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The Gap Year An update from Jen Vinton
To better understand our current culture we organised a series of interactive sessions with staff and managers. These sessions provided valuable information on why it is like this, and what our future culture could feel like.
Our journey to understanding our culture
Here you’ll find a round-up of the activities we held and the lessons we learnt.
Our Gap Year is all about thinking about where we are now and where we want to be in the future. We’re gathering lots of information to help us make improvements further down the line – this is our 100 days of insight. In November the theme for the ‘Gap Year’ was ‘culture’. Culture is all about how we do things. There are lots of things that influence organisational culture such as leadership and management, policies and practices, reward structures, working environment, attitudes to taking risks and new ideas. Your own personal values play a large part in our culture too.
What did we do? We held a culture workshop for managers and a series of fully booked ‘culture cuppas’ with staff. It was great to see how much interest there was from staff – possibly due to the promise of cake! We’d originally planned 2 sessions but held 6 in total, and a further session at Palatine. It was really pleasing to see how many staff wanted to be involved and help us work out what we all want YHN’s culture to be like.
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We asked staff to think about their own personal values
Our personal values We asked staff to think about their own personal values and the value they create at YHN. The aim of this was to understand staff as individuals and what values are important to them. This will help us develop a new set of core values that staff can relate to. Appraising manager’s top values were: • Have a positive attitude • Bring passion and energy to what you do • Support and empower staff • Be creative and inspire • To be happy in their work Staff top values were: • To be happy at work and feel valued • To be helpful and supportive to both colleagues and customers
• To bring passion and energy to what you do • To be creative • To empower staff
New ideas – and what prevents them We want staff to be able to put forward their ideas to help shape the way we do things. To understand how receptive YHN is to ideas we asked both at the manager session and at several of the culture cuppas for all staff to stand up. They had to sit down if they had not had an idea. Approximately 90% remained standing. Then we asked a second question – had that idea ‘happened’? If not staff had to sit down. This reduced numbers dramatically with approximately only 5% left standing – this was disappointing.
We asked staff what prevents ideas within YHN: Manager’s feedback
Staff feedback
• Technology
• Communication
• Money
• Attitude
• People
• Finance
• Fear
• Workload
• Those resistant to change (described as dinosaurs)
• Technology
Staff gave us lots of ideas of how we can encourage more suggestions – mainly surrounding time. Staff need to be given time to develop and see ideas through, and this is something we will be actively encouraging.
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www.yhn.org.uk
Team YHN Understanding our culture To understand our current culture we mapped it out into three sections. 1 Behaviours – how we do things at YHN, what a great day looks like and what a bad day looks like. 2 Outcomes – what happens as a result of our behaviour. 3 Enablers and blockers – why do we behave this way, what influences us, what stops us from doing this differently?
Step one – Behaviours A good day at YHN is when technology runs smoothly, when staff have the right time to do their job properly, and when staff aren’t off sick. On a good day there’s a buzz around the place and there is a real sense of achievement. Happy staff equals happy customers. However there is a feeling that we follow policy to the rule, and that there’s an attitude of ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’ and that we are reactive to situations, almost firefighting, rather than being proactive. This can leave staff feeling frustrated, unmotivated and like they’re always trying to catch up.
Step two - Understanding the impact of our behaviours
Step three - What influences different behaviours
Managers suggested we don’t embrace new ideas because of the difficulty to get them agreed which was echoed in the staff sessions – we are just plodding on and doing what we need to – and that we don’t have the time to actually develop ideas. This impacts on the customer experience.
Managers and staff both said we are stuck in a rut with a culture of ‘we’ve always done it this way’, a fear of change. Staff said they often raised ideas but then did not receive feedback making them feel they aren’t listened to.
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There was a real sense that people are important; both staff and customers. Changing our current culture Solutions suggested by staff to encourage a more positive culture included: • Introducing a recognition scheme for staff • Allowing time for innovation and initiative, and removing bureaucracy to help make ideas happen • Challenging poor behaviour and rewarding good behaviours • Empowering managers /staff to take decisions • Using modern technology to help productivity • Reviewing processes to ensure we are efficient
What did we find out? Lots of positive comments came out of the culture cuppas and manager session. Staff value the role YHN plays in the local community by supporting customers, and generally think YHN is a good employer
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which supports staff training and development and encourages work life balance. Some staff said YHN feels like a family and there is a good comradery which they enjoy when they come to work. There was a real sense that people are important; both staff and customers. However when we asked about how we ‘do things’ and what our current culture feels like, the responses were less positive. Staff are anxious about job security and to understand the direction the organisation is going. We asked staff what our culture should look like and how we should do things in the future. Feedback was positive words such as ‘energy’, ‘innovation’, ‘happy’ and ‘fun’ were used.
What now? We’ll use the feedback from the staff and manager sessions to help develop our new core values. The discussions will help us understand what we need to do to address our current culture and help improve the way we ‘do things’ at YHN. We’d like to thank everyone who came along to give us their feedback. If you weren’t able to attend any of these events there’s still an opportunity to provide your feedback – just make sure you complete the staff survey to share your views!
ut o ab g kin in th t en sp be ill w h nt mo xt ne e Th improving productivityfo- rkeupepdachteecs. king the Gap Year site page: 4