A Partnership of Equals

Solution: to empower staff and engage citizens

Initially, the partnership had to ensure the seamless TUPE transfer of over 200 staff from the Council. So successful was the transition, the partnership retained 100% of transferred employees during the process and achieved 98% of Key Performance Indicators.

The partnership worked with an organisational development company to develop leaders with the right capabilities and facilitate employee engagement in the transformation process. To give staff the skills to engage actively in improving services, Arvato trained all transferred employees up to White Belt standard in Six Sigma methodologies. A further 15% were accredited to Yellow Belt, while a selected group is being developed to Green Belt practitioner level. Lean Reviews conducted across all transferred services enabled employees to use their new Six Sigma skills to identify process inefficiencies, streamline workflows and reduce costs.

Following on from these engagement activities, ‘Champions’ have now been appointed in each service area to promote continual improvement. This deep staff involvement helped ensure a smoother process of change and exploits employees’ first-hand knowledge of where service efficiencies can be made. Working on the improvement projects also strengthened working relationships across the partnership and raised morale.

Further driving the continual improvement process and encouraging buy-in from all parties, the partnership developed a gain-share model, where efficiency savings will be shared 50:50, reinforcing the commitment to success.

To put citizens at the heart of service delivery, a Customer Service Strategy was developed, under which customer service, revenues and benefits services were integrated and centred on customers. Service access and quality were improved, greatly increasing customer satisfaction, which now stands at an all-time high.

As part of the public-private partnership agreement, the original OJEU notice included the opportunity for named neighbouring authorities to streamline the future commissioning process when sharing with or procuring services from the Chesterfield partnership.

Successes: accelerating performance

• During 2011, the Council hit 72% of its corporate plan performance indicators, up from 65% in 2010 and 52% in 2009.
• In the 2011 employee survey, staff satisfaction with the Council stood at 82%.
• In November 2011 citizen panels, 75% expressed satisfaction with the way the Council runs services – a 7% uplift on 2010 and a 27% increase on 2008.
• Streamlining Benefits processes produced approximate cost savings of 17%.
• Resolving more calls at first point of contact reduced calls referred back to the Benefits service by 27%.
• Improving Invoice Processing created savings of approximately 27%.

Awards & Accreditations

Awards

• Winner: Public Sector Outsourcing Project of the Year, 2011 National Outsourcing Association Awards
• Finalist: Public Private Partnership, LGC 2012 Awards
• Finalist: National Government Opportunities, 2012/13 Excellence in Public Procurement Awards
• Commended: Partnership in Professional Services, 2011 LGC Business Partnership Awards
• Finalist: Excellence in People Development, 2011 Business Awards Derbyshire
• Commended: Government Business Awards, 2010 for an innovative approach to partnership

Accreditations

• ISO 9001
• ISO 14001
• Customer Service Excellence

Services: looking after people and property

• Customer services
• Revenues and benefits
• Debt recovery
• Collection of rent
• Accounts payable
• Invoice processing
• Strategic & transactional HR
• Payroll
• Organisational development
• ICT
• Reprographics
• Asset management
• Engineering maintenance
• Facilities maintenance