Archives for June 2016

The Stewardship of Service Excellence at the City of Vaughan

This case study examines how to recognize the desire for change and harness that energy to build and steward the development and implementation of a Service Excellence Strategy that yields concrete results and sustains the momentum required for long term success.

Abstract

The Stewardship of Service Excellence at the City of VaughanThe City of Vaughan embarked on a six-month transition process called ‘Building Capacity and Focus’ to design and implement an innovative approach to developing a refocused strategic plan aimed at fostering a shared vision and culture of Service Excellence throughout all City services and operations. At the end of this process, the City of Vaughan achieved the following critical milestones: unanimous council approval of the Service Excellence Strategy; a shared mindset and commitment to Service Excellence; and an organizational design and alignment of the City’s three-year budget with the priorities and goals of the Strategic Plan, while keeping the tax rate in line with targets set by Council.The City of Vaughan is one of the fastest growing municipalities in Ontario. With the vision of becoming the ‘City of Choice’, Vaughan has committed to a Term of Council Service Excellence Strategy Map focused on delivering council commitments for the remaining term of council. This involves improving citizen experience through service delivery and managing growth; operating more effectively and efficiently,  and improving staff engagement. This transformation journey will take time. It is complex, dynamic, and  requires stewardship, leadership, and management, as well as balancing current fiscal responsibilities and commitments.

Given the short time frame in which these remarkable results were achieved, this case study illustrates the value in capitalizing on a desire for change at the right moment and ensuring the proper leadership team and strategies were in place to preserve the momentum and commitment required for change in the long term. It also stresses the criticality of measuring and evaluating change at each stage of the process.

The City of Vaughan case study provides reflections on the principles, practices, and possibilities of how to successfully leverage the talent, values, and passion of its people to create breakthrough strategies to lead, manage, and sustain momentum through culture shifts and longer-term transformational changes required for success. The Sustainable Leadership Development Framework was used to measure and evaluate the alignment, integration, actions and impacts of the change process. The lessons learned provide valuable insight for the practice of leadership, management and organizational development.

Looking Back on Spring 2016…

Stephanie Noel, Queen's IRCAs we prepare to enjoy the summer with our family and friends, I would like to take a minute to thank all the people who attend our programs and the organizations who sponsor them. Congratulations to those who have earned their certificates.

This spring, we introduced our HR Metrics and Analytics program, which teaches you how to transform HR data into business insight. This program has filled a need in our community, and has also been very popular as a custom offering. We recently completed a Professional Development Awareness Survey, which revealed insights about what types of training people prefer, the most important factors for making a training decision, and which resources people rely on.

I am proud of the work we are doing at Queen’s IRC and I encourage you to take a few minutes to review the excellent papers and articles we have released this spring.

Article Recap

Queen's IRC Article Recap - Spring 2016

Queen’s IRC 2016 Professional Development Survey Results and Winners

Stephanie Noel, Queen's IRCWith over 950 responses to our Queen’s IRC Professional Development Awareness Survey, I am pleased to announce the winners of the $50 coffee cards, and share some of the results with you.

We received responses from across Canada, and a few outside Canada, with 53% from Ontario, and 18% from Alberta. The majority of our respondents (64%) are in the 40 to 59 age group.  About 22% of the respondents are unionized, and 41% identified HR as their primary role within their organization. Additionally, 50% of respondents indicated that they have attended a Queen’s IRC program.

The insights about professional development are very exciting – 85 % of respondents have attended some form of professional development training in the past two years, with in-class training topping the list. Conferences and trade shows also rank high in questions about how people stay current in their profession. We found that 81% of respondents have a budget at their organization allocated specifically for training, learning, and professional development. When selecting professional development programs, respondents indicated that the most important factor is reputation and quality of the program, followed by speaker qualifications.

The Canadian HR Reporter was cited as the most popular resource or publication that our respondents rely on for career-related purposes. Newspapers and provincial HR association publications are also popular with respondents, while 17% indicated that they do not rely on print publications/resources for career-related purposes. The majority of respondents (80%) use social networking sites for career-related purposes, with LinkedIn ranked as the most popular.

We asked which Queen’s IRC programs respondents were interested in taking in the next two years. The top five are:

Thank you to everyone who took the time to participate in this survey. Congratulations to the winners of the $50 gift card for either Tim Hortons or Starbucks:

  • Scott Burant of Dalmeny, SK
  • Gail Bannister-Clarke of Brampton, ON
  • Joey Brar of Surrey, BC
  • Cindy Riley of Fredericton, NB
  • Scott Shaw of Calgary, AB
  • Pam Parks of Oshawa, ON

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