Friday 16 October 2009

Today I had the pleasure of selecting the two winners of the competition that we ran at the recent Team Days. I can confirm that this was conducted "blind", fair, legal and all above board. The winners were:
Gemma Davies, DCS Central Finance Services - from the morning session

Ruth Long, Customer Care - from the afternoon session

Gemma and Ruth both correctly identified all of the words. Both came rushing in to collect their prizes today so I was able to congratulate them both personally. Well done to both of you.

At the recent DOR managers meeting, we identified that not all managers are currently recording staff absence in SAP Manager Self Service (MSS). It is vital that managers monitor and react to patterns of absence, and also that the organisation records staff absence in the system. If I could just remind us all to do this please. If anybody is unsure how to do this - and this is okay - then please contact the Shared Services Team who will be able to help.

On Wednesday, the service directors and I held a planning day where we considered a number of issues relating the wider Resources team and the organisation in general. We looked at the corporate priorities and objectives to be delivered over the next 4 years, the likely impact of the financial situation in the country and how this may impact us and our objectives. We discussed organisational culture and how this may affect our ability to deliver the ambitions of elected members. We also identified ways where we could potentially exploit the current challenges to the benefit of our customers. It was a very lively session with lots of great ideas for moving forward. We will develop these over the next few weeks and share them with you during the autumn.

Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend and talk again next week.

Carlton