Senior HR Advisor

One of the joys of Delt is that it has always known exactly what it is for. We have a set of very clear, well understood strategic objectives that have remained constant and are widely shared. The same is not true of many organisations. Because these objectives are strategic in nature, sometimes it’s difficult to tie them up with everyday priorities, which change regularly. To try and make things easier we have introduced the concept of big rocks, which are the big and important but short-term goals in front of us right now. There are four big rocks – or rather one very big rock and three slightly smaller ones. The biggest rock is the addition of a new shareholder to Delt which will be achieved in 2025 when we transition our services into a new council. This will remain the single most important thing we can continue to do to ensure the long-term viability of Delt as a shared services entity. It’s also one of the most difficult and is something that almost every other similar organisation has failed to do. Because most of our employees cannot directly influence the goal of landing one or more new shareholders, but there are definitely things they can do that will make this easier and more likely which is why all employees with have work objectives that are tied to our other 3 rocks of Customer Experience, Innovation and Cyber Security. We share updates on everyone’s progress throughout the year to keep them alive and for employees to remain engaged.

Delt Shared Services vision, values and mission statement were developed by our staff for our staff. We strive to integrate our values into every aspect of our working lives. From interviews at the recruitment stage through to performance review cycles. In our performance assessment cycle 50% of an individual’s assessment rating is based on the values and everyone including the senior leaders have a stop, start and continue development plan to highlight individually what they are doing well and and what they need to work on. Without it starting at the top it would be very difficult to have employees buy-in. What makes us different is that senior management share their vulnerability – sharing their mistakes and what they have learned to employees to create a more open and honest work environment.

Our CEO, Giles Letheren, is an absolute model for Delt Shared Services values and doesn’t hesitate to show his honesty, vulnerability and passion for the work we do everyday. It was one of the reasons he was the recipient of the Institute of Directors, Director of the Year award in 2019. He demonstrates a mindset that is able to bring out the best in our employees and is highly regarded by all staff. We do not have any offices in our buildings so when he is working on site he sits amongst the teams and has an open door policy, not only because he doesn’t have a door but because he genuinely is interested in the ideas and feedback from employees who are actually doing the work directly in contact with our customers. As part of Corporate inductions Giles has a 121 session with each new starter to ensure he meets them and understand who they are as people and not just the roles they were hired for.

Delt are proud of their staff forum – Delt Rad. Delt signed a nationally unprecedented union agreement in 2018 with 3 trade unions which ensures all Delt staff have a voice whether they are members of a trade union or not. This unique agreement alongside our annual engagement survey ensures employees have a voice into our people plan, processes and policies. Our forum is a pro-active staff led group that represent the business in all interests of working life and practices. The group meets regularly to discuss staff issues, requests and suggestions working to make changes and drive positive impacts wherever possible. Additionally, Delt’s Board of Directors includes a Staff Non-Executive Director. The role is nominated and voted for by the rest of the business with the Director position serving a 3-year term and contributing to the successful running of Delt.

As Delt grows our ability to remain agile means we are becoming increasingly interdependent on each other to get things done. With this interdependency comes increased pressure to communicate, cooperate and collaborate which can be challenging when there are competing priorities and we are operating at the pace we do. It is more important than ever that we nurturing our working relationships and building the skills to enhance our capability to solve problems quickly. These 3 C’s – Communication, Collaboration and Cooperation – are the behaviours at the heart of living our values and when we are all role modelling our values we can do the most amazing things for our customers.