Friday 22 January 2010

Now the snow has gone, our Highways Team have the challenge of fixing the numerous pot holes and other road defects that occur when water gets into the surface of the road and freezes - breaking open the road. There is a lot of poor press, both national and local at the moment with the condition of the UK roads. In Wiltshire, our four depots have filled at least 1,800 potholes in the last three days. This is a tremendous performance, and truly customer focused as we seek to address the issues caused by the bad weather. The Highways Team have been conducting a Systems Thinking or Lean review of this part of the service over the past year. The service has been redesigned against customer purpose and customer demand which has led to the elimination of waste and this incredible performance. Well done and thank you to the whole team!

As an organisation, we need to expand this approach to performance improvement and quickly move on with all services adopting a similar approach. It works very well, results in delighted customers and better performance and most importantly will deliver the cultural shift that we all want in our new organisation.

I met with around 50 staff from planning earlier this week to explain some of the detail around the Harmonisation Programme; that is the harmonisation of staff terms and conditions. It's always good to meet large groups of staff and hear the questions they have direct. I just want to reiterate that every member of staff will be having the opportunity to meet with their manager face to face, in their teams before February 10 to go through the details of this important work. If you don't know when your session is, please ask your managers quickly.

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

Carlton