Friday 19 April 2013

Welcome back everybody after the Easter Break.


It’s straight back into action on the run in to the local government elections on May 2nd. Elections will be held in 27 counties, 6 unitaries and one or two other places and for election junkies like me it will be a fascinating process and exciting to see the results. In Wiltshire, we have just over 300 candidates fighting elections in 92 divisions across the county. Six divisions are uncontested and the single candidates standing have been appointed already. This is not particularly democratic, and as Returning Officer I will be exploring with the new members ways in which we can encourage better democratic participation in some areas.

On Wednesday I joined the Development Services team for their event in Devizes. The whole team gets together three or four times per year to review their service transformation progress, look at their staff survey results and share information about the changes going on in the service. It is always a lively event with about 120 people attending. The presentations were excellent and the question and answer sessions were lively and enlightening. I encourage other services to take part in these types of event – you can never over communicate, and everybody needs to know what is happening and have the chance to ask their questions.

Next week I am attending the Associate of County Chief Executives spring conference. We will be exploring economic growth, and how county councils can drive forward the growth agenda across the country, completing some work on troubled families and looking at transport infrastructure and how we ensure we and the Local Enterprise Partnerships can deliver what our communities need. It is always good to catch up with colleagues and share experiences and learning from the common challenges we face.

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a couple of weeks.

Carlton

Friday 28 March 2013

The 2013 unitary and parish elections are in full swing now. We’re in the middle of the nomination process – accepting nomination forms from potential candidates for May 2nd. There could be over 2,000 candidates contesting over 400 election – the second largest elections in the UK, so it’s a very big challenge for the team. All going well so far but as Returning Officer it’s a little unnerving!


I have just been interviewed by Mark O’Donnell on BBC radio about how we as an employer encourage people with disabilities into the work place. This is a very important issue for me because we need to attract and retain the very best people in the organisation. With 17% of the population having a disability, we need to reach out and ensure we recruit from this large pool of talent. At present only 2.3% of our staff declare themselves as having a disability so we have some work to do.

Earlier this week we had another in a series of staff engagement events at Monkton park aimed at explaining the changes that we plan to refurbish the building between May and December this year. This will affect the 300 staff based there and a further 200 who will be moving in. Key highlights are; desk to staff ratio of 1:2, paper-less office space, flexible meeting space, hot desking and flexible IT enabling staff to work anywhere – especially out in our communities with our customers and clients. This is all about improving service performance and dramatically reducing the costs to the business of the many buildings we have. I am also pleased that we will share the building with our police partners – enabling us to join up our services with them.

Finally I wish you all a happy Easter holiday – if you’re staying at home or going away, stay safe, relax and have fun. Don’t eat too much chocolate either (40Ibs lost so far...).

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a couple of weeks.


Carlton

Friday 15 March 2013

This week I have had the pleasure of attending not one but two award ceremonies – the first was for all of our staff who were nominated for awards for 2012 and the second was the health and wellbeing awards for Wiltshire, celebrating the efforts and achievements of staff, partners and community groups from across the county. Both were a humbling experience and served to remind me what dedicated and talented people we have in the organisation and across our county. The future is bright when you see such talent recognised.

The personal challenge I have had this week with the two ceremonies is avoiding the extra food on offer. I’ve now lost 32Ibs and counting...

All of the staff nominated for awards were winners in my opinion, but I was particularly pleased to see the Development Services team win the innovation & Transformation award. It has been a long hard journey for the team of 160 and it’s not over yet.

For a full list of nominees and winners please see the link below:

http://thewire.wiltshire.council/index/corporate-awards-2012/corporate-awards-2012-winners.htm

Speaking of innovation and transformation, I have this week been interviewed by The Guardian Public Leaders Network Zone for a piece on systems thinking and how it joins up with the wider transformation programme including buildings, new technology and most importantly leadership and management of people. You can read the interview here, and I would appreciate any feedback:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/vodafone-partner-zone/interactive/wiltshire-s-lean-thinking-transforms-service

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.



Carlton

Thursday 7 March

I have mixed feelings this morning; England were hammered on Day 2 of the first test against New Zealand which doesn’t bode well for the Ashes later this year, but I have now lost just over 2 stone in 7 weeks which is good. Three more to go, and I must buy a suit that fits for the staff awards next Tuesday. Speaking of which I’m really looking forward to seeing many of you in the new Atrium at County Hall to celebrate the achievements of so many colleagues over the past year. Reading the nominations was an inspiring and humbling experience.


Over the last week or so I have attended four staff engagement sessions that Maggie Rae organised for Community Services; Salisbury, Chippenham, Devizes and Trowbridge. Over five hundred staff attended and it was good to speak with the team and hear their ideas for improvement and innovation over the next few years. I always worry that as a team – all 5,000 of us – we will run out of ideas of how to improve services for our communities, clients and customers. I needn’t have worried, and I was so impressed with the enthusiasm and commitment to doing things differently in the future.

Tomorrow, Maggie, Carolyn and I are spending a full day together to work on the draft of the new Business Plan. When the new members are elected in May, we want to have an analysis of the current situation the country and county are in together with a series of options for members to pursue to deliver their policies, priorities, ideas, and manifestos. This is exciting and really gets the creative juices flowing. More on progress in future blogs.

This morning I am meeting with the CEO of the Police & Crime Commissioners Office to explore ways in which we can support each other to enable delivery of the Police and Crime Plan, and to ensure the Police and Crime Panel – a type of scrutiny function that many of our elected members sit on – works well. I’m then being filmed for a short video on mentoring young people, something that I enjoy a lot. Not sure about being filmed though!

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.


Carlton

Friday 22 February 2013

I wanted to share with you some of the detailed messages from the staff survey that we conducted in October last year. The results are now analysed and published today. Details for each service will be shared over the coming weeks so that we can understand and target our actions to specific areas. I’m pleased to say that 60% of you took part in the 2012 survey – up from 55% in 2011. We have improved our results in all ten sections of the survey this year and our philosophy of continuous improvement across the business is starting to show, something I’m very proud of. Specific improvements are:


Change up 32%

Your role up 4%

Wellbeing & safety up 12%

Reward & recognition up 4%

Communication up 12%

Management & leadership up 10%

Learning & development up 8%

Employee engagement up 19%

Team work up 1%

Customers up 1%


The staff survey was designed using many of the same questions as in previous years so that we could compare results year to year. Employee engagement – a key measure of how engaged our staff are in our business and its objectives – is up by 19% this year. This is a tremendous result. Overall, you are telling us that we need to focus on the following four priorities during 2013:


1. Wiltshire Council employees need to receive more consistent and regular information and, in particular, clarity is needed on why changes are being made by our leadership team.

2. Communication needs to be open and honest in order to give staff confidence in our leaders.

3. The council needs to further develop a culture where respect and recognition is embedded.

4. Wiltshire needs to ensure that it is committed to customer satisfaction and that all our staff are part of this.

As Priorities 1 and 3 were highlighted in the 2011 survey, they remain vital to improving employee engagement. We will prioritise these and redouble our efforts to excel in these important areas. Priority 4, for me is the most important. It’s the very essence of this organisation and why we do what we do for our customers, clients and communities. We need to redouble our efforts to understand what our customers and communities want from us and then to design our systems and services to deliver these reliably and robustly.

I would welcome any feedback on these results personally so please get in touch with your views, observations and comments.

For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.


Carlton