Verax Public Sector Case Studies

 

Joint Venture MOD/Private Sector Contractor

 

A high profile project was several years and several £BN over budget. OTI was used to investigate reasons for performance shortfall. Involving over 2,500 staff the Verax OTI identified Organisation Structures, Systems Processes, Leadership, Management and Behavioural issues which were having negative impacts on performance.

 

Such was the specificity of problem analysis that the Project Reform Group was able to start working on rectifying problems immediately. Within months significant interventions had been made such that a realistic revised project plan was created and is now on track.

 

County Council

 

This is a relatively new assignment. Having concluded that Local Government senior officers were better equipped and trained to be policy makers and administrators rather than organisational leaders, the County Council decided that the Council could only truly serve its constituents if it had a proper strategy, mission and vision for the future and a group of leaders to take it where it needed to go.

 

Having determined (with external consultants help) the Council’s mission, vision, strategic objectives etc, they then used Verax’s  Strategic Profile to express what the Council had to achieve and define how it would operate in order to achieve those outcomes. This automatically set up a set of Leadership target behavioural scales and patterns, measured by the Verax Leading for Results (LFR) diagnostic.

 

The LFR feedback benchmarked their leaders against others in the public sector and also analysed what each leader was doing and how that impacted on the strategic results the Council wanted. This information was first used in a series of leadership workshops together with the Council wide OTI results. This took leadership out of the academic arena and demonstrated personally what each leader was doing to help the council achieve what it needed and the organisational issues that leaders had to address to get things moving in the right direction.

 

Government Agencies

 

This high profile Agency wanted to become more effective and more efficient. They had used the EFQM model as guidance but could not point to improvements as a result.

 

OTI Real Time was installed and the Strategic Profile was produced at the same time. This showed very ambitious objectives and desires to be a world beating organisation.

 

OTI RT data capture produced higher levels of returns than any staff survey ever completed before. The results showed very precise areas to address in terms of strategic focus, minimising inefficiencies, improving leadership and streamlining systems and processes.

 

Although early days the senior management team has actively embraced these action streams and early feedback is demonstrating significant progress.

 

Council 1

 

Council 1 based in Scotland and with over 5,500 employees was looking for efficiencies by merging various Services.

 

They used the Verax Strategic Profile to define what each new Service had to achieve and how it needed to operate in order to achieve its new set of Strategic Outcomes.

 

OTI Actual data were collected to asses how far from the Strategic Profile each new service was and then used the recommendations to drive action plans for integration.

 

Whilst not without difficulty, these mergers happened faster and with fewer problems, fewer recriminations and with a more robust and healthy future legacy than in any previous reorganisation in the history of the Council.

 

Council 2

 

Also in Scotland , this Council has over 15,000 employees. They had offered a traditional “menu” of training and development opportunities, with managers recommending people for courses etc. Inevitably some courses were oversubscribed others cancelled at the last minute.

 

The council decided that a more scientific approach was needed, to ensure that training and development was meeting organisational needs and was cost effective/value for money.

 

The council decided to use Verax’s personal and management 360 diagnostics to:

 

Identify the training and development needs of each key individual in the context of the Councils needs.

Using the same diagnostic to evaluate the on job improvements made by individuals as a result of their training and development (a mixture of workshops, projects 1 on 1 coaching, and learning etc)

Over 4 years some 480 people went through this process. The council estimated the savings to be in excess of £40,000 per annum. Some 70% of attendees were measured as having significantly improved between first measure and re-measure.

 

The Police Force 1

 

This Police Force in the Home Counties was reporting very high levels of sickness and absenteeism, mostly stress related. Using OTI to identify the Organisational issues and Verax personal 360 diagnostics to deal with the personal issues, absenteeism was reduced by almost 60% and even some long term sick officers were able to return to work some 6-8 weeks after attending personal development workshops based on the Verax diagnostics.

 

The Police Force 2

 

 At the behest of the new Chief Constable a complete Force Review was ordered. In addition to conducting the analyses required by the Home Office he also asked for an OTI analysis (recommended by the HR department who where already using Verax personal 360 diagnostics)

 

Within 3 weeks the new Chief Constable had the OTI results on his desk. Subsequently he said that he had learned more about his force, in less time and for less cost than all the other analyses that were instigated at the time, put together.