Operational efficiency Case study
Conversation is key
The City of Edinburgh Council moved away from paper-based
annual reviews to a more holistic performance framework
focused on having honest and good-quality conversations.
THIRZA TOOES reports
The organisation
The City of Edinburgh Council is a local
government authority created in 1996. It was
formerly a two-tier system of Lothian
Regional Council and Edinburgh District
Council. The organisation has largely been a
mixed control or Labour-majority council
since 1972, except in 1977 when the
Conservatives held the majority. Currently
there are 63 seats; made up of 18 SNP, 11
Labour, 17 Conservative, eight Scottish
Greens, six Liberal Democrat and three
independent councillors. The City of
Edinburgh Council employs 18,000 people,
making it one of the largest employers in the
area. Its responsibilities include housing,
planning, local transport, parks, schools,
libraries, waste disposal, benefits, local
economic development, and urban
renewal regeneration.
The problem
Three years ago The City of Edinburgh
Council’s performance management system
was much the same as many organisations’ –
paper-driven, complex, and a bit of a tick-box
exercise. Many employees were not engaging
with it at all, or found it too rigid for their
particular role.
“We have about 18,000 staff, and as with a
lot of local government organisations it is
extremely varied,” explains Katy Miller, head
of human resources at the council. “You have
roles within that 18,000 that are everything
from your functional areas to finance, HR,
audit, risk, strategy teams through to some of
our frontline roles such as cleaners, school
assistants, roads people, parks people, and
so on.”
“It would be true to say that our previous
approach was very traditional,” adds
Margaret-Ann Love, lead consultant for
HR consultancy, case and learning and
development. “It excluded quite a significant
part of our workforce, who weren’t engaging
with it at all. It just wasn’t working for us. It
was very much seen as a one-off. The better
leaders out there would be having all-yearround
conversations, but really the system was
about having a looking-back conversation and
a looking forward one, and that was it.”
The method
The HR team knew something had to change,
and wanted to create a system that could be
understood and used by every employee
across the organisation. “One of the key pieces
for us when we started was: how do you create
something that is meaningful for every single
colleague? So right from the beginning, one of
our biggest drivers was around the cultural
engagement with this piece of work,”
says Miller.
To ensure engagement throughout and a
holistic process that prioritised employee
voice, a business user group was set up that
involved representatives from across the
Performance
timeframes are
flexible to suit
different roles
The City of Edinburgh Council
All photography: A road service team was one of the early adopter The City of Edinburgh Council has a huge range of New leaders learn about the framework on induction 46 HR June 2019 hrmagazine.co.uk
/hrmagazine.co.uk