Enabling Environment
It is vital that individual employees have the tools they need to deliver services to the public in the most effective way possible. To do this, each individual needs to have the right tools for the job. 'Tools' covers everything the employee needs to do their job, whether that is a high-spec computer capable of analysing national statistics to the mundane necessity of having anti-bacterial soap in every room in a hospital. There also need to be systems and processes in place that help, not hinder, the deliver of public services, from both the employee and the client point of view.
Like Tangible Rewards, providing a more Enabling Environment may not necessarily motivate employees to perform better. However, improvements in this area will enable your employees to deliver a higher standard of service.
See the elements of Enabling Environment, and their definitions.
Actions
Use the results from your Senior Management Team workshop, Focus Groups and/or Diagnostic to determine if this is a key area in your organisation. If so:
Assess:
- Is the working environment pleasant? If no, which employees/groups does this affect? What, if anything can be done to improve this?
- Do employees have the tools they need to do the job? Do they work consistently?
- Does the organisation provide sufficient induction and training for employees to perform their role?
- Does the IT work effectively and consistently? Most organisations have a growing dependance on computers, and an hour of unscheduled network failure results in many lost person-hours of work, and a lot of associated stress.
- Are there efficient processes to help people get the job done without overburdening them with bureaucracy?
- What health and safety hazards are individuals exposed to during their working day, and getting to and from work? What can be done to reduce these risks?
- Which of these issues can be changed by the organisation, and which are dictated by government? If there is no flexibility to change something, this needs to be communicated to employees to ensure they understand that you are attempting to act on their feedback.
Again, you will need to work with colleagues both within HR and in other departments to improve some of these areas.
Benchmark
External benchmarking (pdf, 25Kb) of non-financial awards may help you gather the evidence you need to support recommendations for change.
Consider
- Improving the physical work environment. Surveys tell us this does have a positive effect on employees, so consider the case for a more modern colourscheme or more comfortable chairs. This is as important for 'employee-only' areas as it is for areas seen by the public.
- Improving the tools and equipment for the job, whether this is offering faster or more reliable computing power or good-quality protective clothing (this doesn't have to cost more - since starting to provide leather shoes to delivery workers, Royal Mail have made leaps in service delivery and stopped losing money).
- Asking employees what training and development would maintain and improve their performance - as well as technical training, this could include time management or team motivation. Slough Council (and many call centres) offer training in emotional intelligence to help employees deal more sucessfully with angry or upset customers.
- Reviewing information or work processes that interfere with getting the job done. As an example, some GP surgeries now offer computerised, multi-lingual check-in facilities, freeing up the receptionists to make appointments, answer calls and deal with more complex enquiries.
- Review health and safety policies periodically, including transport policies for employees working late in unsafe locations.
Further Resources
Back to Review of Progress
