CorpComms Magazine

When I arrived at Companies House, I was given a simple task as far as staff internal communications was concerned - to 'break up the management silos'. Why? Well, following a patchy restructuring consultation coinciding with my appointment, it became clear that the team meeting structure was not a communication vehicle strong enough to support the business changes we needed to make over the following three years through our 1,200 staff. 

Now before everyone assumes we were running a dilapidated service back in 2006, I need to state that absolutely wasn't the case. Much of what we did was, and is, routine and running exceptionally well, with or without team meetings or the occasional all-staff event. 

PREPARING FOR CHANGE

However, we were approaching a once-in-a-generation period of change with the introduction of a new database system to underpin the national register of British companies and the implementation stages of the Companies Act, targeted for October 2009; the largest piece of legislation ever to pass through Britain's parliament. Suddenly 1,200 staff didn't seem enough, and the consultative structure clearly wasn't ready for what was ahead.

I suppose the issue with management silos was a sense that they were liable to undermine the corporate structure at a critical time of change. We worked in teams but not together. When one area triumphed it wasn't necessarily seen as a company-wide success. Similarly, when sections were struggling it became very much their problem and not ours. There was also the information chasm between main-grade staff and senior management, with middle ranges trying to bridge the gap. Something usually got lost in translation and the information exchange really wasn't working well enough.

So, we also needed to build better corporate awareness as we decisively changed the way we worked together; to get staff to look up from their desks at the rest of the business and embrace it as theirs. 

Effectively, I had three months to replace the existing staff communications system, known as Core Brief, with something more useful. In one sense that was easy as the existing process was neither 'core' nor 'brief'; a multi-page scatter of management-speak that few read or understood. We rapidly chopped that to one side of A4 and no more than two items for discussion. However, the real challenge was to engineer a way to get useful staff feedback through to management, changing it from an information cascade to a communication cycle that facilitated decision making. I was influenced by a book by James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, where he decisively dispels the folk myth that crowds cannot be trusted with decisions. As fans of Who wants to be a millionaire? know, the audience almost always get it right.

SPREADING THE NEWS

For practical purposes we used the tried and tested Roman military structure; the decuria. Every two months, the entire staff group receive what is known as the 'Peer2Peer Brief' from the executive board. Over five days, half-hour briefing sessions take place in mixed grade and area groups of ten staff, chaired by volunteer leaders drawn from all grade levels across the organisation. Directors also hear the brief as ordinary staff members do. Staff are not restricted in what they can ask or say. If they don't find the brief inspiring, they can raise other issues in Open Forum. Group sizes are manageable, feedback is confidential (no one is named) and the board has the collated, unabridged, written returns from just over 100 groups usually within two days, facilitated by our survey software. This also comes with a 'Quick & Dirty' summary, drawing the headlines and common themes together, to which the board responds in writing. Attendance is running at 70 per cent, and all staff have the opportunity to attend.

FEEDBACK MATTERS

The breadth of discussion points since inception has been impressive. Just a sample would include dialogue with staff on 'rightsizing' the business or seeking their recommendations on improving customer experiences and workflow. We gathered views of their own experiences as staff members and what management could do to improve things, leading ultimately to our 'Values Campaign' in which staff were exclusively responsible for determining these for the business. We also got to grips with some big agenda items for government, such as corporate fraud and data security, and how we manage these challenges. Taking soundings on the credit crunch and what they and we might expect, we looked for ways to help staff through what we anticipate will be difficult times. One consultation entirely reversed policy on corporate health standards, the staff rejecting a higher health award in favour of retaining practices that were felt to be fundamental to the staff group.

Peer2Peer is not a magic bullet but it does tick a lot of progressive boxes and has, importantly, affected and improved decision making, helping unify the corporate structure. It's tough at the top but at Companies House we regularly call on our resident experts to help. Taking the road less travelled has made all the difference. 

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