Building trust in the workplace is a cornerstone of a thriving organisation and it starts with listening to your people.
It’s why taking and acting on employee feedback is a key focus for organisations such as the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (OCAG). The Office has a statutory remit to improve the use of public money and resources and strengthen public accountability.
Colette Drinan, secretary and director of audit at OCAG, says its mission is “to add as much value as we can to public service in Ireland through the provision of high-quality audit services, focused on improving the use of public money and resources, and strengthening public accountability.”
It is responsible for the audit of accounts across a wide range of State activities including central Government, funds administered by Government departments, state revenue collection, non-commercial state sponsored bodies, third-level educational institutions, health bodies and more.
Book your place at Europe’s leading summit for talent
‘A gas emergency would quickly turn into an electricity emergency. It is low-risk, but high-consequence’
How LEO Digital for Business is helping to boost small business competitiveness
‘I have to believe that this situation is not forever’: stress mounts in homeless parents and children living in claustrophobic one-room accommodation
In its Statement of Strategy 2021-2025, one of the main priorities was to strengthen the organisation, she explains.
“We recognised that our people are our most valuable resource as we rely on our highly qualified staff and their professional skills and experience to carry out public audit. We want to be an employer of choice for those who wish to pursue a career in audit and to make a difference to the delivery of public services,” says Drinan.
As part of this, the OCAG, which has about 200 staff, gathers and encourages feedback in a number of ways, including the annual Great Place to Work certification process. The anonymous survey asks staff for their workplace experiences, focusing on areas such as employee engagement, wellbeing, workplace culture and leadership.
“We created an action plan, which is updated after each survey, outlining how management plans to address the lowest scoring areas,” she says. “We provide staff with updates on progress against the plan periodically and the consistent nature of the surveys provides us with data to assess the impact of management’s actions. The results, action plans and updates are all shared on our intranet.”
It also channels feedback via informal methods including pulse surveys, town hall meetings and topic specific working groups, and has introduced numerous initiatives based on the feedback received, helping to improve employee experience.
These include the introduction of an employee recognition policy. A working group was formed to develop the policy and sought input from all staff on what the policy should include. It also includes the creation of personal development dashboards enabling people to monitor their own learning and development and work experience.
The office now publishes quarterly articles celebrating those who have reached length of service milestones and has developed a wellbeing programme with an annual calendar of events. It has also introduced a uniform scheduling system to give greater visibility of upcoming assignments.
“From a management perspective, gathering feedback gives an invaluable insight into the overall sentiment within the office. It allows management to identify what we are doing well, so we can track these areas to ensure it continues to do them well. Crucially, it also allows us to identify and address areas where we can do better. This has resulted in targeted actions to dramatically improve the workplace culture in the last four years,” says Drinan.
Sport Ireland has also benefited from turning feedback into progress. As the agency tasked with the development of sport in Ireland, including high performance sport, team building is central to its mission.
“A key part of fostering trust is listening to staff, creating an open space where they can share and come up with solutions and ideas, then empowering them to engage with those ideas and follow through,” says Kevin Quigley, organisational development and learning specialist at Sport Ireland. “People will trust an organisation where they know that if they have an issue, they can raise it and act on it.”
As part of this the agency has developed a people development framework which supports organisational strategy both in terms of business planning and human resources. It benchmarked against international peer organisations, asked staff about the key skills they felt they required, and supported them to develop them.
In recent years Sport Ireland has focused on communications too, bringing together a group of volunteers across different units within the organisation to encourage suggestions for improvement.
By using an impact-effort matrix, it identified and prioritised the “low-hanging fruit”, which could have the most significant impact quickly, he explains. These were then driven by staff known as “make-it-happen sponsors”.
The improvements that resulted span everything from better performance management to greater provision of training and development opportunities, and from the introduction of an events master planner to the delivery of interview skills training.
The fact that staff not only identified problems but devised and implemented solutions ensured full buy-in. “The power of it is that it empowers everyone, and everyone takes ownership of it,” he says.
In so doing, not only does the organisation improve but its people’s leadership and collaborative skills develop too. “It’s a win-win for everyone involved,” says Quigley, who says it has helped employee engagement and retention too.
Trust allows your people to be the best they can be, says Jim Flynn, partner at Great Place to Work. “It aligns people to what the organisation is trying to achieve. Having it means people don’t spend time second-guessing their leaders’ intentions. It provides them with a safe space to contribute fully and to learn,” he explains.
At both the OCAG and Sport Ireland, “The approach to action planning has been very consistent over the years, with the result that they put their employees in the best position to do the best job possible,” says Flynn.
“It is impossible to build organisational trust without listening and these organisations have proved very good at both listening and taking action – and the two go together.”
