Some important meetings….and serious wine sampling….

 
Yes, you guessed it, this week I took my entire management team offsite to thrash out some important issues and to ensure we are fully prepared for future challenges. We had a great and productive two days although there were some sore heads on the second day! We do feel though that here in People Services it is vitally important to celebrate our successes and we certainly know how to do that.

If you recall form the first blog we finally got the results from the interim survey back in time to discuss them at the offsite meetings. Overall we were delighted with the results with a 7% increase in just 6 months, however it was apparent that there are still some discrepancies between teams and still some areas and issues we need to address. This will certainly be taken forward, acted upon and learnt from as we are looking to still further increase this percentage. In order to drive this forward it will now be the team leaders turn to be taken offsite for a day and plan how they will try to make improvements and changes within their teams. However it is obvious that people are recognizng and appreciating all that is being done in the center and for the majority, this is for the better.

We also collated and looked at some feedback form our HR business partners. Again, although there are still some areas to improve, it is apparent they recognize not only the change in the processes and structure of the center, but also a big change in attitude from us. There is a much more positive vibe about People Services in the wider business community and this is positivity  reflecting back onto us. It also became clear that we have more work to do on clarifying our scope and the roles and responsibilities of People Services, as it seems there is sometimes blurred boundaries as to who should be responsible for what.Overall however a lot of positive things have come out of People Services in the past 6 months and seemingly this is being recognized by all.

We also took time to go over our lessons learnt form the huge former United integration in preparation for the Somerfield project that is looming round the next corner. We are approaching this People Services lead project with a much better planned, clearer image of the bigger picture and once this kicks off I will keep you updated with what will be a  massive undertaking, a migration of approximately 30,000 employees.

In other news we held our monthly floor update and appreciation awards and we had one outstanding member of staff, Carla Jess who won three of these this month…well done Carla, (please see attached picture). The categories we nominate under for these awards fit under the four pillars of our strategic triangle, and then we choose an overall winner for the month, we have also decided, on the back of our two day meeting to add a new category to these awards that focus on our People Services values to ensure we are all living them and embedding them in the teams fully. This brings us full circle to a close on this weeks blog, again lots has happened and there is still so much to talk about….!

Until next week…..