ideasUK

Another website worth a browse:

The only non-commercial association in the UK dedicated to employee suggestion schemes/reward and recognition processes. Joining ideasUK puts you in touch with the largest professional team of experts in the UK in the development and running of successful suggestion scheme programmes. Founded in 1987, ideasUK receives no funding from Government or from private enterprise. As a result ideasUK provides completely independent advice, guidance and assistance to any organisation (private or public sector) wishing to incorporate, or maintain, a successful suggestion programme in their business.

http://www.ideasuk.com

ideasUK is committed to developing a wider understanding that within employees there is a vast untapped resource of creative ideas, the harnessing of which will have a major impact on business performance.

http://www.ideasuk.com/ideasUK-aboutusp.html

Ideas are free...

I am always on the hunt for other website / blogs that reflect a similar outlook to this one. I came across this one today:

http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/operating/leadership/ideas.html

Everyone loves big, dramatic ideas. In fact, the bigger and sexier the ideas, the more people are drawn to them.

So it's not surprising that when managers think about promoting workers' ideas, they envision going after the home runs - the super-sized breakthroughs that promise fame and fortune. Yet it's actually smarter to go after small ideas, as they're where the real action is. Why? According to our research, there are countless reasons. Here we'll focus on two of them - sustainable competitive advantage and performance excellence - as they're vital to every organization's success....

The original source of this article (I believe) comes from:

http://www.ideasarefree.com/

Today, the best managers companies get and implement more than fifty ideas per person per year from their front-line employees. There is no reason why this couldn’t happen in your organization too! It is purely a matter of management know-how and will.

Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder are perhaps the foremost experts in the world on how to get ideas from front-line employees. Their book Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations is based on their research and consulting experience in more than 300 organizations in 17 countries. They have extensive experience at helping managers at all levels, and in all kinds of organizations – tap the extraordinary power in their employees’ ideas

Their website is worth a browse including:

http://www.ideasarefree.com/idea_of_the_month.html

The power of Twitter

I am feeling empowered by the new media this morning - my tweeted question to Sir Liam Donaldson concerning H1N1 Flu was asked by Jon Snow on Channel 4 News last night!

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/swine+flu+pandemic+declared+/3206617

(about 1.55 in)

So twitter works!

Now... how can we use twitter to share small creative ideas around world wide ether?? Any suggestions? 

Workflow and Document Management

Example: The introduction of ‘Workflow’ and ‘Document Management’ to our Housing Benefits Service. 

Results? Improvements to processing times were achieved, retrieval times were reduced and quicker payments of benefits to customers resulted. This contributed to reduced staffing costs and improved efficiencies.

What leadership helped? The change was lead by a project group of staff actively involved in the service; they piloted new working practices and rolled out implementation over a short period.

What was learnt? The staff learnt that changing working practices, backed by new technology and supportive management could produce improved results. 

Thanks to Mid Devon District Council for this example

Collaboration in action.

The IDeA website has the good story of an innovative and collaborative partnership 

Building learning partnerships and leadership capacity: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Oxford City Council development year. In October 2007, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Oxford City Council teamed up to put a joint cohort of 15 middle managers through a development year. Kensington and Chelsea has successfully run development years, but this was the first time it would partner with another council. 

More information: http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=10643258 

I wonder how many more collaborations there could be like this that are a) happening or b) could be happening...?

New drive on innovation in the NHS

Some considerable weight and money are put into the new duty being placed upon Strategic Health Authorities: ‘In performing its functions each strategic health authority must promote innovation for the purpose of securing continuous improvement in the commissioning and provision of health care.’

The Health Minister is on record promoting innovation wherever he can: "We can improve patient care by encouraging staff to be innovative: Frontline nurses are best placed to identify the changes that are needed to improve care, and their ideas must be encouraged to enable best practice" says Lord Darzi (Nursing Times - full article click here)

And what is more - there is helpful best practice guidance document which is intended to support SHAs in fulfilling their legal duty - it explains the purpose of the duty, what it means for patients, public and staff, and where to seek further information. You can download it here.

