Interrelate
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Interrelate is a not-for-profit specialising in improving relationships for over 90 years
Interrelate is a not-for-profit organisation with over 280 employees across New South Wales. With almost 90 years of operation, Interrelate specialises in improving relationships through a number of counselling and support services for families, individuals and young people.
After a recent change of leadership, Interrelate undertook a process of cultural transformation to build upon the organisation’s strengths and address areas of improvement. Interrelate’s board of directors initiated the transformation, engaging newly appointed CEO Patricia Occelli to lead the project. The transformation project was highly complex, with an aim to involve all staff throughout the process and address several systemic issues within the organisation.
The Need For Cultural Change
Patricia, the CEO, described the organisation when she arrived: “staff felt that the culture of the organisation wasn’t quite right”. To help identify the specific cultural issues within Interrelate, Patricia met face-to-face with over half of their workforce. It became clear that the organisation was beset by a culture of fearing to speak up or act with initiative, reinforced by punitive and controlling leader behaviour, communication processes and performance management. One issue staff reported was a fear of communicating outside their line of delegation because they felt there might be negative consequences for doing so. Additionally, staff felt if they voiced feedback that was potentially contrary to the view of management they would be ignored or face negative consequences.
Building Employee Voice
Patricia understood that a major aim of the transformation project should be to open the lines of communication to enable the organisation to grow and thrive again. Interrelate introduced a number of systems and processes to encourage and enable staff to raise issues, concerns, and ideas.
First, as an interim emergency measure, an email system was introduced that allowed staff to send anonymous feedback directly to the CEO, “it was quite a useful way of getting a sense of the temperature at the ground”. Patricia acknowledged a major limitation of this email system was the difficulty of following up emails lacking details, and she encouraged staff to provide at least minimal details (e.g., office location). This greatly improved Patricia’s ability to respond to feedback raised in the email system, “there were patterns in what was coming in. If enough people tell you through a confidential system that something’s wrong then you can’t just ignore it”.
Patricia used an online portal to provide feedback on issues raised in the email system, and as a source of feedback itself through posts by individual staff members. When Patricia found that individuals avoided using the online portal, they improved the system by encouraging group feedback from a representative staff member in each region. This increased the usefulness of the online portal both because of the safety provided by group feedback, and because of an increased sense of representativeness and credibility of the suggestions. “All those mechanisms were about opening the dialogue so that people not only felt safe in expressing a view, but they also could see that if they expressed a view it would have a response”.
Interrelate has been highly consultative with its staff, involving them in day-to-day decision making about topics such as branding, newsletters, communication processes, programs, training and accreditation, and appropriate workplace behaviour. “The whole process has been a process of consultation, feedback, engagement, incorporation and then repeating that over and over and over again”. Feedback from staff has been used by Interrelate to review and make changes to policies and procedures. Where it has not been possible to implement all staff suggestions, Patricia has “provided feedback about the cost implications of doing it that way, why it had been considered, and why we couldn’t do what people were suggesting we did”. This process helps ensure that staff feel their feedback has been carefully listened to and considered.
Benefits For Interrelate
Several outcomes have been observed as a result of the cultural transformation at Interrelate.
Staff are more likely to come forward and report grievance issues than in the past
Interrelate’s staff survey response rate increased from 55% to 76%
Staff and managers are more proactive, “they’ve started to already put in place strategies to address whatever their issues were”
And, in Interrelate’s latest staff survey, 74% of employees agreed that Interrelate had improved over the last year, significantly higher than the industry benchmark
“People came to me and said ‘I’m so pleased with the work that you’re doing and how we’re engaging as an organisation at the moment’. I’d be totally wrong to say that all the problems are finished. But the fact that now people are willing to come forward and say ‘I have an issue, I have a problem that needs to be resolved’, I think that’s a positive thing” - Patricia Occelli CEO Interrelate .
