brilliant - redbridge · brilliant team london borough of. new ways of working p3 i want redbridge...

NEW WAYS OF WORKING p1

Manual for A CHANGING REDBRIDGE

ONE BRILLIANT

TEAM

London Borough of

NEW WAYS OF WORKING p3

I want Redbridge to be brilliant - as a borough, as a council and as a collection of teams and individuals. A place where our staff work together to help local people maximise their potential. An opportunity to shape the destiny of a booming part of London. This is our chance to make a real difference.

Over the past year, we have worked together as a council to put our budgets on a stable footing and to map out a hugely ambitious programme of change that will touch every corner of the organisation. I am proud of the way that our staff have stepped up to this challenge.

The questions we need to answer now are: what is all this change for? What kind of organisation do we want to be? What is it we want to achieve for residents?

This document is designed as a field manual for the next few years of our journey to excellence at Redbridge. It sets out the values, design principles and ways of working that we need to become a modern and effective council.

These principles have emerged from the many conversations I have had with Redbridge staff, including last year’s staff forums where we developed our organisation values of fairness, honesty, excellence and collaboration.

ONE BRILLIANT

TEAM

Many of the ideas here are not new - every part of the council has brilliant people that are already living many of the values we want to see.

From social prescribing to employment advice, we are already building the borough of tomorrow.

That’s why this document contains case studies from different parts of the council, demonstrating what our principles already mean in practice.

The challenge of One Brilliant Team is to make these principles part of everyday life for all our staff across the council. The future of Redbridge is too important to be left to senior managers and politicians alone. This is for everyone.

My promise to staff is simple: I will work tirelessly to create an environment where everyone can have great ideas and make them happen, where everyone can be part of the debate about the future of our organisation, and where everyone can use their judgement about how best to serve residents.

In return I ask that staff are always prepared to go the extra mile in pursuit of what is best in any given situation - regardless of what is written in our job descriptions.

By pulling together as One Brilliant Team not only can we can survive the challenges of the years to come, but also emerge as a strong and confident organisation.

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We think there are three things we need to get right as a council to thrive over the coming years. First, we need to be clear on our underlying values. These are the things that should inform the way we interact with each other and our staff at all times. They are the foundation for everything else.

At last year’s staff forums, we agreed that our values would be honesty, fairness, excellence and collaboration.

Second, we need to be clear on what we are trying to achieve for our borough. We’ll decide what our goals look like in partnership with residents, our public service partners and our politicians. Our plan for delivering on those goals will be defined with staff.

All of this will come together next year in our borough plan. For the time being, we are developing ideas around three very high level outcomes that we know residents care about: quality of life, opportunity and strong communities.

Third, we need a clear set of design principles for the kind of organisation we want to become. The chief executive set out and discussed these principles earlier in the year. They are: a council that responds rapidly to changing external circumstances; a council built around the needs of residents; restoring local democracy; and securing financial self-sufficiency.

Taken together, the principles embodied in this document imply some concrete changes to the way we work. At the end of this document, we discuss some of the journeys we are going on to start building the new Redbridge.

Over the coming pages, we’re going to explain what each of these principles might mean in practical terms. But let’s be clear – these principles will only live and breathe if you as staff take them away and think about what they mean for you.

One


Fairness We are committed to equalities in the workplace

and across the Borough

We consider the impact of everything we do on all of our communities

We provide a safety net for those who are not able to support themselves

We help our communities to participate in decisions that affect them

Honesty We are open and truthful with the public,

politicians and colleagues at all times

We accept when things are not working as planned and ask for help to address the situation

We share information and data openly within the Council and with our residents

We give each other constructive and supportive feedback

Collaboration We work together with our partners in pursuit of a better Redbridge

We engage residents and businesses in all that we do

We support each other to problem solve across directorate boundaries

We look outwards for good ideas, for inspiration, for challenge and for support

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Excellence We believe that the residents of Redbridge

deserve nothing but the best

We constantly experiment with new ways to improve our services

We know mistakes happen, but we spot them early and fix them fast

We seek feedback and use it as an opportunity to do things better, even when it’s negative

Our valuesLast year we agreed four values that would underpin everything we do as a council. Here is what some of you have suggested they mean in practice:

Honesty Fairness Excellence Collaboration


Our outcomesEarlier this year we asked residents, partners and members about their hopes for the future of Redbridge.

