Happy birthday to me
Add bookmark
...before I receive a flurry of expensive gifts, let me elaborate. This week marks my first year here at People Services and this week I’m asking if this place is starting to alter my physical appearance, i.e. if it has aged me as much as I think it has, answers on a postcard please…!
It has certainly been a topsy turvey year that has had its fair share of successes, challenges and changes not least the complete re-branding and re-location of the entire operation!
My first challenge in the role was the mammoth task of re-focusing the centre and giving everybody a clear view of the strategy and goals to be implemented over the coming months. Our People Services Strategic Triangle (attached) shows a break down of the entire operation into its component parts or ‘The four key pillars’, of Process, People, Customer and Technology. These are supported by our Values, Continuous Improvement and Enablers, and all activity in the centre can be placed under one of these pillars. The reason it is divided in this way is to ensure our focus is divided equally across all the categories and not weighted more to one category to the detriment of another.
I also had to ensure that we went forward with a clear and inspiring vision to motivate the centre and to reconnect and rebuild relationships with the businesses. ‘Liberating our business through exceptional people and service’ heads up the strategic triangle and gives kudos and context to the centre.
From the creation of the triangle, a Transformation Journey document was then created. This showed, at high level, all the plans for the centre in three phases, running up to 2011 (attached).
We also outlined our vivid description that shows our pledges and goals to be achieved by 2011 (attached).
This then focussed and aligned our goals so we could begin to re-build the centre and move forward with all our plans for development, succession, customer service, large integrations and the appointment of new roles.
Since I started here there have been a massive 35 appointments to new positions within People Services Manchester. The complete overhaul of the hierarchy and organisational structure has pushed the development opportunities forward at pace and the response to this from everyone in the centre has been extremely positive.
It is exhausting looking back at everything that we have achieved in such a short space of time, but it’s equally intimidating thinking about all the future challenges that People Services face. The enthusiasm of the team and the clearly outlined goals and aspirations are a great springboard for the next challenging year.
