Home > BEST Events > Engagement 2.0 - 2nd April 2009 - Birmingham

Engagement 2.0 - 2nd April 2009 - Birmingham

On Thursday 2nd April, The BEST Programme Team held their first external event of the year for the benefit of external organisations to share ideas and successes surrounding employee engagement and to also take on board examples of best practice from others from around the country.

View the stream

View the Photos

Due to the growing national interest and success of Birmingham City Council’s BEST programme, the team had received many requests for a visit to Birmingham to learn more about the programme and see it in action. As there were far too many organisations that had shown an interest to see individually, the team decided that dedicating a full day to showcase the programme to a number of different interested parties would be of most benefit to all involved.

The event, which took place at The Studio, was sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers and included attendees from local authorities all over the country, the NHS, Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, BERR, Local Government Association and Stanton Marris. The event was also updated on Twitter and webcast live on www.birminghambest.co.uk with an audience stretching as far as New Zealand with Auckland City Council getting up at 5am New Zealand time to view the event via the Internet.

The day started Chief Executive Stephen Hughes giving delegates his thoughts on the importance of personal leadership in a change journey. He described his personal experience of the programme from a corporate leadership point of view, to give the delegates an idea of how important it is to have strong backing of such programmes from the top of the organisation.

After being given an insight into the corporate side of things, Cllr Alan Rudge – Cabinet Member for Equalities and HR, gave an overview of how the political side of the council plays an important role in the development of a programme such as BEST. He also gave his personal journey of the BEST programme from early pilots and development of it to the importance of enthusiastic drivers of the programme to really make it work.

Chief Executive Stephen Hughes then joined Councillor Rudge in the spotlight to take questions from the room, Twitter and pre-submitted questions sent via email. The atmosphere for the next thirty minutes was buzzing with a variety of questions coming from all over the room. Some of the highlights from the session were a pre-submitted question from Kingston Business School wondering what the council plans to do to give more variety in t jobs to lower grade staff and a question from the room from Lancashire Council querying how Birmingham had measured the improvements to service experienced since the introduction of BEST. These two questions in particular generated a lot of discussion and debate.

After a short energising break, the BEST team took the stage for the second half of the morning session, “Spotlight on the Birmingham BEST programme”. First up were Richard Billingham, Head of Organisation Development and Learning and Raffaela Goodby, Employee Engagement Manager to look at the background of Birmingham City Council, the importance and difficulty of implementing such a programme into a huge and diverse organisation such as Birmingham City Council and the journey of BEST so far.

Following on from this were the four BEST programme managers, Jill Cheshire of the Children, Young People and Families directorate, Siobhan Brittland from Housing & Constituencies, Andrew Potter from Development, Environment & Culture and Alexandra Whittard from Adults & Communities. They each gave a short example of a success story to give the delegates and idea of what can be achieved through the programme and the benefits derived from this.

The first part of the afternoon session saw BERR take the stage with Nita Clarke and David MacLeod presenting their work on the National Employee Engagement Review which is due to be published later this year. They used the opportunity to gain feedback of all things related to employee engagement.

The Engagement Heroes Dragons Den ran throughout the second part of the afternoon. Event participants were asked to work together in table groups to quickly come up with an innovative, creative engagement idea. They then pitched these ideas to the ‘Dragons”

The Engagement Dragons for the afternoon were: Nick Ringrose from PricewaterhouseCoopers; Andy Albon, Director of Human Resources and Equalities Birmingham City Council; Colin Williams, Director of Local Government Services LGA; Donato Esposito, founder of ibostin.com; and David McLeod, lead on national engagement review on behalf of BERR.

First to face the Dragons were team one ‘Virtual Reality’. The team were aiming to impress the dragons with their idea to create a virtual reality management team which would enable employees throughout a local authority to get to know council leaders and ask questions in real time. The virtual management team would be created and maintained through partnerships with local universities. The team also proposed the concept of ‘Employee Champions’ to act on behalf of the authority, talking to employees and solving issues raised.

The second team to enter the den ‘Best by Nature’ proposed an interactive board game which could be used with stakeholders and employees for a variety of policies and procedures. The teams would play the board game and form an action plan from their progress throughout the game. The game would also identify what the team is good at and boost confidence and engagement.

Then next team to bid for funding ‘Keeping it REEL’ wanted funding to enable senior managers to go back to the floor and spend a day carrying out a frontline job. The senior managers would then be able to identify any issues within the team. Roles would then be reversed when the team spends a day with the senior manager to gain an idea of the type of strategic problems faced at the top of the organisation as well as working with the senior manager on any team issues they may have.

The final team to face the dragons were ‘Your Channel’. The team hoped to secure funding to create and run an organisational TV channel to enable engagement in a dispersed workforce. Employees would be able to make videos and transmit ideas and suggestions throughout the organisation. The channel would also be a two way interactive medium allowing feedback of videos.

Following careful deliberation the Dragons decided to award funding to Team 4 ‘Your Channel’. Feeding back Andy Albon said: ‘really impressed with the idea, worked out practicalities, some issues around moderation but sure they could be overcome.’

Each of the winning team members were presented with an iPod Shuffle care of Engagement Heroes Dragons Den Sponsors Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

The event was a great success with high levels of energy, enthusiasm and idea’s on display throughout the day. The feedback received so far has been fantastic. Nina Purcell of The Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive called it “Really well planned, brilliant location, and I was genuinely so impressed with the content and how much Birmingham are putting into staff engagement”.