Dearden’s work in completely turning round the performance of one NHS foundation trust has seen it rewarded with this prestigious prize. We look at its achievements and those of the runners-up in this tight, high quality category.
WINNER
Dearden HR
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust was rated ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission and placed into special measures for a second time in 2017, being rated as the worst performing mental health trust in the country.
Quality of care, extremely low staff engagement and high vacancies were all issues at the Trust. Dearden HR was asked to lead the HR function, developing business partnering and support to clinical services while re-orientating the culture from blame and criticism to kindness, compassion and learning. Dearden worked with the Trust to radically change its approach to employee relations.
As a result, the organisation is no longer rated ‘inadequate’ by regulators, with some services rated ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’. The Trust has seen confidence among commissioners and wider stakeholders radically improve, while external inspectors recognise significant progress.
The Trust now has the lowest number of vacancies in years, at 5.8%: 3% below the average for similar Trusts. Medical staff vacancies have fallen from 25% to under 12% over the past year and 320 more staff are employed than 12 months ago, the majority doctors and nurses.
Dearden HR is now reviewing the Trust’s approach to bullying and harassment, grievance and managing change and has improved its internal mediation capacity. The team is applying the approach of psychological safety to everything the Trust does, particularly focusing on how it manages adverse patient incidents in an entirely different way. Trust staff now believe that things can improve through hard work and partnership working.
RUNNERS-UP
CitrusHR Consulting, formerly Reabur
CitrusHR Consulting was formed in 2010 by Georgina Read and Kirsty Senior – two university friends who wanted to break free from the 9-5 corporate lifestyle and deliver creative HR solutions to small businesses. The consultancy has grown organically and steadily year-on-year. Its staff work part-time and flexible working is proving to be the core of the business models success. The consultancy has developed an exceptional reputation among its clients and wider network who frequently refer other businesses to them as a result, and their staff are engaged, motivated and loyal.
Over the past few months the team have been busy supporting clients to implement hybrid working models. It has ensured its clients are competitive in the recruitment market as focus is placed on sustaining work-life balance and reducing stress. The consultancy has also expanded in the agricultural industry where HR advice historically hasn’t been seen as integral to business operations. Now through reputation and word of mouth CitrusHR Consulting has proven invaluable in putting in legal processes and educating farming families in maximising opportunities through employment processes across arable and dairy farming.CitrusHR Consulting has a key client base of more than 40 small-medium sized business in the South-West covering Bristol, Bath and Gloucestershire and a few based in London.
The team works with small businesses dealing with high pressure and often very sensitive and confidential issues, from gross misconduct dismissals to complex ill health challenges. Last year was particularly challenging for the team, on both a personal and work level. Every team member executed the continuous high standard of work that the consultancy strives for, all while juggling family life.
Copacetic Business Solutions
Copacetic Business Solutions is a successful HR and employment law company employing five staff and three external consultants. It has diversified its product offering health & safety and created new roles where others were being lost. In
doing so, it added over 25 businesses to its client base this year. During the first lockdown, it worked hard to alleviate the pressure on clients by assisting them with issues like transitioning to home working and furlough applications. During the day consultants would advise clients on Covid HR issues, and at night spend hours studying the latest government advice.
Copacetic researched the latest financial information and areas above and beyond the normal operations of its business because it was determined to do all it could to alleviate stress from clients and ensure the long-term sustainability of their businesses. Realising small businesses and the self-employed were struggling to understand the constantly changing advice, Copacetic put together a series of explainer e-books and developed media relationships to make these free and accessible to the public.
Consultants were innovative in their approach and utilised blogs, Mailchimp newsletters, social media and videos to
provide information and complement their services. Engaging with stakeholders allowed for strategic planning to implement the workforce planning and the implementation of the government initiatives. Different industries faced different challenges; for example, those who were deemed non-essential and not permitted to operate and those who were essential. Equally, if they were essential it varied from the haulage industry to the mushroom farmers. The outcome was to ensure that businesses survived, employment positions were maintained or protected where practically possible and employment relations was maintained; these were the three key objectives.
McCann Synergy
McCann Synergy combines behavioural science, HR expertise and creativity to achieve measurable results that shift the behaviour of entire organisations, making the C-Suite sit up and listen.
Working with Arqiva, McCann Synergy supported 40 new leaders to unite, learn new skills, and turn positive behaviours into long-term habits. At Experian it helped the firm’s 17,000 colleagues celebrate diversity and inclusion, with a brand new global celebration of achievements report. And with Ion, McCann Synergy developed a global wellbeing proposition and equipped colleagues in 120 countries with the narrative, tools and support to bring it to life inside and outside the organisation.
