Transcript Cascade December 2014 Keeping you informed with news from across the council In this issue • New, improved PRD process – find out more • How we.

Cascade
December 2014
Keeping you informed with
news from across the council
In this issue
•
New, improved PRD process – find out more
•
How we deal with our customers – results of this year’s mystery shopping exercise
•
Smoking policy update
•
Planning for retirement? Keep up to date with changes to pensions
•
Staying healthy at work – proven benefits
•
Don’t risk it – be aware of the new lower drink driving limits
•
Keeping up with the council – sign up for our e-newsletter
•
Award-winning council – more recognition for teams and services
•
Employee surveys
New, improved Performance
Review and Development
(PRD) process
New PRD process
Argyll and Bute Council is committed to realising the potential of its employees and
ensuring that its customers are receiving value for money. Effective performance
review and development is a key part in achieving this. It ensures that:
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Each individual is clear about their contribution to the overall ambitions of
Argyll and Bute Council.
The targets of employees are aligned to the values and priorities of the
organisation.
The learning and development needs of employees are linked to their
individual targets.
The new PRD process aims to develop employees by linking their development to the
council’s goals. Developing our employees will help us to improve our services to
customers and improve our performance.
Need help completing your PRD
(Performance Review and
Development)?
Please see the Learning and Guidance pages on the Hub
By spending time training you can save time working –
as well as guidance on the PRD process, the Learning
and Development pages have lots more options which
could help you.
New PRD process
In response to your feedback we have made improvements to the PRD
form. Please use the updated form here for your next PRD.
We have an eLearning course available to help with the PRD process. The
elearning course is available on Learn-in Bytes and to use this you will need
a username and password.
If you do not currently have these please email
[email protected]. Once you are registered on
the system you will be sent an email from Learning and Development with
confirmation of your username and password.
There is now a dedicated PRD email address – [email protected] –
where line managers should send all development plans and driving licence
checks.
Mystery Shopping Exercise –
2014 Results
Mystery Shopping Exercise 2014
Background
Each year since 2010 the council has conducted an independent mystery shopping
exercise to check the way each department deals with enquiries from customers by
telephone, e-mail, face to face and letter enquiries.
The overall performance is measured against the customer service charter pledges.
The full November 2014 report can be found on the Hub under the Customer Service
Toolkit.
Mystery Shopping Exercise 2014
Outcomes
Overall performance has improved or been sustained for three of the four main
contact channels, but dipped for letters due to only ten out of eighteen receiving
a response within the allocated time. Overall performance is summarised in the
table below (2013 results in brackets):
Department
Customer Services
D&I
Community Services
Customer Service Centre
Council Score
Telephone
Email
Letters
Face To Face
85% (76)
89% (83)
94% (79)
88% (88)
88% (62)
66% (84)
13% (88)
83% (81)
86% (51)
79% (76)
61% (73)
91% (87)
87% (90)
82% (66)
N/A
92% (92)
86% (84)
78% (73)
52% (59)
88% (90)
Mystery Shopping Exercise 2014
Telephone
36 telephone calls were attempted to commonly used numbers and 35 were successful. Areas
that scored highly were being courteous and helpful, understanding the customer’s issue and
calls being ended politely. Areas for improvement are:
1. Employees must check they have dealt with all of the customer enquiries before terminating
a call – “is there anything else I can help you with?”
2. Employees should strive to deal with the enquiry there and then where possible without
needlessly passing the caller on.
3. The Effective Call Handling Guide has useful tips on active listening to build a rapport with the
customer; this approach should be used.
Face to Face
17 visits were made to a selection of Customer Service Points and service locations. On no
occasion did anyone have to queue or wait more than three minutes to be seen. Everyone felt
they had been dealt with in a polite and courteous manner and received a polite and sincere
farewell. Areas for improvement are:
1. A new poster will be issued to all locations with details of council contact numbers and
alternative contact channels.
2. Name badges should be worn at all times – only 56% of employees were seen wearing one.
Mystery Shopping Exercise 2014
Emails and Webmails
36 email and web form enquiries were made . Three went unanswered, with an average of 2.5
days to reply (charter standard is ten days). The overall council score improved by 5% (78%)
compared to 2013 but areas for improvement were:
1. As this form of interaction is electronic, employees should send links to web based resources
in their responses where possible, to promote channel shift.
2. All teams that use generic email accounts e.g. earlyyears@ must ensure that they have set up
a rule to issue an auto acknowledgement to customers stating that their email has received
and will be responded to according to the council’s charter standards.
3. Personal email accounts must have a signature set up to include name, job title and service
or department as standard.
Letters
Letters were sent to services - only ten received a response. Those customers that did receive a
response were happy with the content and standard of the reply. Clearly team efforts here must
focus on ensuring white mail receives as high a standard of response as the other contact
channels.
Smoking Policy Update
Smoking policy update
Smoking can cause health issues for smokers and for non-smokers who may be
affected by passive smoking. In addition, the council has to comply with legislation
about smoking in the workplace.
The Smoking in the Workplace Policy has been updated with the new Management
Standard on Smoking at Work. The main change to this is the inclusion of Electronic
Nicotine Delivery Systems – more commonly known as e-cigarettes.