Three big themes emerged:

1. Quality of life We offer residents green space, great schools, outstanding transport links and relatively affordable housing. As our borough regenerates and our population grows, we need to take every opportunity to ensure that everyone has access to the things that make our borough special. That means preserving the best of today’s Redbridge while seizing the change to improve our borough economically, socially and culturally.

2. Opportunity We want to be an inclusive borough, and that means ensuring that all residents can access good education and training, find good jobs, and get the housing they need. Critically, it means ensuring that residents’ opportunities are not curtailed by illness, disability or poverty.

3. Strong communities People love the strength and diversity of Redbridge’s communities. We need to build on this by working with local people to include them in the way we make decisions, to put them in the driving seat of big decisions and to work collaboratively with them to redesign our services. In the current global climate, we must strive to ensure our communities continue to set a shining example of how different faiths and ethnicities can thrive alongside one another.

Our Streets projectResident Marian Temple, 68, leads the Wanstead Community Gardeners who transform Wanstead’s neglected public spaces


Give our staff the freedom and support to make the best decisions about services at the frontline

We need to create a single version of the facts that we can all agree on - and not use information that suits our own ends

We will be dealing with situations that we haven’t dealt with before and that means that we need to be open to new ways of doing things and to new ideas

We shouldn’t push so hard for efficiency that we end up with no time to think and no capacity to change

Help ensure that we are constantly experimenting with new ways to meet the needs of residents

Our design principles

A council that responds rapidly to changing external circumstances

We need to ensure we have a deep understanding of our customers and communities so we’ll put them at the heart of everything we do

Having rich conversations and building strong relationships to understand what people need from the council and how we can help, but also understanding what strengths they bring and what they can do for themselves

Using data, insight and participation to bring residents into the heart of our decisions about service design

Engaging with residents before we make decisions, giving them the information they need to have a real voice

Work hard so residents can easily access and understand how our services work

When we talk with residents we need to take responsibility for ensuring all their needs are addressed, not just the one relevant to our own department

A council that organises itself around the needs and strengths of residents, communities and businesses


Our design principles

The council is a democratic body. We draw our legitimacy from local people and we are stronger when residents participate in our work

Turnouts for local elections are too low, so as a council we need to work together to ensure residents are formally engaged in elections and informally engaged in everything we do

We must all recognise that it is our elected politicians who ultimately make decisions. It is our responsibility to advise politicians, of all political persuasions, truthfully, factually and with integrity

We all need to be passionate advocates of the council, championing our collective work and ensuring that our successes are celebrated

A council that promotes local democracy

We need to be careful not to confuse income with profit - ultimately we must generate income that more than covers the costs of the services we provide

The only way out of austerity is to reach a point where we raise and control our own money. This means that we must all live within our means

Always consider the financial implications of our judgements and decision making

Have a zero tolerance approach to fraud or financial irregularity

As staff we have to take some risks in pursuit of new income. We need to explore whether there are services we could sell, charges we could make, or profit we could generate

A borough which secures financial self sufficiency

£


This is a big ask in a time of austerity, but we are already on the journey to creating One Brilliant Team and there are things we can do today to push further and faster.

Coming together as One Brilliant Team means that we’ll have to take responsibility to create an open, collaborative and supportive environment. An environment where each and every member of staff feels valued and has clarity of purpose.

As a council our promise to staff is freedom and responsibility. We will set a clear direction for the organisation and give our people the tools and support they need for the job in hand. With this comes a responsibility to use those tools to deliver great results – to innovate, experiment and excel.

You need to define what these principles mean for your service. We can’t wait to see the results.

We’ll invest in a programme of training and development to give our staff space to reflect on their own work and how they can collaborate effectively with others.

We’ll create a new business intelligence team to ensure that everyone in the council has access to the data they need to make the right decisions.

We’ll model a culture of openness and honesty from the top, ensuring that everyone understands how and why decisions have been made.

We’ll reshape our corporate transformation team, moving away from running top down programmes and instead helping frontline staff to experiment and innovate.

We’ll transform our back office functions to ensure that IT, finance and HR support our frontline staff to do a brilliant job.

ONE BRILLIANT

TEAM

now what are yougoing to do?


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As we said before.. these principles will only live and breathe if we all take them away and think about what they mean in practice

REDBRIDGE underTHINGS TO GET YOU STARTED


Designing services around user needs

Share what we’re doing whenever we can

Iterate Then iterate again

Make some time to try something new..

