How can we empower staff?
Dog Warden example
Simon Harwood is the manager responsible for the Bath and North East
Somerset Council Dog Warden scheme. He believes empowering front-line staff
is the key to customer service excellence, Dog Warden Dennis Oakman has
achieved for the service. He says: 'The whole essence of the way I
manage and the culture I encourage is to do with enabling and empowering
staff at very front line levels. It is much more likely that they know
what's needed. because they are at the sharp end. They have got to feel
comfortable discussing things with me and knowing that we will be
responsive to good ideas. I very much rely on people coming to me with
initiatives and that is brought out in their performance appraisal. We
don't use those to say, 'you are not doing this or that
properly', but very much to listen to staff ideas and to design plans
for new initiatives to keep improving the service.'
Dog Warden Dennis Oakman has control over his own budget, and says this has
given him the freedom to react when an opportunity to develop the service
arises. One example of this is the way the service actively promoted a
scheme to microchip dogs at cost. Dennis made an initial outlay of £1,000
to offer the service free to the first 50 dog owners to sign up, resulting
in plenty of positive media coverage. He says: 'The response to the
scheme was so great that by the time we had finished, we broke even, and we
had successfully micro chipped hundreds of dogs.'
Want to know more? Contact: Dennis Oakman
Tel. 01225 477555, Email: dennis_oakman@bathnes.gov.uk
