City of Vincent
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Managers and teams were given full responsibility and ownership of their strategy and business planning
Between their first Engagement Survey in 2018 and their second in 2019, City of Vincent improved on almost every survey category, decreased employee turnover, and reduced workers compensation spend by 24%. This was achieved despite a period of notable organisational change, including the arrival of a new CEO.
Shortly after joining City of Vincent in 2018, CEO David MacLennan commenced an organisational review which was partially informed by the Voice Project Engagement Survey conducted prior to his arrival and the development areas it identified. To facilitate this process, Voice Project conducted additional debriefs with David to help him interpret the perceptions of the staff he was now leading. The review showed that staff did not have a good understanding of what other work areas were doing, or how their work contributed to the overall purpose and vision. The review also aimed to embed a new vision and set of priorities, which included a focus on the clarity of roles and of organisational direction.
All-staff briefings were conducted to communicate the new vision and priorities, and clarify how staff at City of Vincent would need to work and perform in order to achieve those objectives. Additionally, they introduced a new Project Management Framework and conducted a corporate planning process in which projects, programs and services were reviewed against the new priorities, self-assessed against a maturity model, and combined within each team into a long-term strategy and business plan. Each staff member’s performance was then linked to their team’s business plan and KPIs so that they understood how their work contributed to the broader work unit. Organisation-wide standards were also put in place to ensure that the same guidance was available across different projects, programs, and portfolios.
A critical factor for achieving change was ensuring that staff were involved in the process. Managers and teams were given full responsibility and ownership of their strategy and business planning, as they were in the best position to identify how to improve their services. Self-assessment against the maturity model was also key, as it clarified the current and desired future states of the services, and required a discussion of roles, responsibility and relationships between different teams and directorates.