Do we engage with residents?

Do we test anything

with our residents,

how could we improve

this?

What is the one thing you’ve always wanted to do differently, but never had the time?

Use data, unlock your data and insight...base your ideas on solid facts

Who are our customers?

Try an idea, if it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to scrap it and start again

Do residents have different touchpoints within the council?

Think commercially... are there opportunities to create income?

Use behaviours that are curious, experimental, innovative....the list goes on!

Could you create and use customer profiles?

Collaborate

and then

collaborate some more

How could we improve engagement with our residents?

Everything we build should be inclusive

What does all of this mean for your service users?

How is your service or change programme delivering on our behaviours and design principles?

What experiments are you running to discover new ways to support our residents?

How are you using data and community engagement to inform your future plans?


Gladys Xavier: We’re taking a different approach to how services are delivered and our expectations of how people manage their own health and care needs. We are supporting people to remain healthier for longer, which in turn keeps people out of the care system and helps them to remain independent for longer.

We are currently piloting a new service called social prescribing in Fairlop. This service involves us working in partnership with GPs, the voluntary sector and Redbridge CCG to provide patients with support if they are feeling socially isolated, low, sad or anxious or have Type Two diabetes.

The service will offer patients a one-to-one appointment with a ‘Health and Well-being Buddy’ who will discuss concerns, explore what is important to the individual and support them in accessing local activities and services that suit their needs.

We’ve also introduced the Three Conversations Model, a strength based approach to social work that promotes independence. It is based on much more interaction with people and their families and taps into the capacity of both the individual and the community. It improves outcomes for individuals, promotes their independence and enables them to remain in their homes longer. It is intended to roll out the model across the borough over the next twelve months.

This person-centred approach to social work aims to allow social workers to work with people who have sought support. It focuses on the person’s own assets and strengths and those available to them in the community around them. The Three Conversations aim to listen and connect, work intensively with people in crisis and support them to build a good life.

CASE STUDY 1 CASE STUDY 2

Caroline Cutts: We have been developing a children on the edge of care project by looking at a number of low incidence/high cost looked after children cases. Case studies are being developed using extensive data analysis work along with qualitative research. This helps us to better understand the journey of looked after children and young people in order to develop more effective interventions that reduce the need for children becoming looked after in the first place. The aim is to move towards a new way of working which reflects a shift in focus.

This will include tailored packages which support children and their families at the earliest opportunity to help keep them with their families (where it is appropriate) resulting in improved outcomes for children and a reduction in the overall cost to the authority.

We are also looking at our internal costs on agency social workers. Recruitment and retention of Children’s Social Workers is challenging across all London boroughs, leading to a greater proportion of posts being covered by agency staff. This is more expensive than having full-time permanent officers and we are currently talking to staff through a series of focus groups and questionnaires to find out the reasons behind staff leaving and what might make them stay in Redbridge. From this we will develop a recruitment and retention strategy and implement new strategies and initiatives to reduce the vacancy rate and increase our staff retention.

A council that organises itself and the needs around the strengths of residents: transforming adult social care

Suzanne Wright: As part of our programme we have developed an engagement plan to capture all of our key stakeholders and are aiming to develop this into a model for co-production.

In reviewing our day opportunity services, we have spoken to older people, people with learning disabilities, people with lived experience of mental health problems, those with physical and sensory disabilities, carers and many others. With them, we have co-designed a number of models for our day services in the future which we will soon be consulting on widely.

A council that responds rapidly to changing external circumstances: using data to build better children’s services

Tools used: Tools used:

Honesty Fairness Excellence CollaborationHonesty Fairness Excellence Collaboration

Another key area we are currently looking at is how we commission our services. The aim is to deliver contract savings on external purchasing by working with other boroughs and services to make efficiencies of scale. This will be especially effective when looking at the use of independent fostering agencies, recruiting more in house foster carers to reduce our costs and make better decisions around how we commission block contracts with providers and where necessary spot purchase emergency placements for children looked after.


Sophia Looney: I’m helping the council transform the way that people access our services. We’re working across directorates to look at how Redbridge can grasp the opportunity of digital, improve telephony and build a new approach to face-to-face. It’s about making sure people use the channel which is most likely to resolve their enquiry, ensuring calls are answered, and that people who take the call take responsibility for sorting the issue out completely.