At Arqiva McCann Synergy worked closely with the ExCo team to devise a programme of creative face-to-face and virtual workshops, using a whole range of training tools, techniques and interactive activities. It wanted to create measurable behaviour change, so the workshops were spaced out over nine months to give the leaders time to reflect, learn the skills and put them into practice. By the end of the programme, Arqiva had a more collaborative, inclusive and credible leadership team, ready to drive forward the business strategy.
At Experian, McCann Synergy successfully developed a single D&I template that each of the firm’s five regions would complete and then turn the resulting information into a single eye-catching, easy-to-read global report that could be accessed by all colleagues as well being promoted externally.
Rainbow HR
Rainbow HR was set up by Fiona Irvine in 2009 having built up a strong reputation for designing high quality HR solutions which drive commercial success. In 2018 Fiona was engaged by Porterbrook to support a cultural change programme. Porterbrook is a rolling stock asset management company that has over 4,000 vehicles on lease to the train operating companies across the UK and has 159 employees. The business has undergone a transformational change in the last three years, following the appointment of a new chief executive officer in September 2017. The HR function has been central to the change.
When the CEO joined the organisation the business had no clear business strategy nor did it have the skill sets to move the business forward. There was no vision, mission and values statement and the organisation did not have a high-profile reputation within the rail industry.
The past few years have seen Porterbrook enter a new phase of growth and evolution as a business which combines the legacy of 25 years of expertise in the UK railway alongside a new vision to meet the needs of a changing rail industry
landscape. There has been further investment in the HR team with the appointment of an HR manager and recruitment and talent manager. The HR strategy put in place has helped deliver positive results including strong female representation at 33% (against an industry average of 16%), significant investment in people with headcount increasing from 111 in 2017 to 159 at the end of January 2021, the delivery of a significant change programme with the business retaining 93% of
staff (2020) and 96% of staff agreeing that Porterbrook is a great place to work (2020).
Starford Legal HR
Starford is a Legal HR consultancy business offering operational strategy, project management and people-related consultancy, always supported with legal expertise. It does not create dependency, aiming to empower clients by giving them the tools to flourish.
It pairs each of its consultants with an employment law solicitor to ensure that all operational strategy and people-related consultancy is complemented with a solid legal foundation, offering clients a complete HR solution. Consultants become embedded with clients’ teams from the start.
Starford Legal HR says its reputation for excellent advice provided in a pragmatic way has resulted in it attracting national clients such as RSPCA, Arora Hotels, the Lawn Tennis Association, Brasserie Bar Co and the National Portrait Gallery.
The firm displayed strong agility to clients when furlough was introduced by attending their senior leadership meetings to talk through the unprecedented issues they were facing and help provide strategic solutions.
An affordable pricing structure allows the firm to support clients when complex issues have been raised that would otherwise take up too much internal resource. This was invaluable to those clients facing financial uncertainty during the height of the pandemic.
One client, the Caravan and Motorhome Club, asked Starford to help it reorganise their staffing structure across their sites to devolve responsibility from the centre and ensure greater consistency of people management. Starford provided a project manager to lead a client project team to carry out a pilot and then full estate roll-out of the proposed solution. It worked closely with the internal HR team to develop new roles and job descriptions for the sites and to give site managers more devolved responsibility for people management. The newly streamlined working practices resulted in reduced costs of training for the business and provided more consistent performance from staff, thus driving greater consistency for customers.
The TCM Group
The TCM Group is an HR transformation consultancy working with its customers to develop people-centred management practices, empowering HR processes and fair and just cultures. For a long time now, it has been calling out the fact that the traditional HR policy framework is a direct driver of stress, harm, fear and dysfunction in the workplace. TCM is vocal in its view that there is a need to completely redefine resolution and move towards a more informal, resolution-first approach, centred around dialogue, mediation and facilitated conversations.
TCM Group works with clients including hospitals, banks, insurance firms, universities and councils to help them shift from grievance to resolution and to develop the fair and just cultures they need to succeed. Its work has become particularly pressing in the current environment. In a recent TCM survey, 60% of respondents said Covid-19 had made it harder to resolve issues of conflict at work.
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Over the past year, TCM’s work with its growing client base has developed in several ways including the launch of: a Resolution Framework, a fully legally compliant alternative to the traditional disciplinary; and Engage Leadership, a unique range of leadership and management development programmes designed to help managers build and sustain a high performance, values-based and person-centred culture.
The business prides itself on forming close partnerships with clients – such as TSB, AB Vista, Pret A Manger, and London Ambulance Service – working with them at all stages of a project, from initial inception, internal influencing, policy development and communication, through to implementation.
