Major steps have been taken in 2018 to radically altering how we deliver services and communicate with our staff and communities, helping the Council become a more responsive, innovative, trusted and ambitious organisation.           

Throughout the year:

• Ten Council of the Future projects have either been completed or phase one rolled out, helping to make savings and radically changing how we operate.
• Currently, 23 projects are being taken forward which will result in further savings and changes to service delivery over the next five years.
• Nearly 100 employees have signed up to become CANs, helping to deliver over 20 hackathons on subjects as diverse as foster care, project management, and housing of tomorrow.
• All services have committed to an action plan, based on the outcomes of the Employee Engagement Survey helping to make it happen. Further employee engagement will be undertaken in 2019.
• Five employee listening events, three employee communication groups and four Leadership Forums have taken place, providing project updates, transparency, and two-way communication with a diverse range of staff. 
• Over 1k employees have attended sessions on personal development.
• Eight Andy Cope’s sessions on ‘The Art of Being Brilliant’ took place, highlighting how small changes in the way we work can result in big rewards as we move to realise the Council of the Future vision of being RITA (responsive, innovative, trusted and ambitious).
• Two major community consultations were undertaken, with an action plan launched for the eastern locality and a plan being drafted for the west. Consultation with communities in the central locality is planned for spring 2019.

In August, Kenneth Lawrie stepped into the role of Chief Executive heralding a new era for the Council, one focused on transformation, innovation and entrepreneurialism.

• Under his leadership, five-year business plans are being drafted to help bridge our substantial funding gap and meet individual savings targets laid down in the Medium Term Financial Plan.
• Major work has gone into producing the plans, with budget options for the next financial year forming the foundation on which options for year one are being built.
• The New Year will see a renewed drive to identify opportunities for collaborative working, areas of commercialisation, and alternative delivery models that meet the needs of modern society.

The business plans will be central to the Council’s transformation into a smaller organisation that has fewer buildings and staff and delivers fewer services.

Examples of transformation proposals - aligned to five work streams - in the plans include:

• Entrepreneurial services:  Looking at ways the Council could modernise services through projects such Services for the bereaved.
• Enabled communities: Radically altering service delivery through the Closer to Home strategy.
• Digital: Streamlining processes and making better use of technology to create a more flexible workforce – and offer digitally enhanced services that communities want.
• Services of the Future: Finding alternative ways of enabling services i.e. working with other councils and better partnership working with third sector.
• Transformational enablers: The big changes needed to transform the Council such as working with the Strategic Property Review team to transfer assets to community groups, support the Council’s technology infrastructure, and making better use of our data.

The financial aspects of the business plans are expected to be presented to the full Council in February.