Poll results (who has the best ideas...)!

Regular readers will know that since this blog was established, I have been running a poll on "who has the best ideas on improvement". The poll has now closed and here are the results (with 27 votes cast):

Senior managers?	3 (11%)
Middle managers?	6 (22%)
Front line staff?	16 (59%)
Clients?	9 (33%)
Citizens & communities?	9 (33%)
Public service partners?	2 (7%)
Governance bodies?	2 (7%)

An interesting result - which suggests that frontline staff need to be highly involved in developing and implementing improvement ideas. Perhaps this result is not surprising - given the purpose of this blog. 

Now please vote on the next poll: Who is best at frontline innovation?

U Suggest

This scheme was set up in October 2007, and awards are made approximately quarterly.  Of the nearly 90 ideas sent in to U Suggest so far, 23 suggestions have received awards.  The types of suggestion we receive include operational improvements; the highlighting of areas of our service which would benefit from review; suggestions for improved staff facilities; suggestions for carbon emission reduction; ideas for improving internal communication, and so on. 

Thank you to Uttlesford District Council for this example of good practice - a couple of further examples are given below.

Council Direct Debit changes

An award was made to an officer for his suggestion that changes to benefits for Council tenants paying by Direct Debit should be generated by an electronic report.  This suggestion was made by someone from outside the relevant department, who realised that such a report could save much staff time.  The idea has been successfully implemented.

Thank you to Uttlesford District Council for this example 

Testing of Lifeline equipment

Instead of officers carrying out visits to customers using Lifeline equipment purely in order to check that the equipment was working, telephone testing was suggested.  Of course, in view of the vulnerable nature of many of these customers, this suggestion would not be feasible or desirable in certain cases, but where appropriate, remote testing will take place, thus saving officer time.  

Thank you to Uttlesford District Council for this example

Partnership to procure agency staff

A trailblazing, cross regional partnership to procure agency staff has yielded savings of £8,010

The partnership contract to procure agency staff was let to Comensura.  The hours worked and charges of each appointment are recorded and benchmarked against current commercial rates

Thanks to the City of Lincoln Council for this example

Public Service Reform... but not as we know it!

This is a "story of how democracy can make public services genuinely efficient" by Hilary Wainwright and Matthew Little - and published by Compass and UNISON with support from the Transnational Institute and the International Centre for Participation Studies, Bradford University and distributed by Picnic Publishing. 

This piece sets out to discuss why "few political leaders in either of the two parties responsible for founding the welfare state positively promote the idea of public sector staff themselves working with citizens and elected politicians creatively to improve the services that they deliver". It challenges the view of "the Westminster village" that "public service reform means marketisation and outsourcing to the private sector".

"This book recounts the story of a workforce that seems to have ‘energised’ itself through playing an active part in a well organised branch of UNISON. Between 2000 and 2002, this union and these workers successfully resisted the outsourcing to the private sector of Newcastle City Council’s corporate ‘back office’ and customer services, and then worked closely with management to see through an ‘in-house’ plan for improving services"

http://clients.squareeye.com/uploads/compass/documents/PublicServiceReformWainwright.pdf

I have only just downloaded it (thanks to Clifford Singer for the link) - but appears to be a good read. You may agree with its trade union foundations or not - but it appears to be useful exposition of innovation and improvement in practice. But do let me know what you think!

Some questions to support creativity...

Here are some questions I have developed over the years - which I often use to help people take a different perspective on their system / process. I present them as 'solutions looking for problems' - so some of them will fit - and others will not. You will only know if you ask the question... 

• Have we agreed the stakeholder requirements?
  
• Are the providers involved adequately trained?
  
• Are there too many ‘handovers’
  
• Is the process being done in the right order?
  
• Could it be made simpler with a ‘triage’ stage?
  
• Could we make better use of technology?
  
• Where are the sources of rework?
  
• Why does performance vary – and by how much?
  
• Could some parts of the process be done at the same time?
  
• Are there too many checks and controls?
  
• Could we get the users / clients / etc. to do more?
  
