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Digital Experts, Transformation and Channel Shift Programmes
Coventry City Council has taken measures to maintain strong lines of communication with residents, businesses and its own workforce during COVID-19 and beyond. During the lockdown, the HR and IT Teams accelerated the delivery of a staff app to ensure corporate messaging, training and other vital information was available to its workforce of over 4,000 employees.
The app has been developed to give unprecedented access to services in one, easy to use location on smartphones and tablets. This allows staff to have all crucial information related to the organisation at their fingertips 24/7. The app has been built in partnership with MyArk for free due to a sponsorship deal for staff deals which covers the costs of development and maintenance in a sustainable way.
The service covers the following:
Key coronavirus information Recruitment guidance Vacancies Staff deals (supporting local and nominated businesses) Health & safety policies Online induction documents Learning and Development opportunities Access to payslips and trade union contacts IT ‘digiknow’ training Corporate comms updates
The user interface on the app is formatted under Coventry CC branding and allows staff to select tiles for the above services. In terms of information governance to download the app staff need to access it via a link or QR code. The app is a bespoke enterprise app and not available to the general public via normal app stores. Allowing for a high level of security to information aimed at Coventry CC staff.
For members of staff on the frontline who may not necessarily have corporate IT accounts, they are able to request a Microsoft account for those that require them, making it much more accessible for them to engage with the services available to them in one place.
It was crucial to roll out key COVID-19 messaging to staff and allowed the organisation to make efficiencies for staff who required the ability to work remotely and flexibly. It also supported recruitment processes and made it possible to access payslips or policies in an easy and simple way.
At the time of writing, HR and IT teams at the council were looking to integrate further crucial services and information for staff such as flexi time shift sheets to allow staff to log their hours remotely from the app. There were also scoping for messaging tiles for ‘Generation CCC’, BAME and LGBT networks to coordinate meetings and initiatives for interest groups among members of staff.
This app allowed the council to revolutionise flexible agile working to accommodate the new way of working and communicating with workforces in the 21st century and post COVID-19.
Contact
Susanna Newing Director of HR , Coventry City Council - [email protected]
Brett Dawson, Divisional Media Manager - 01253 784323
Monmouthshire County Council have launched several new workstreams and projects to improve digital literacy among staff throughout their transition to remote ways of working.
Connecting our Workforce: Prior to the covid-19 outbreak, mcc had a large proportion of frontline workers (spread across leisure services, highways operations and catering & cleaning) who did not require any form of digital links with the council to carry out their role. following the lockdown, these workers required accounts to access the council’s internal coronavirus communications hub to check in on internal resources for digital guides, tutorials, mental health and wellbeing tools. This led to an informal advancement of digital literacy within the staff body, further access to over 700 staff to digital tools and a knock-on effect of digital education for those residents and businesses working with the council.
Remote Interviews: The council has also embraced the Microsoft Teams platform to keep in touch with employees on a daily basis through video calls weekly catch ups and question sessions with colleagues and senior members. An example of one of these meetings is presented in the recording.
This technology has also allowed key service areas to remotely interview people for crucial key frontline services. For instance, the social care team held 4 interviews in one day where the team interviewed the candidate and also ran a presentation exercise with 30-minute preparation time. The team appointed an early help duty & assessment team manager into post the following day.
Talent Bank: The team have also utilised Microsoft Forms and SharePoint platforms to undertake a skills audit of the staff workforce in order to gauge soft skills and other crucial abilities or connections staff have. This has allowed the council to redeploy staff into roles that adds value to the organisation and best suit them.
Contact: For more information on this work please contact - Emma Jackson, Digital Design & Information Manager, at [email protected]
