Government Department for Children’s Services: Deploying OpEx to Address Capacity and Performance Issues

A Government Department For Children’s Services’ leadership team recognised that the current systems, practices and processes needed improvement. Recent changes had added further complexity, and capacity was becoming an issue for the organisation. To address these issues, the leadership team enlisted the help Reinvigoration, an Expert Operations Consulting Team. 

Reinvigoration helped deploy Operational Excellence ways of working within the organisation and coached colleagues to apply these techniques to address variation in performance as well as capacity issues. This case study highlights the positive impact such a programme can have on an organisation. 

Client Overview

This local government Children’s Services Department provides a variety of services to children and families to help keep children safe and protect them from harm. 

The Challenge

The local government Children’s Services Department leadership team recognised that the current systems, practices and processes made an already difficult job harder for the staff within the organisation. Recent changes had added further complexity, and capacity was becoming an issue for the organisation. 

Other challenges:

• Social workers struggled with high workloads and busy schedules which meant deadlines were occasionally missed
• There was no best practice when it came to visits undertaken by social workers so the quality varied 

The Solution

The Government Department Children’s Services engaged Reinvigoration to help resolve performance management issues and improve overall efficiency across several teams within the organisation.

How Reinvigoration helped:

• Developed and deployed Operational Excellence ways of working across various teams within the organisation to resolve several issues with performance management across teams, resulting in a better ability to deal with the increasing demand.
• Designed and developed digital performance boards for each team with live data feeds to accommodate the work-from-home policy.
• Helped develop a daily planning framework through various interviews and workshops to help social workers better organise their days.

The Outcomes

• Deploy new Operational Excellence ways of working across 17 teams, including daily huddles, digital performance boards, and workplace assessments.
• Equip the management team with new skills to help with workplace organisation and skills management.
• Design and implement a “model visit” to provide guidelines and improve the quality of visits.
  
  
  

The Conclusion

Reinvigoration was successful in helping this Government Department for Children’s Services resolve several issues with performance management across teams, resulting in a better ability to deal with the increasing demand. Additionally, through deploying new Operational Excellence ways of working and equipping the management team with new skills, Reinvigoration helped improve workplace organisation and the quality of visits undertaken by social workers - leading to increased capacity for staff and reduced inconsistencies across the organisation.