• Could we get our partners or suppliers to take action?
  
• Could we create an expert system to make it work better?
  
• Is there a ‘standard’ way of carrying out the process?
  
• Where are the delays in the process?
  
• Could different people or agencies be providing the service (or part of it)?
  
• Have we made any cultural or professional assumptions that are getting in the way?
  
• Are the performance measures helping?
  
• Could we stop doing the process altogether?
  
• Are decision making protocols getting in the way?
  
• Does the process contribute to outcome goals? 
  

My vision is that each of these questions is a lens to hold up to the process / system and see if it brings something useful into sharper view. Do let me know if you use them and find them useful. I have said in the past that these questions come with a guarantee - I promise you will find at least one if not several ways to improve your process / system if you ask them. No one has claimed a warranty yet... but who knows!

(This is part of a longer blog posting on my other blog. If you wish to see the whole article: http://jonharveyassociates.blogspot.com/2009/05/improving-whole-systems-with-creativity.html)

Empowerment in Kent

"The Kent Card is a revolutionary system enabling people to use their direct payments to pay for their Adult Social Care Services. 

http://kenttv.com/programmes.php?PID=2457&Title=The+Kent+Card 

Kent County Council, in partnership with The Royal Bank of Scotland, have developed this Visa preloaded card to allow users to pay for their services via Chip and Pin, over the phone and on the internet." 

Direct payment empowerment - great idea! (Should we call this 'empayerment*' ?!)

* you heard it here first!

Server Recovery Project

The Council has entered into a joint procurement agreement with Winchester City Council and East Hampshire District Council. The procurement enables the council to benefit from the assurance of server support with the benefit of not having to go through the full procurement exercise.

Thanks to the Isle of Wight Council for this example

Insurance Tender renewal

The Council has reviewed the Insurance Contract arrangements and sought to identify a range of firms to provide specific elements of cover, rather than going to one broker. This approach secured significant cost savings for the council based on the previous years costs of 31%, whilst providing an enhanced depth of protection including an increase of the Level of Indemnity cover to £50 million. The project was led by the Interim Head of Compliance and Insurance and Risk Manager, and is part of the Council’s ongoing pursuit of VFM and achievement of economy, effectiveness and efficiency.

Thanks to the Isle of Wight Council for this example

Mobile Phone Invoicing

The Council consolidated the mobile phone invoicing arrangements from individual invoices per phone to sub accounts. This reduced invoice volume from 13,560 in 2007 to 1788 invoices. Project was led by the Head of Procurement and part of the ongoing challenge and review of costs and the search for appropriate tariffs to match Council need – all related to improving economy, effectiveness, efficiency.

Thanks to the Isle of Wight Council for this example

Mobile Phone Tariffs

The Council has reviewed and continues to review the tariff arrangements available under the OGC GTM agreement with Orange for mobile phone provisions. This has achieved year on year ongoing savings for the council Project was led by the Head of Procurement and part of the ongoing challenge and review of costs and the search for appropriate tariffs to match Council need – all related to improving economy, effectiveness, efficiency.

Thanks to the Isle of Wight Council for this example

Advantages of co-location

Administrators that sat within 'business services' (IT, Business Change and HR) were co-located into a central area providing a more coordinated administrative support.The support provided by this centralised administrative support was enhanced with administrative support working as a team naturally supported each other with phone calls, absence cover, addressing strengths and weaknesses i.e. use of SAP. 

The support, buddying and mentoring within the administrative support team has allowed individuals to augment their skills and working together as a team to support the services also means less reliance on costly temporary staff. 

Thanks to West Sussex County Council for this example

Another cornucopia of good ideas

A selection of ideas from Fareham Borough Council - thanks for these.

• Remove standalone printers/photocopiers/scanner and replaces with multifunctional devices.
  
• Removed surplus waste paper bins
  
• Use an intranet to publish policies, procedures and staff notices
  
• Duplex printing
  
• Electronic new starter and sickness absence process
  
• Use of clean (post office) mail
  
• Consolidate mobile phone supplier
  
• Move to non-cheque payment process