A Case Study in Collaborative Working
A Case Study in Collaborative Working: Braintree College External Services Solution Development with EST Connexions Ltd Managing Performance Management.
When in 2006 Jo Melling, Learning and Development Manager at EST Connexions Ltd, was looking for help to finalise development on an in-house Excel based pay-related Performance Management Review system she had designed, she knew exactly where to look. 'Witham Technology Centre, now Braintree College External Services, have consistently provided Information Technology training that is second to none. Their one day short course programme gave our staff expert and friendly tuition whether it was at introductory or advanced level, with group sizes that were ideal for our staff to ask questions’, stated Jo, 'and we felt sure they had the expertise to meet our needs’. As a result of that collaboration with Manda O’Connell, the system was then successfully piloted and used for the performance management review of 300+ Connexions personnel, at every level, across the whole of Essex, Southend and Thurrock.
However, whilst this system provided a common framework of carefully selected competencies, essential for a coherent and objective approach, in practice there were, Jo felt, a number of improvements that could be made. Feedback from appraisors and appraisees indicated that the small print size on printouts from the Excel system was hard to read and the A3 format unmanageable. There was also the need to accommodate users who had minimal Excel skills and the difficulty of navigating a spreadsheet where it was impossible to view the whole of one competency framework on one screen. These comments, coupled with the need to incorporate the key elements of Every Child Matters - Safeguarding, Common Core of Skills and Knowledge, and Championing Children as required by new Government guidelines, led Jo to approach Braintree College again for consultancy, this time to re-develop the system as a Microsoft Access application.
The benefits of this were numerous; Manda and Jo collaborated to produce something that was easy to use, that required no Access knowledge at all, where the user just had to click and input or select from built-in drop down lists, with automatic calculation of final scores leading to pay progression, dedicated printouts and which presented the whole of one competency framework on one screen. As Jo says, one of the chief aims in the performance management process is to 'get people to take responsibility for their own performance, and the new A4 pre-appraisal self-assessment printouts do exactly that. It also saves an awful lot of time as both appraisor and appraisee arrive at the review fully prepared.’
In addition, all data is stored so the new system can provide a reference point in terms of distance travelled for future reviews, where the Excel system simply provided a template for calculation and printout - no data was stored. Feedback from the management pilot so far has been very positive. The last word has to be with Jo, the originator:
"Just a quick e-mail to say that I am so very pleased with our bespoke database - it's just what we wanted. Thank you for being so accommodating and helpful, it's certainly been a pleasure working with you... the extra elements that you have recently added to the system are the icing on the cake."
