Organisational context
Oxford City Council is a local authority delivering services to 142,000 residents. It employs approximately 1,400 staff. The workforce is divided into 17 business units, which fall under one of three strategic directorates, all overseen by the chief executive. The HR and learning and development functions are centrally based.
There are a number of challenges faced by the authority:
- Budgetary pressures – over the years the value of support received from central government has reduced and this, together with targets for ‘efficiency savings’, has resulted in a reduction in the workforce.
- Revised management structure – the chief executive left her post in December 2006. Her replacement started in September 2007 and is working on a revised, streamlined management structure with fewer business managers.
- Absence rates – the authority is in the lowest quartile in terms of days lost through staff illness at an average of 11.43 days per staff member.
- Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) recategorisation – all local authorities have a CPA score reflecting their ability to meet a number of targets over a range of measures. Oxford’s current score is ‘weak’. However, some improvements are being made, leading the authority to seek recategorisation of this score.
- Political pressures – Oxford is run by a minority administration, so any potentially controversial initiatives such as refuse and recycling attracts interest both from opposition parties and local media.
Context for coaching at Oxford City Council
Coaching and its connection to the business strategy
As a public authority, the city council’s strategies are focused on the provision of services to the community, such as Communications and Consultation Strategy, Community Safety Strategy, Homelessness Strategy, and Social Inclusion Strategy.
Coaching at Oxford City Council has to some extent been very much a ‘stand alone’ concept with little direct connection to formulated business strategies. Its growth can best be described as ‘organic’ with little formal structure and has been independent of any of the formal strategies in place. This has partly been due to the fact that the coaching network is not ‘owned’ by any individual department and as the coaches involved come from a variety of business units, no one unit dominates.
There is, however, currently a loose link to the learning and development team, as all referrals and requests for coaching are passed to this unit. The team are currently in the process of devising a learning and development strategy but at this stage there is still an important role for coaching in this strategy.
The organisational culture at Oxford City Council
The culture of Oxford City Council has changed over the past few years. The arrival of a new chief executive in 2004 saw a change in the culture of Oxford City Council to a more ‘inclusive’ one, where staff were encouraged to accept responsibility and explore alternative methods of working.
These changes also involved managers undergoing 360-degree surveys and analysing their own styles.
Coaching was introduced as part of this culture change, together with other inclusive initiatives, such as the promotion of action learning – which was fully supported by the senior managers. A more open approach was adopted with the chief executive being more accessible, enforcing the message that staff are valued.
Coaching was a live example of this culture change, as one coachee sums it up: ‘I think it (coaching) shows the employer is willing to invest time and effort to helping its employees and this can only be a good thing.’
The coaching network has worked hard to continue the promotion of this culture by the production of coaching guidance, evaluation questionnaires, newsletters, and a ‘How to create a coaching culture’ factsheet for managers.
How Oxford City Council responds to learning and development interventions
The city council delivers its learning and development interventions through a variety of sources, both internal and external. Coaching or mentoring is just one of the tools that are available.
All staff have, as a minimum, an annual appraisal and mid-year appraisal. The annual appraisal forms the basis for setting the individual’s learning and development plan. These plans are used by the learning and development team to determine where best to devote resources. All requests need the approval of the staff member’s manager and, because of potential financial implications, all training courses are booked by the learning and development team.
In addition, staff can submit requests for learning activities throughout the year, but these too are co-ordinated by the learning and development team.
Coaching requests are, however, a slight exception to this. Coaching requests are dealt with by the coaching network, the 12 remaining coaches who meet on a regular basis. The coaching co-ordinator will have received the requests for coaching and will allocate coaches to candidates as part of a regular meeting to ensure that coaches are not taking on, or being asked to take on, a candidate with whom there is too close a connection, or that the coaches are not exceeding their capacity.
The perception of coaching
As in any organisation, the perception of coaching can and does vary depending on the level of involvement, particularly with the staff. Once candidate who successfully completed a coaching intervention, summed this up as follows: ‘In people who have been coached, it is mostly seen as a very good thing. However, people who don’t understand the process can be quite dismissive of its worth.’
The aim of the coaching network is to promote this positive message so that all staff are aware of how coaching can help them. This is an ongoing process through the use of the council’s intranet with its dedicated coaching pages, regular team briefs and coaching newsletters to get the message across. The use of quotes like the following certainly help:
‘It could mean that conflicts of interest are more easily resolved as someone who is impartial who helps you solve the problem rather than just offering advice is running the coaching. Sometimes you don’t want to speak to HR or your line manager on work issues as you feel it will reflect on you personally, but with an impartial coach and knowing the conversations are confidential may encourage people to try and solve their issues rather than bottling them up.’
At the time of writing, plans are also under way for a series of lunchtime ‘drop-in’ sessions where staff can come and meet the coaches and gain a greater understanding of how coaching can help them.
