The 20th CIPD People Management awards were the biggest ever. Find out what made your 2016 champions top of the class – and what happened to those who took past trophies home
It all began with a pile of bricks. In 1996, the inaugural CIPD People Management Awards crowned Redland Brick the overall winner of HR’s most prestigious prize. In the two decades since, the trophy has been clutched by everyone from Bupa Care Homes and Merseyside Police to Heathrow Express and BMW.
What they’ve all had in common is a dedication to outstanding HR practice, and the ability to make a real difference in their organisations. The 2016 champion continues this fine tradition – and then some. People Management meets some of this year’s winners in their workplaces once the glitz of a black-tie event at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel has faded, to hear more about the challenges they faced and the innovations they put in place. Plus, we visit winners from the past to find out what happened next.
OVERALL WINNER: Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust
Our 2016 overall winner’s exemplary HR practice has been the difference between life and death
Deep inside the labyrinthine halls of the admin wing of Frimley Park hospital in Surrey, Janet King’s office is a corner of calm in an HR department that lives its mantra of making things happen. Candidates queue to be interviewed; doctors drop in with queries; HR professionals scurry into meetings. It’s exhausting just to watch. But one thing’s for sure: it’s working.
The Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust’s HR team won the employee engagement category at this year’s CIPD People Management Awards, and the prestigious overall prize, for a turnaround story that is not just inspiring – it is literally life-saving. In taking a failing NHS trust some feared was a scandal-in-waiting from the bottom to the top quartile of patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes, in just two years, the Frimley story represents a high watermark of what targeted HR interventions can achieve. Little wonder the judges felt it held “ideas that should be extended across the health service.”
In early 2014, regulators and NHS leaders began to fear Wexham Park hospital in Slough needed drastic reform. Rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), it was “a poorly performing organisation on just about every indicator you could think of, from staff to patient outcomes”, says King (pictured above, centre). As director of HR and corporate services at the outstandingly rated Frimley Park NHS Trust, 20 miles away, she was well aware of Wexham’s reputation. A takeover by Frimley was deemed the only way to prevent the trust going into meltdown.
“We agreed to do it, but not at any price,” says King. “We got a good deal from the Department of Health. But you have to work through problems, as well as throw money at them.”
The indicators were bad enough: only 40 per cent of Wexham’s staff would recommend it as a place to work, and the CQC had issued 20 ‘breach notices’ in two years for serious failings. But as King and her team oversaw structured interviews across the organisation, and dived into HR data, other problems began to emerge. There were 400 nursing vacancies and a 23 per cent turnover among nurses, with 38 grievances awaiting resolution. The grievance process itself had been outsourced, as had many aspects of HR; most top managers were interims. “It got to the stage where I thought I wouldn’t even bother to learn the name of the next HR director because they’d only be there five minutes,” says King.
Levels of trust between employees and management was gossamer thin: the annual staff Christmas dinner has been cancelled, for example, even though employees paid for it themselves. Leadership, King soon realised, was the underlying issue: “There was no vision, no clarity about what the organisation was there for. When our chief executive got up on stage and talked about strategic direction and the clinical investments we were going to make, the consultants gave him a round of applause because the only thing they’d been talked to about previously was the need to save money.”
As functions across the two organisations began to harmonise and the ‘Frimley way’ was introduced into Wexham’s operations (alongside a complex TUPE process), the HR team started defining new values with staff and considering the behaviours that would follow. King emphasises that the “vast majority” of staff remained in place but new leaders were clearly required, and having clinicians at senior levels was non-negotiable. From there, change would cascade to managers: “We knew policies meant nothing on their own. We had to do a training programme with the managers, and that was a chance to eyeball them, and tell them how we were going to work.”
A “solid and robust” customer care programme was imported from Frimley, and every member of staff learned a new way to deal with patients. HR, too, was restructured. Complaints were brought back in-house and a dedicated team led by a new head of resourcing introduced an ethos of “recruiting every day”.
But Wexham also had a retention issue: “Nearly all the nurses recruited from Spain and Portugal had left. They did brilliant inductions and training, but if the nurse manager doesn’t understand it’s alien for you to be in a new country, you’re not being nurtured.”
King took responsibility for exiting a handful of the more “difficult” doctors, while encouraging others into leadership roles. HR also had to be seen, she says: “It’s so easy and quick to email. But because I didn’t know people, I promised I would go and see them. That surprised people, but it showed I was there to support them.” And the personal touch had to be backed by tough conversations. “You have to be a bit like a supertanker – ‘I’m coming in and I’m going to sort this stuff out.’”
There were, says King, a couple of key moments where the change became wonderfully, and visibly, apparent. The first was when people began stopping her in the corridors to chat: “That was a mark of success, because I had been seen as the enemy.”
The second was the arrival of positive metrics; first, through ‘friends and family’ tests that showed patients were recommending the hospital. Soon, staff engagement and patient satisfaction were in the top 20 per cent across the NHS and 89 per cent of employees said they supported the trust’s values. In 2016, the CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals called Wexham “undoubtedly the most impressive example of improvement” he had seen.
The hard work, of course, is far from done. There are still 200 nursing vacancies, and until those can be tackled King admits she cannot rest easy. But what has been achieved will set the trust on a steadfast footing for the future – no matter what it brings. “Sometimes you have to make some fairly wicked choices,” says King. “But nobody has the luxury of never having to make tough decisions about things. And it is a privilege to be part of this.”
