Oadby and Wigston Borough Council has implemented a structured, customer focused performance management approach that drives continuous improvement. By using data and adopting a performance driven culture, the council achieved measurable outcomes, including a 30% increase in planning service satisfaction.
Background and introduction
Oadby and Wigston Borough Council (OWBC) is a small borough in Leicestershire with a population of 57,747 covering an area of nine square miles. The council operates a committee system.
The performance management function is located within the council’s customer services and transformation team. Currently, there is one policy, performance and transformation manager who is solely focused on performance. Other members of the wider team play key roles within performance and transformation providing specific skills and capacity. The focus of the wider team is on:
- continuous improvement
- creating efficiencies through transformation, including service reviews
- performance management (monitoring and reporting)
- compliance and policy.
The council’s approach to performance management
Customer focus and accountability is at the heart of OWBC’s approach to performance management. Delivering good services to the public is the council’s core purpose and it wants to do this well. Performance targets are set with the customer in mind and the council is making use of its customer insight data (such as customer feedback, surveys and analysing customer data) when exploring underperformance and making improvements.
OWBC measures performance in three ways:
Service standards are the starting point. They are day-to-day target measures that reflect what is important to customers, for example how long it takes for a benefits application to be assessed. Each council service has a set of service standards for day-to-day service delivery. They are published so that customers know what to expect. Service standards are agreed between managers and the policy, performance and transformation manager, stretching these where possible.
General KPIs – these include all statutory KPIs and continuous improvement KPIs, the latter being determined by mangers and heads of services depending on their focus for the year and agreed by the senior leadership team. All KPIs have targets which are revised annually.
Corporate Strategy KPIs – these are KPIs included in the council’s corporate strategy that drive the corporate objectives of creating a more confident, resilient and inclusive borough which provides a higher quality of life for all its residents. KPIs are driven from the corporate strategy, which was developed in collaboration with members, and set by the Senior Leadership Team.
When setting KPIs and targets, the council focuses on whether they are in the council’s control, whether they are achievable and realistic and how they will drive improvement.
Performance monitoring is a core part of manager’s responsibilities at OWBC. The performance management lead meets monthly with each service manager to review performance, using the council’s performance dashboards. In addition, all managers meet at a compulsory monthly performance review meeting. These are facilitated by the policy, performance and transformation manager and allow managers to present and talk through their monthly results. The meeting is focused on learning, collaboration and collective problem solving.
A quarterly performance report is presented to SLT followed by the Service Delivery Committee. This is a short summary report with performance charts for each of the three types of KPIs that summarise the RAG (red, amber, green) rated performance. A succinct performance commentary is given for any KPIs with an ‘amber’ or ‘red’ rating. The report is complemented by a comprehensive set of appendices that provide operational updates for all services in standardised format, performance dashboards for several high-profile council initiatives or projects, and a customer service statistical analysis. This provides the basis for challenge and debate at SLT and Committee.
SLT review the reports and discuss performance across the council. This gives SLT the opportunity to discuss and highlight any support or action needed to improve performance. SLT regularly invite partners, for example the council’s leisure provider, to attend and present performance as well as challenges and opportunities. All members of SLT have access to the council’s performance dashboard.
Councillors monitor and scrutinise corporate performance at Service Delivery Committee, focusing on under-performance and remedial actions. The meeting will be attended by the heads of service who are expected to respond to questions about their service areas. There is a lot of focus on customer experience and councillors are invited to sense-check the performance data against residents’ views, using published data and their own experiences as community leaders. The meeting is supported by the head of customer service & transformation.
Performance management in practice
One of the key facets of the council’s performance data is the use of and focus on customer data. It makes explicit use of customer surveys as well as comments and complaints data which will be segmented by service and analysed. It also collects and analyses customer data via different channels to learn and analyse about levels of demand and in what ways this can be met more easily or prevented. For example, council tax customer emails have been analysed to see what types of enquires the council receives digitally and this was used to improve and increase the council’s online forms, leading to a more effective customer experience.
Another example is the analysis of customer data to analyse hot spots for dog fouling reports; this information has been given to dog wardens to patrol certain areas more regularly and to decrease the frequency of patrols in other areas.
Day to day performance data is held in a composite performance dashboard (Excel) that has been created internally for this purpose. Each service area has its own dashboard. All managers are required to input their data monthly. The dashboard is live with a locked down version accessible to SLT. Heads of services are encouraged to use the dashboard in their 1:1 discussions with managers.
There is a keen recognition that performance management is about processes and systems as well a culture of positive and open enquiry and learning. Starting with the customer and putting the customer at the heart of everything OWBC does helps staff understand why good performance is important. Celebrating successes and linking awards to the councils’ values helps staff understand their hard work and efforts matter.
Managers being empowered to make improvements and be accountable for their teams’ performance helps the council drive forward – at all staff briefings successes are shared and good performance is highlighted and this helps to motivate everyone to do more.
Case study: Planning Service
In line with many councils, OWBC is experiencing challenges with the recruitment of planning officers. This led to a backlog in processing planning applications and rising levels of complaints. The performance team reached out to the planning team to see what support could be offered.
This first step was to review the customer insight information. It became clear that customer enquiries (customers chasing up on their applications) had increased significantly, which meant planning officers spent more time on explaining delays as opposed to addressing the backlog of undetermined planning applications. With service standards not clearly specified, the customer services team were unable to deal with enquiries.
In response, teams worked together to upskill the customer services team and introduced a new planning duty system to triage calls. Weekly performance meetings were introduced to monitor progress and trouble shoot. The website was reviewed and updated to help customers self-serve. And – much against the instincts of the planning team - a customer satisfaction survey was introduced to find out what matters to customers and improve relations. The survey shows that customers appreciated that there was a backlog and what mattered most was to be kept informed of delays. They also appreciated that the council was keen to improve and took the time to engage with them. The results were used to improve communication further and recorded an overall improvement in satisfaction levels by 30 per cent over a period of six months.
Getting ‘buy in’ from all managers to focus more on performance and measure work against set targets was a challenge at the beginning; being tenacious helped and SLT support was essential. A few years on, this approach is now business as usual for managers. They are focused on their team’s performance and continuous improvement comes naturally now.
Links and council contact
Performance page https://www.oadby-wigston.gov.uk/pages/performance
Service Standards Page: https://www.oadby-wigston.gov.uk/pages/service_standards
Service delivery committee reports: https://moderngov.oadby-wigston.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CommitteeId=203
Corporate Strategy - Oadby & Wigston Borough Council
Contact: Trish Hatton, Head of Customer Service & Transformation [email protected]