The degree of senior sponsorship
The level of senior sponsorship has varied throughout the period of time that coaching has been used at Oxford City Council. Initially there was a strong level of support. The chief executive at the time was heavily involved in encouraging and supporting staff to take responsibility for their learning as well as equipping managers with better skills to be able to manage staff.
Coaching was introduced as part of a number of initiatives to improve management skill levels, in addition to 360-degree surveys and residential courses.
The council was fortunate at the time to secure funding to support these activities, which naturally overcame one of the obstacles and ensured time could be dedicated to the initiative.
Since then there have been major changes to the hierarchy. The chief executive has now left, as has the head of human resources, both major players in the introduction of coaching to the council.
However, their replacements are keen to ensure that coaching continues, although it has been accepted that it may be difficult to continue at the same level of intensity due to the fact that the number of coached has dropped over the past year. The council is getting perilously close to that ‘critical mass’.
Resources that are available
Oxford City Council has invested heavily in its own staff so that it has an effective coaching resource at its disposal. Initially, 20 line managers undertook a Coaching and Mentoring Diploma through the services of an external training provider, Tactical, accredited by the Institute of Leadership and Management. By June 2006, these line managers were conducting coaching interventions for a variety of candidates in a number of departments throughout the council.
In addition, the use of coaching as a management style has also been promoted through a number of ‘management awaydays’, with basic coaching tools and methods being explained.
From this strong position, there has unfortunately been a step back. The number of internal coaches has reduced by half through coaches leaving the council ‘for pastures new’. However, what is encouraging is that those that remain are still as active as ever and willing to deal with coaching interventions as they arise.
This has prompted a review of the way that coaching interventions are handled so that resources can be more effectively used. Methods such as ‘sifting’ of coaching requests to determine which are more ‘short term’ and which ‘long term’ are being used so that urgent cases can be dealt with.
Coaching at Oxford City Council
Coaching was introduced to Oxford City Council (OCC) following a series of interventions run in collaboration with Gatenby Sanderson (an executive search and selection consultancy specialising in the public sector) during 2005.
The aim of the coaching programme is to underpin the business principles of Oxford City Council by providing a sustainable, robust means of supporting cultural change. All coaching contracts undertaken are in line with individuals’ learning and development plans, and personal and business objectives. A culture of empowerment and ownership in an environment of maximising individual and organisational potential is at the heart of Oxford City Council’s coaching programme.
Following a series of management events, 20 managers from across the council’s services commenced a programme to achieve the Level 5 Diploma in Management Coaching and Mentoring awarded by the Institute of Leadership and Management and run by a local training organisation.
In addition, less formal insights into adopting coaching as a management style were introduced to other managers in a series of ‘awaydays’ to underpin the process.
The authority now has a core of ten managers who now fulfil, alongside their ‘day jobs’, the role of internal coach. These trained line managers ‘spread the word’, developing interest among their peers for coaching.
Coaching is available to all OCC staff to support both performance management and change management issues.
The learning and development team have produced a comprehensive guide to coaching, which is available to anyone considering taking up internal coaching. It covers what is coaching and how it is used within OCC, as well as including forms to support objective-setting, setting agendas for individual sessions, personal development plans, recording reflections after a coaching session and a coaching progress review. The guide also sets out the European Mentoring and Coaching Council’s (EMCC) code of ethics for coaches.
Contracts are established between the coach, coachee and line manager prior to any coaching taking place. The agreement will include duration and defined expectations. All coaches are signed up to the OCC contract for internal coaches, which include the EMCC code of ethics.
Requests for coaching are sent initially to the learning and development team, which co-ordinate activities and ensure that coaches are allocated on the basis that they will be independent and impartial. Each coach maintains a record of their coaching activities and the coachee is invited to complete a questionnaire on completion of the coaching intervention.
Existing guidance suggests that an intervention will last for up to six sessions, and each lasts approximately one hour.
To monitor activity and progress, the coaches meet approximately once every six weeks to act as peer review and agree future allocations.
The coaching network has looked outside its boundaries to embrace new ideas and learning, which has involved attendance at the Oxford School of Coaching and Mentoring Annual Conference and lectures by David Clutterbuck at Oxford Brookes, in addition to a number of the coaches speaking at their own professional associations on the subject of coaching and mentoring.
Despite its reducing numbers, the network remains active and is currently seeking external partners to offer a regime of coaching supervision.
What next? Lessons from a successful strategy
Phil Adlard, Benefits Performance and Quality Manager and internal coach, counsels patience in developing an internal coaching offer, in terms of generating take-up and in looking for results. That said, he reflects that critical mass is required to make an internal coaching service sustainable, both in terms of the number of active trained coaches and in people taking up coaching.
Looking forward, the imperative is to expand the coaching approach to management to all managers in the organisation to support the development of a coaching culture.