Leadership and Management is the number one priority for our Organisational Development Strategy. It underpins all the other priority areas. We see it as the firm foundation on which ambitions are built.
All our managers need to find a way to factor in time to listen to individual aspirations and/or concerns of our staff. Management attention and capacity is crucial to retention, wellbeing, and to all our priority areas.
We expect great things from our people so management needs to be top of the priority list. It is not an optional task or a ‘nice to do’ if the pressures of the workload allow. It is critical to service delivery and to making our organisation a ‘great place to work’.
One hour with a manager, either in person or through a video call, can make a huge difference to an individual member of staff and their ability to do their job. This priority therefore includes 1:1s, holding PDRs (Performance and Development reviews) and actively participating in comprehensive workforce planning – alongside HR and OD support.
The importance of 1:1 manager/employee conversations has been reinforced repeatedly – through our survey in Summer 2020, our wellbeing survey in Spring 18 and often repeated in exit interviews conducted by leavers.
Before we prioritised this, just under half of employees responding reported that they were not having 1:1s. Many listed the benefits they sought to get from such a discussion. It is therefore clear that 1:1s make a difference.
1:1s and PDR discussions therefore form the backbone of this priority area and we continue to monitor completion rates through a variety of means including staff surveys. Our most recent survey in Spring 2020 was very positive, around 85% of you continue to have 1:1s regularly (and this was a survey taken during the Coronavirus lockdown).
If we find patterns or trends indicating some services are lagging in this area we can target our attention to improve the situation.