Communication, collaboration and connection...all in a day's work at FCSS
We are a people led service,
where our team members are actively involved in the design of our services and
in decisions that affect them, their colleagues, and our clients.
We recognise that as our customer facing frontline, they will often know more about what works well, where improvements are needed, and what changes we can make to ensure we are delivering the best possible service. So, for us good communication isn’t just about getting information to our people, it is also about getting information from our people.
We use multiple tools to facilitate information sharing, discussion opportunities, ideas pipelines and much more. Here’s a run down of some of the things we do:
Newsletters: We share an electronic quarterly round up of activity across the organisation, introducing new team members, sharing learning opportunities and best practice and celebrating the successes of our colleagues. Our team have the opportunity to contribute content to our newsletters and we achieve a very good open and engagement rate, which on average is 80%. Check out our latest news here.
Whatsapp: We use Whatsapp groups and broadcast lists for informal communication, including offering extra shifts, running polls to support decision making, sharing tips and saying well done when our colleagues go above and beyond in their work. We have multiple groups and manage membership effectively, each of our services has a group, we have management and leadership team groups and topic focussed groups to support our working groups.
Community of practice: We have created a community of practice online platform, Team FCSS, to support our team in shared learning, professional discussion, and shared best practice. This is a busy group with around 70% of our team taking part. There are lots of pictures shared, with hints, tips and ideas for activities with the children we care for. We also have a monthly Foghorn Friday event in this group where team members can highlight good work, achievements, and successes of their colleagues. This is an opportunity to be proud and to share thanks across our teams.
Blogs: We regularly invite members of our team to contribute blog material for sharing both internally and externally. This is a lovely way to share knowledge and experience and to inspire and motivate our newer colleagues.
Face to face support and supervision: We operate a system of regular face to face support and supervision where each member of our team gets focussed one to one time with their line manager. This is an opportunity to praise achievements, discuss and identify areas for learning, share aspirations and ideas, and to keep on top of administrative updates to things like annual leave, recording professional development etc.
Team meetings: All of our teams, whether location based, or grouped by role within the organisation have team meetings, these are planned in advance, diarised and run to an agenda that all team members have the opportunity to contribute to. Whilst covering standard items like health and safety and business performance these meetings are also used to brainstorm ideas, review and debrief over any issues or incidents that may have occurred, and to provide general updates on strategy, results etc.
Stakeholder groups: Each of our place based service has a Friends of FCSS stakeholder group, these groups are made up of our team members, service users and members of the community. They guide the direction of travel for our work, consult with and communicate information in relation to the progress and decisions being taken about the development of the service, ensure clear messages are given, and feedback is received and circulated to all stakeholders.
Topic based working groups: We have topic based groups consisting of operational team members and management team colleagues, these groups focus of pre identified areas of development. Each of our services is represented and those who attend disseminate information back to their location based team. Current groups are based on UN Rights of the Child, Making Mealtimes Matter and Child Protection.
Cross site visits: we actively facilitate cross site visits, peer observations, and role shadowing. This helps our team members feel part of the wider organisation and gives them an opportunity to showcase their work.
Team surveys: we regularly carry out surveys to assess and manage employee satisfaction.
Posters in team rest areas: we produce attractive and informative posters to share information about benefits, events etc in team rest areas.
So many communication tools, ensuring we cover the preferred communication styles of our team members and keep the two way flow of information and ideas moving. We believe our internal comms are a key strength of our organisation, but of course we would say that, so here’s what our team have to say:
“I feel respected and always kept up to date with any changes made and my views are always listed to.”
“I have worked with the company for many years, I do have a sense of belonging and feel I have been supported during a very difficult time in my personal life, they have taken my disabilities into account and worked with me to ensure I am able to continue to work.”
“Constant communication with my team and management when needed and support where needed. Everyone always happy to help.”
“FCSS is a warm welcoming organisation that supports one another”
“I
struggled greatly with mental health due to my previous workplaces and felt as
though my thoughts and ideas were never good enough. However. at this setting,
my ideas are always taken on board, and I have been given specific tasks to
complete for the company as a whole, I feel as though I am recognised and able
to share my knowledge with others as well as provide support where I can to
help others gain knowledge in different areas.
Comments
Post a Comment