We are bringing together the different face-to-face contact points into a single space on the ground floor of Lynton House. We’ve worked with local people to test the design and to understand what is really important, particularly for people with special requirements, and adjust the design and layout to make it work for us all. We’re also introducing a number of self-service computers and scanners for people to support themselves.

We are taking a similar approach to the design of our telephone answering. We introduced call reporting, which means we’re able to tell more precisely how many calls we receive across the council (around about 2 million each year), how long they are and how many customers ring off before we answer. This data is helping us design any changes that we make.

We’re introducing simple, effective, automatic routing so people calling us get to the right place quickly. Where we can, we’re making sure that calls are appropriately queued so people aren’t waiting too long.

CASE STUDY 3 CASE STUDY 4A council that organises itself around the needs and strengths of residents: building a new customer contact function

A council that responds rapidly to changing external circumstances: transforming Work Redbridge

Mary Matthews: The new digital services that the council has introduced into the contact centre make it easier for our advisor to help customers and save time by reducing the need to enter data by hand. The new processes contain all the information a customer needs to successfully use the service and manage expectations. This all-in-one view works well for advisors.

All levels of staff from the Customer Contact Centre have been involved in the development, testing and promoting of the new digital services, and we’re ensuring our services are accessible so that customers who need to interact with us face to face or in person are still able to do so.

Tools used:

Fairness Excellence

Elizabeth Gardner: Work Redbridge was funded by central government grants until 2016. When these ended, members wanted to continue supporting the service, but challenged us to redefine the way we worked. We spent three months engaged in a data deep dive and extensive analysis of the residents that we’ve previously helped in the borough to identify how best to use our resources and expertise going forward.

The result was a whole new approach to delivering employment, skills and business support that built on our existing strengths but helped us to maximise the opportunities of working with the rest of the council and external partners.

We still provide a good universal service, but the purpose of the service has shifted to using work as a way to help our most vulnerable residents. We want to help people who are at risk of homelessness or who have been hit by benefits reductions, both because it’s the right thing to do and because it can help reduce pressure on the council’s most expensive services.

We created a new triage model which means that any Redbridge resident can access initial support to get back to work. Once we assess their needs, they are quickly signposted to additional services and offered support by external organisations. This has freed up time that our advisors can use to provide intensive one-to-one help for our most vulnerable residents to help them in building confidence, identifying career opportunities, writing CVs and accessing local vacancies.

It’s definitely more challenging in some cases as these are residents where unemployment is really entrenched but by building trust with the advisor we’re able to give them the confidence and motivation to see the positives of work.

Tools used:

Honesty Fairness Excellence CollaborationHonesty Collaboration


CASE STUDY 5A council that organises itself and the needs around the strengths of residents: working together to build better communities

Sue Harper: We need to change the way we work to create great neighbourhoods in Redbridge. Our streets are getting dirtier -litter and flytipping are on the rise, reflecting national trends - but our resources are getting tighter, so the council can’t solve the problem on its own. We created an independent commission made up of representatives from business, the voluntary sector and the community to consult residents about how we can all work together to keep the borough clean and green. More than 550 people got involved in shaping our new approach.

The result was the Our Streets Strategy, a new plan approach to creating brilliant neighbourhoods. The key principle is that we want to build on the strengths of our residents and communities - some of our residents have already said they want to become neighbourhood champions and we’ll recruit even more and support them to organise action days to improve their areas, as well as supporting residents to maintain local green space and create new gardens and orchards. Our new structure will support this approach by creating neighbourhood teams.

If we want to create neighbourhoods that work for people, we’ll need to reduce our dependence on the car. Redbridge has a rising level of car ownership at a time when the figures are falling for lots of other boroughs. We want to make it easy and safer for residents to walk and cycle around the borough and to close streets for parties and so that children can play. We’ll also encourage council staff to cycle or walk, and try to reduce the number of people who drive their children to our schools.

A major step towards making our borough cleaner is to stop people dropping rubbish in the first place. Enforcement has a key role to play here and we’ll continue to fine people and businesses who don’t play by the rules, but we also need to make sure we communicate really clearly so that all of our residents understand the rules. We need to find new ways to develop services that are easy for people to use, including new communities and those without good English, and we want to explore using smart communications to change behaviour.

This is a huge change for Civic Pride - moving from cleaning the streets to working with residents to create great neighbourhoods - but we’re up for the challenge.

Tools used:

Fairness Excellence CollaborationHonesty

notes

London Borough of Redbridge Staff Manual | October 2017

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