Friday 20 January 2012

I feel it’s been a good week this week – if somewhat busy. Good except for the cricket of course. I’m waiting for a call up for the second test (in my dreams).

We held the first staff forum yesterday and it was good to talk with so many staff – 750 by the end of the day. There were some tough, challenging questions which I always like to hear as it shows deep thinking about the issues we face collectively. I always feel this is a good sign! The behaviours framework was well received and colleagues were keen to understand how we will implement it and ultimately ensure staff and managers aspire to meeting it. We will try and role model those behaviours and we expect others to do so too. I’m sure we won’t always get it right and we will need your help to identify when this is the case. In the next month or so our revised appraisal process, aligned to our new values and behaviours will be shared with us all and ready to use. I’m looking forward to the staff sessions in Melksham and Salisbury next week so if you’re not booked to attend please do so quickly. It will be good to see you.

Some information hot of the press. Our customer satisfaction has risen by 17% in the last survey to 56%. This is the percentage of Wiltshire residents who rate themselves as completely or very satisfied with us. This is great news and demonstrates that what we are doing, and how we are doing it is having a real impact on communities and individuals. There is no room for complacency though, as we can always be better but it’s great feedback which we can learn so much from. I’ll share more details behind this headline figure in future blogs.

I attended Scrutiny Committee as I always do earlier in the week. We had some good discussion around the new leadership mode (lots of member support) and our budget position in year for 2011-12 amongst other things. I was delighted that one of the members raised the issue of staff work load and some of the long hours being worked. All other members recognised this issue too and discussed their concern over staff welfare and the need to focus on this. I was able to confirm that we do just that but I was pleased that the issue was raised and recognised. We need to take this issue very seriously and where we see work-life balance issues becoming unbalanced, we must address them quickly.

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Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again next week.

Carlton