Hive, Cliffs Pavilion, Chalkwell Park, Cycle network, Garrison

development, railway stations, improved road network, forming our own energy company.”

“Investors in People Gold achieved in 2015.”

We launched our own L&D venue in 2011, as other authorities were cutting L&D we invested in ours.

SBC formed a new partnership with the Pre-School Learning Alliance successfully attracting £40m (from the Big

Lottery Fund) over the next 10 years.

Works commenced on our £210m Airport Business Park creating over 7,000 new jobs and transform the surrounding highways and infrastructure over the next few years.

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Background

The why and how

Being a 21st Century Public Servant

Walk Tall Launch

What is happening around the country

What could we and should we do next?

Next steps

21st Century Public Servant Introduction

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The Research: “Cui servire est regnare” To serve is to rule

The Premise

The sponsors

The research team

The outputs

- The future of work is changing- Further Public Sector integration

presents huge challengers- We need to understand what the

21st Century Public Servant looks like

- Dr Catherine Needham (University of Birmingham)

- Dr Catherin Mangan (University of Birmingham)

- Supported by:- Interviewees, survey

responders, bloggers

- ESRC (Knowledge Exchange Project with Birmingham City Council)

- Public Services Academy

- Identified 8 key roles- 10 key characteristics- These are portable across different

public service organisations- …..and Third sector

CASESTUDY2

Walk Tall: Being a 21st Century Public Servant

Steering Group established

Over 60 people interviewed for the book

Participants from LG, Blue Light, Health and Voluntary Sector

Used storytelling as the technique to describe the characteristics in action already

eStorybook Launched in July 2016

To date over 3,500 hits on the LGA and PPMA website

CASESTUDY2

The 21st Century Public Servant:

Is loyal to their locality Works with citizens as equals Has a public service ethos as well as commercial awareness Has generic as well as professional skills Builds a career across sectors and services Reflects on practice and learns from others Thinks creatively about ongoing austerity Takes the initiative, acts as a municipal entrepreneur Embraces distributed and collaborative leadership Needs flexible, supportive organisations.

The characteristics

CASESTUDY2

Following the launch of the book, we developed a summary Vodcast

It gives a great overview of the work we have done so far

Walk Tall …..the Vodcast

Please double click on the icon to activate the video and then click the play key

CASESTUDY2

Why does this work matter?

It represents the most current thinking in the field AND it is applicable across all of public service

Walk Tall can be used:

Holistically for those organisations looking at whole scale workforce transformation

To enable people development activities, e.g., leadership and management approaches

To help address some of our most pressing challenges:

It is absolutely applicable across Health21st

Century Workforce

New Pay Structure

NLGN New Deal

Ongoing funding

challenges

Integration

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A range of activity is underway: Some is cross council

Other is very specific

Some examples 21st Century Employer assessment tool

Leadership survey

360 degree management tool

Leadership development

We are also making sure that we are publicising the sister research: 21st

Century Councillor and thinking about how that can sit alongside 21st Century Public Servant

Looking at how 21st Century Councillor will apply in other public sector governance settings

We are already applying 21st Century Public Servant in practice…..

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We are working on a 21st Century Workforce ‘accreditation’ programme…..

And continuing to spread the word amongst the broader public sector

We are also applying 21st Century in the LGA New Graduate Development education programme

We are also using it as the basis for some of our lobbying responses and partnership working with other bodies

Next steps and questions

CASESTUDY2

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