Client stories: Birmingham City Council

This article is filed under: organisation, organisation design, organisational performance

Improving organisational performance

The issue Birmingham City Council were facing

In 2006, a survey revealed that only one in five of Birmingham City Council’s (BCC) people felt that the council had a clear vision, while job satisfaction and motivation ratings had also fallen sharply since the last survey two years previously.

The Council had just embarked on a major technology enabled transformation programme and the chief executive was clear that process and technology change had to be supported by changes in behaviours and mindset across the organisation. With 58,000 employees, making BCC the largest Local Authority in Europe, the task of improving the organisation’s performance wasn’t going to be simple.

How we tackled the issue

Working closely with BCC, we co-designed an innovative programme to improve the Council’s performance by engaging and empowering employees. The programme was based around the organisation’s core values: Belief, Excellence, Success and Trust (or BEST).

Work teams explore the council’s values and score themselves against them before generating actions they can take to improve these scores. These BEST workshops are led by a team member nominated by their colleagues. Indeed employees are involved in all aspects of the programme from identifying the values to facilitating the BEST workshops and following up on actions agreed. Workshops consistently encourage teams to think in new ways, providing opportunities for leadership outside of the usual structures. The actions generated improved team performance and the performance of the organisation as a whole. The language and framework of BEST has become embedded in the council’s way of working.

Four years on

The latest residents’ survey suggests that the people of Birmingham can see a difference, with 62 per cent agreeing the council is well run (up from 53 per cent). Year on year BEST has generated thousands of improvement actions that have contributed to the Council’s overall improved performance. BEST Managers reported that BEST improved productivity by around 20%.

People, too, are more satisfied and engaged as thousands of teams have run the BEST process for themselves, many over two or three years. A survey of 300 plus employees from teams that had participated found that 90 per cent felt proud to work for the council, and 83 per cent felt motivated in their jobs (up from 56 per cent in the 2006 Mori survey).

The BEST programme has already won five major awards including: PPMA Awards 2009, HR innovation of the year; HR Excellence Awards 2009, Employee Engagement Strategy of the Year; HR Excellence Awards 2009, Overall Gold Winners; Municipal Journal Awards 2009, People & Workforce Achievement of the Year; and National Training Awards 2009, Partnership Category. In addition the BEST programme has also been finalists and nominated for a number of other industry awards.