World Health Organisation research shows that using e-cigarettes can pose serious
risks to young people and unborn children, as well as exposing non-smokers to
nicotine and other toxins. Because of this, the Management Standard on Smoking
at Work states that e-cigarettes, as well as standard cigarettes, cannot be used in any
council workplace.
The Management Standard on Smoking at Work is available to read and download
on the Hub.
Changes to pensions
Changes to pensions
From 1st April 2015 there will be changes to the Local Government Pension
Scheme (LGPS) Scotland. This will affect council employees.
The council has already held a number of seminars for staff with more
coming next year.
In the meantime, you can find out about the
changes and lots of other information about
pensions, including how yours is worked out,
here.
Staying healthy at work – the
Healthy Working Lives Group
Staying healthy at work
The Healthy Working Lives group is continuing to work on driving forward our wellbeing
agenda – and their efforts so far netted them a Healthy Working Lives Scotland bronze
award in November. This recognition is about more than an award – it shows that
wellbeing is an increasing priority for the organisation with real results starting to show.
To get the bronze award, an organisation has to demonstrate that:
• Everyone in your organisation is aware of how their health, safety and wellbeing
affects their work.
• Everyone understands the role of health and safety and health improvement and
how they can be supported at work.
• Your organisation ensures that the work undertaken by its employees does not
adversely affect their health and indeed understands how work can protect and
improve their mental, physical and social health.
• As a result of consultation and engagement with employees, your organisation is
aware of and is addressing health, safety and wellbeing issues at work.
Staying healthy at work
Everyone can play a part in maintaining health and wellbeing at work – it’s about the
whole organisation, not just one group. To encourage colleagues to do what they can to
stay as healthy as possible at work, the group has set up a dedicated page on the Hub.
Here, there is lots of information about general good health as well as steps you can take
to improve wellbeing while you’re in the workplace. You can also read the group’s latest
newsletters there.
Visit the Healthy Working Lives page on the Hub and see for yourself!
Don’t risk it – drink drive limits
are now lower than before
Don’t risk it – drink drive limits are now
lower than before
Argyll and Bute Council is supporting the nationwide ‘Don’t Risk It’ campaign to remind
drivers of the new lower drink drive limit and to share advice on how to stay safe on the
roads this festive period.
Scotland’s drink drive limit has been lowered from 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood to
50mg.
One death as a result of drink driving is one death too many. A lower drink drive limit
should help to reduce the number of deaths on our roads.
The advice when it comes to drinking and driving continues to be that the best approach
is not to drink any alcohol at all before getting behind the wheel.
Find out more by visiting the Road Safety Scotland Facebook page, visiting
www.dontriskit.info or following @RoadSafetyScot on Twitter.
The inside story –
keeping up to date with news
from Argyll and Bute Council
Keeping up to date with council news
Want to keep up to date with what is happening at Argyll and Bute Council? Why
not sign up now for our weekly newsletter?
Issued by email every Friday, the newsletter brings you information about recent
council news with links for further details, and other information on different
services available.
Registering is simple and will take only a few minutes. All you have to do is provide
a valid email address to receive the newsletter.
Go to www.argyll-bute.gov.uk and click on the Login/Register for Services link at
the top right corner. From there you will be invited to create a new account and
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If you have any suggestions for information you would like to read
about in the newsletter, please contact the Communications Team
on 01546 604171 or email [email protected]
Award-winning council – more
recognition for our teams and
services
Award-winning council
Two more Argyll and Bute Council teams have won national awards in the last
month, reinforcing our status as an award-winning council.
Our work on bringing empty properties back to life as affordable homes has been
named Outstanding Project and won the Scottish Empty Homes Champion of the
Year. This follows the team’s silver success at the IRRV awards, featured in
October’s Cascade.
The Campbeltown Townscape Heritage Initiative
received an award for Best Before and After Photo
after providing grant funding to bring a tenement
on the Buildings at Risk Register back into use.
Both awards were presented to the council at
Shelter Scotland’s annual conference, which
highlights best practice and experiences of
bringing empty homes back into use.
Well done to everyone concerned!
Above: Kelly Ferns and Moira MacVicar of the Empty Homes Project receive their
Outstanding Project award.
Employee surveys –
you told us, we listened;
what happens next
Employee surveys – next steps
Over the past year we have asked you to take part in a number of staff
surveys. Thank you for taking the time to do this – your feedback is very
important. As the council continues to improve and innovate, your views
help us to shape what we do and how we do it – and, importantly, they
help us to provide you with the right support you need as you do your
invaluable work delivering services for the people of Argyll and Bute.
We’ve listened to what you’ve told us, sought further information through
employee focus groups and are using all of this to put together an employee
action plan. There will be more information about this in future editions of
Cascade and also on the Hub.
Thank you again for taking the time to take part – it is much
appreciated and will help to make a difference.
Got something for Cascade?
Cascade is normally issued to managers first and is published on the Hub one
week later. It is usually published on a four to six-weekly basis. Managers are
encouraged to share the information in Cascade with their teams – thank you.
If you have anything for future issues of Cascade please send it to the
communications team at:
[email protected]
or contact the Communications Team on 01546 604171. Cascade depends on
your contributions, and we’re happy to help with layout, content and
presentation if you wish.
If you have anything you’d like included in the next issue, please send it by
Friday 16th January 2015. We can help with formatting and creating slides –
don’t hesitate to call if you would like some assistance with this or any other
communications
issue.