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A holistic programme of organisational development
The client was a provider of day centre services in London. They had undertaken a major rebuilding and refurbishment programme and wanted to change their culture to being more professional and centred around challenging the homeless clients to make significant changes to their lives.
An initial audit by Real People revealed ‘a policy vacuum and a deficit in staff management and performance’. Real People worked with the client intensively over two years on a holistic programme of organisational development. We provided a clear policy framework, a robust performance management scheme, improved recruitment and selection processes, a leadership and management development programme and flexible one-to-one guidance and support to deal with a whole range of HR and staffing issues.
As a result of our interventions the client reported big changes in all areas: clearer strategic vision and leadership, a huge increase in the extent to which they are organised and structured, clearer roles, better skills for the job, much better health and well-being, improved recruitment, greatly enhanced ability to deal with conflict and considerably greater clarity about what is expected from staff.
The organisation is also very proud of having achieved Investors in People accreditation as a result of the changes they made.
“The major change is that we are now focused on people management. Before that was absent and we relied on goodwill. Now we have and implement a people management strategy including support, supervision, policies and procedures etc. All staff now have supervision [according to the Director] and 80% have started staff appraisal processes.”
“I was pessimistic. I didn’t think they could do it. But the transition process was really well-managed; there was no ambiguity and lots of communication. Everyone felt like we were doing it together, very well-managed. I wondered if they could do it, but they teach. The scale of the changing ethos has been staggering. The attitude was to feel sorry for people, now it’s about responsibility. Used to be ‘our clients need our help drop everything’ now it’s on the responsibility of the clients to change as well. There have been so many changes at the same time. It’s good to be here to be able to see it.”
Comments from the evaluation
