Meeting held with Health and Safety Manager,Tuesday 14th March 2006
“The process would have been a waste of time without the Unions”
" Once we agreed that the Management Standards process must be incorporated into every day work, it worked very well”.
“We have already seen an increase in staff motivation”.
" Must not be half-hearted, you only get one chance to 'get it right' ".
"If you get it wrong it is a wasted opportunity".
"We can already see the potential for long term rewards".
Coleg Glan Hafren is Cardiff's largest provider of further education and training. This year (2005/06) it is providing over 800 courses and subjects to nearly 13,000 students and employing 600 staff.
The College is currently running the staff survey.
Senior management were very keen to buy into the process from the outset.
Some of the Unions were initially skeptical. Since coming on-board, however, they have been a valuable asset to the whole process, including reviewing all paper work and initializing staff briefing sessions. The process would have been a waste of time without Union commitment.
Initially a letter from the Principal was circulated to staff informing them of the forthcoming survey and the overarching process. 3 briefing sessions were then organised in partnerships with the Unions, to advise staff of the objectives and aims of the process. These were followed-up with a global email to all staff outlining format and timetable for the survey process.
To encourage maximum returns of completed surveys it was decided that staff would also receive paper copies of the documentation via internal and/or external mail (external mail was mainly to capture those staff who were part-time workers).
At the beginning of the process it was agreed that posters would not be used to promote the survey, as they had not worked for other campaigns in the past.
We have been monitoring sickness absence data and line managers have been evaluating staff reviews to try and identify triggers earlier in the sickness cycle. We have also looked at our ill-health statistics, trying to find trends.
We see this process as a benefit in the longer term, when we can see a decrease in our sickness absence figures.
Briefing sessions to all staff have been undertaken; a global email was circulated at the launch of the survey to outline the process and to offer staff the opportunity to raise questions. This was followed up with a reminder email to request staff complete the survey. Divisional managers also initiated meetings with their staff to introduce the process and encourage completion of the questionnaire.
It is envisaged that the next stage will be the set-up of a number of focus groups , which will include staff and the Unions, to review the data from this process; this will then feed into the action plans.
Being at this early stage, this is still to be considered by the steering group.
It is hoped that we will see the longer-term goals further into the process; however, at this early stage we have already seen an increase in staff motivation.
Safety within the organisation has developed a higher profile over the last year and we are now using the MS process to help do the same for Occupational Health.
We have also introduced a year long fitness programme via our Working Well group; this has shown that the ‘feel good factor’ within the organisation is improving.
To date the process is working well for us, so we see no need to change it at this stage.
Positive
1. Advice and assistance from Acas have been invaluable throughout the process.
2. Staff have been given a voice and the opportunity to use it.
3. Staff motivation has increased.
Negative
1. Organisations must ensure that they allow time to undertake the process; this has sometimes proved difficult to achieve at Coleg Glan Hafren.
2. Resources must be identified, agreed and allocated at the start of the MS process, and at action plan stage as there are times when resources can be very limited.
Actually getting the process off the ground was difficult. There are few in the education sector that have done this before, so it was hard to know the way forward. Once we achieved this and agreed that it was a process that had to be incorporated into every day work, it worked very well.
Commitment from every one involved meant that staff saw the organisation as 'caring' and 'willing' to do something about the issues they raised. The process has been an eye-opener. It has enabled the College to achieve benefits by meeting regularly, cascading information and influencing what we are doing in lots of different areas of the organisation.
No additional costs have been incurred at this stage. Projected costs will be included in our action plans.
1. Must ensure commitment of all involved (including the Unions), must not be half-hearted.
2. Must have senior management buy-in, as they will need to allocate resources to do the job properly.
3. Take your time going through the process, you only get one chance to 'get it right', if you get it wrong it is a wasted opportunity.
Seminars or conferences in which people already undertaking the process can discuss their experiences. This provides the audience with the opportunity to raise questions directly to those who have been through the process already.
Advertisements or article can also be helpful, if they are providing positive information.
This has been a really interesting, exciting, worthwhile process. It has also been hard work and frustrating at times. On balance we consider we have been fortunate to be part of the MS process and can already see the potential for long-term rewards within our organization.