Get In Touch

0161 720 50 50

enquiries@workingtime-solutions.com

Cheshire West and Chester Council

Cheshire West and Chester Council cuts costs, whilst also retaining and creating jobs!

Robert Crossman is Director of Service Delivery at Working Time Solutions (WTS). He has over 10 years' experience supporting organisations in the implementation of optimised working time arrangements, using an approach that WTS call Lean-ER™. This methodology builds on the concepts of Lean, employee engagement, demand-led rostering and flexible working to drive out waste and reduce cost.

Here Robert describes a pioneering Local Authority partnership project with APSE, WTS, and Cheshire West and Chester Council (CWAC), which brings new working time arrangements to their Street Scene Department. APSE’s involvement in the project was to lend experience to the service provision element and advise on the rosters required to meet that demand. The project is currently in negotiation with union representation.

John Jeffrey, Head of Waste Management and Street Scene at CWAC, explains, ‘The project has identified a solution to help us achieve our budgeted savings, improve service coverage by designing rosters that ensure we have the right people in the right place at the right time and the best opportunity to retain a critical and quality service in-house. We have even identified the opportunity not only to retain jobs but create them too! We engaged with WTS recognising their very specialist knowledge of working time and their ability to bring alternative thinking to our service provision.’

Within CWAC Street Scene there were shortfalls in cover at particular times of the day, week and year, with service provision unaligned to demand and employees working long hours. Furthermore, the service had high overtime and agency costs. In order to identify budget savings and improve the current working arrangements, CWAC engaged external help from WTS and APSE. A further part of the brief was the key management objective to retain the services in-house.

Employee engagement is an essential component of these projects, ensuring employees understand and contribute to the process and solutions developed. This is the best way to ensure all factors, constraints, demands and work-life balance aspirations are taken into account. To this end, the CWAC/WTS partnership, supported by APSE, established working parties with the remit to confirm demand requirements, and design working time arrangements to deliver the Council’s key objectives of reducing cost, improving service coverage and keeping the service in-house.

A large number of varied groups were involved in the project both across a range of city centre, urban and rural locations and across different sections, which included mobile street scene teams, cleansing operatives, mechanical sweeper operatives, and supervisors. The working parties were engaged throughout the project as it progressed through the following three phases:

Project Initiation – this was necessary to establish a clear baseline and structure, incorporating objectives, key tasks, timescales, responsibilities and project planning.

Business Evaluation – here an understanding of true service demand and the challenging of habitual ways of working is critical to the design of innovative new working time arrangements.

Design and Development – demand clarified, alternative rosters are created which deliver the identified service requirement and simultaneously reduce the need for peripheral labour.

Following the review, a new system of work has been devised for the Street Scene service. A key feature of this system is rostered holiday arrangements. This reduces inhouse administration costs, overtime and agency usage. Continuity of service is guaranteed and expensive equipment does not stand idle. The number of units of equipment required may be fewer, further reducing costs.

The CWAC project will roster the majority of holidays but leaves 37 or 74 hours (dependent on length of service) free to choose on request. Staff will also be free to swap shifts. Other features of a sample shift pattern for a 6-person rotation include 9 clear days off every 6 weeks, and a maximum of 2 weekends worked in 6.

Whilst employees are asked to make concessions in terms of holiday rostering and overtime, the system inevitably brings a healthier, lesspressured working culture, reduction in long-hours working, more useable leisure time and, finally, not only job retention, but in some cases, job creation.

To find out more about the many services available from Working Time Solutions – including consultancy, software and Lean-ER itself – then please don’t hesitate to contact us or submit an information request and we shall be happy to find out how we can help. All our solutions start with talking and listening: we look forward to beginning the conversation soon.