Best coaching and mentoring initiative: Housing Diversity Network
“Our mentoring programme is going beyond improving diversity – it’s nurturing talent”
When the Housing Diversity Network (HDN) was set up in 2002, there was a clear need for a better pipeline for minorities into leadership positions in the housing sector. It lacked black and ethnic minority (BAME) staff, as well as women in senior roles.
HDN’s mentoring scheme has been working to plug this talent gap for more than a decade. It is free to members across the sector and runs annually between September and July, comprising one-on-one meetings, group workshops and events.
The first cohort was made up of just 50 mentors and mentees, but this has grown to more than 230. “It brings people together – the people responsible for diversity in a housing organisation might be working alone, so it enables them to network with each other and benchmark what they’re doing,” says mentoring manager Kam Urwin.
The mentoring team handpicks mentors (who give up their time for free) and mentees in just a few weeks between receiving the applications and the start of the programme – a feat in itself. “It’s a challenge to ensure it’s resourced properly – every year, some mentors will retire or need a break from the programme, or may have been made redundant. But our members tend to go out of their way to find someone,” says Urwin.
The programme has led to better career opportunities for the minorities it supports: 15 per cent of the last cohort were promoted during the time they were involved in the programme, while 80 per cent of attendees so far have been women and 25 per cent had a BAME background. But HDN’s ambitions don’t stop there, says Urwin. “It’s about more than just increasing diversity now – it’s about nurturing talent.”
Best learning and development initiative: Superdrug
“Telling staff to smile at customers wasn’t enough” beyond improving diversity – it’s nurturing talent”
High street brand Superdrug, part of the AS Watson retail group, wanted to make its customer service stand out. But Jo Mackie, the chain’s customer and people director, was frustrated with the L&D programmes on offer. “Typical customer service training would tell people to adapt their body language and smile – I felt we needed something more,” she says. There was also a clear business need to adapt its approach after research revealed that 35 per cent of complaints could have been resolved through better staff training.
The result was a solution called ‘That Superdrug Feeling’, a combination of video, online and face-to-face learning that immersed employees in an interactive customer experience. Some of the videos were filmed in the style of popular TV show Gogglebox, featuring ‘viewers’ in conversation about a customer experience they were watching on TV. The idea was that employees could relate this back to the experience customers would get at Superdrug, and interactive text and questionnaires built into the videos reinforced the key messages.
The results have been impressive: the retailer enjoyed 73 weeks of consecutive sales growth after the initiative was launched, and customer complaints have dropped by 9.2 per cent. Mackie says the L&D programme has been so successful because it focuses on “a whole mindset, not just one element of the customer experience”, and it will be refreshed at regular intervals.
Best health and wellbeing initiative: Reed Business Information
“I’m proud our wellness enthusiasts made this a huge success”
Implementing a health and wellness scheme that engages high numbers of staff is no mean feat – especially when the workforce includes hard-nosed journalists, analysts and consultants in 50 offices, across six continents. Yet that’s exactly what Reed Business Information (RBI) achieved with its five-pillared ‘Living Well’ initiative.
Catalysts for the programme included high levels of pressure on staff, and uncertainty resulting from a significant transformation that included selling 50 per cent of the business.
Senior HR business partner Tricia Wrinch says it was the range of wellbeing options introduced – such as mindfulness courses, healthy eating competitions and new working environments including standing desks – that meant the programme was met with little, if any, resistance from employees.
“Engagement levels far exceeded expectations,” she says. “Already, 2,000 people have participated. While we have our fair share of analytical, inquisitive and cynical people, we started with understanding individual needs and interests, and then designed programmes that addressed those needs.”
The voluntary nature of Living Well was also important, says Wrinch. “You can’t realistically force everyone to take an interest. It’s up to us as individuals to take responsibility and participate, or take no notice.”
Since Living Well’s introduction, staff satisfaction is up 10 per cent, and sickness absence is down 40 per cent. The secret to the programme’s success is that it’s not an “HR-driven, top-down initiative”, says Wrinch. “Our success is down to the large numbers of wellness enthusiasts who gave up their time to make something happen. They’ve taken a big idea and turned it from a concept into a reality. That’s something I’m really proud of.”
Best change management initiative: Gatwick Airport
“Change came easily because it was driven by employees – not management”
A five-year change management initiative flew Gatwick Airport to success after rapid growth and a need for tightened security prompted HR to lead the transformation of work practices at the airport’s south terminal, with the dual goal of improving employees’ experiences at work and Gatwick’s passenger capacity.
Analysis of staff sickness rates and wellbeing levels, and of the airport’s passenger performance, identified key areas for improvement: introducing new equipment so passengers could be processed faster, re-establishing clear leadership structures and creating a cultural change in the security team.
“Juggling the team’s availability, so we could familiarise and train them in the new ways of working – while keeping our passenger numbers up – was probably the most challenging aspect,” says Mandy Hopper, head of HR services. “We had to be very responsive.”
Gatwick invested heavily in leadership and management training to create a more open culture of communication between managers and team members, particularly around wellbeing and sickness absence. Employees at every level were encouraged to come forward with their ideas for improving service.
“Small ideas are the key to real change in configuring a workforce, and these came from employees – not fancy ergonomics specialists,” Hopper says. “Our employees provided solutions that management could never have come up with. The change curve came easily because it was driven by colleagues who were proud of their ideas, not management.”
The new leadership structure has improved career opportunities, with 191 employees moving into new positions. Employee wellbeing has improved, too, and the airport can now process 600 people through security an hour – believed to be the best in the world. It’s good news all round, but Hopper and her team aren’t resting on their laurels: “There is always a plan for what we can do better.”
Past winners: where are they now?
Click here to see the class of 2016