We have retained our Investors in People Silver

We have been an accredited with IiP since 2009, however this assessment was against the new generation 6 framework of IiP which is far more stretching than the previous one that we were assessed against in 2014. So to achieve Silver was a significant improvement for us.

The assessment was in two parts. We received a great return of 47% from the online survey, which was a brilliant result. Then 53 face to face and telephone interviews were conducted at several locations across our organisation.
It is clear from the assessment that whilst we have been rated as Silver, there is evidence to show we are working at a Gold level in some areas. If we continue to embed our people plans then at our next assessment in 3 years’ time we could well be up to Gold.

So what did the assessment tell us?

What stood out through the assessment was our values and the focus upon achieving outcomes for the people we support, along with a culture of empowering others, continuous improvement, team working and collaboration. There was consistency through the assessment that everyone understood how they contribute to providing great care and support.

Performance management was one of two areas requiring the most development. Overall this is about embedding a culture of high performance and we are developing a number of plans to achieve this, including introducing an operational dashboard so all of our services can see how well they are performing in a number of different areas, continuing to make our values part of how we go about our work and the introduction of a new supervision and appraisal framework.

Reward was the second area and this is about employees feeling well rewarded and recognised for their contributions. Again, we are taking a number of actions to address this including introducing our new reward platform, looking at how we recognise behaviour which is in line with our values and developing employee awards and long service awards.

Thank you

Finally, on behalf of EMT and the board of trustees we’d like to thank again everyone who took part and shared their views on working for Making Space. People were honest and reinforced our belief that to provide great care and support we need engaged employees who want to give their best and that stood out through this assessment.