Almost a year on since the business case for Aberdeenshire’s Worksmart Project was approved, the Worksmart Team has helped 530 employees change their working profile and 135 employees change their working pattern at the council.
The programme has been awarded a COSLA, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, bronze award in the ‘Securing a Workforce for the Future’ category. The award recognises that attracting, retaining and developing staff in a highly competitive labour market is becoming ever more challenging for employers, with public sector bodies being no exception.
Mark Baker, Corporate Improvement and Performance Manager at Aberdeenshire, said, “Worksmart is one of the most significant organisational development projects ever undertaken by Aberdeenshire Council. It places the customer at the heart of everything we do and delivers a variety of new working methods for our employees to help us become more efficient.”
“It is an inclusive programme which affects every employee of the council and through the adoption of a range of flexible working practices the council is delivering increased team productivity and improved service delivery.”
In April the new Worksmart HR policy, which encompassed the council’s previous flexible policy, was approved. The new HR & OD Policy for the council is interactive and allows the user to easily navigate through it and find the information they need quickly.
A Worksmart Intranet site was launched in June and provides a wealth of information on the project and includes an online application form that allows employees to complete a request to change their working profile or pattern.
The Worksmart Team work with services to adopt teams and individuals that are willing to change the way they work and to ‘do things differently’. They work with employees to test various pieces of technology to determine what equipment will work best for each person and the role that they do.
Through the Office Accommodation Strategy of the Asset Management Programme, the council plans to reduce its office floor space by 25% over the next two years; to help achieve this, the Worksmart team has moved the implementation of the programme to three years instead of five.
To achieve the goals of the programme, the Worksmart Team work closely with others including those involved in property, electronic documents and records management, employee relationship management, Kaizen for Daily Improvement and customer relationship management.
Mark said, “As the programme develops, the impact of Worksmart will be demonstrated through better office accommodation utilisation, reduced sickness absence and improved staff retention, whilst delivering significant benefits to the work/life balance of employees. We are also working with other public sector organisations, including the Improvement Service and other local authorities to roll this approach out as widely as possible in Scotland.”
“A large piece of this project is dependent upon driving a change in culture throughout the council and we need employees to change the way they hold and attend meetings.”
“The project team is currently looking at different unified communication and collaborative tools and a pilot involving 100 employees will be running in early 2011 to assess whether there is an appetite to make these cultural changes and that the cashable savings as indicated by the service providers can be achieved before investing heavily in these tools.”
The Worksmart Team will find out in March 2011 if they have been awarded a gold award from COSLA for the ‘Securing a Workforce for the Future’ category.
Contact: Communications Assistant linzie.carson@aberdeenshire.gov.uk
Tel: (01224) 664611
