GuideWell Impact Awards: Cultural transformation & Process Improvement
Background
GuideWell has undergone a massive Lean cultural transformation over the course of the last 3.5 years, that has saved millions to its members and providers, thanks to the leadership of Service Center and Enterprise Shared Service Vice-President, Gregory Szkotnicki, and Program and Community Developer, Sr. Director, Eduardo Curros, with the sponsorship and support of President & Chief Executive Officer, GuideWell and Florida Blue: Pat Geraghty and Executive Vice President, Medicare & Chief Innovation and Experience Officer: Camille Harrison.
Activity
This year alone the community has expanded by over 900 members and the program has added 4 instructors, 19 Black Belts, 30+ Brown Belt Coaches, 100 Operational Excellence Green Belts and 200+ Continuous Improvement Green Belts. With current totals of over 2,300 members, across 100 teams and growing in all 50 states and Puerto Rico; in addition to multiple GuideWell entities such as Triple-S, Florida HealthCare Plans, Diagnostic Clinic Medical Group, Emcara, and WebTPA.
Of the 2,300 members, over 700 members have a Continuous Improvement Green Belt, 250+ with Operational Excellence Green Belt, 65+ Internal Brown Belt Coaches, and 38 Black Belts, and 5 instructors. In addition to the internal benefits, the program has done external community integration with the University of North Florida Master’s in Health Administration Program and the Jacksonville Humane Society. Team Recognition: Lean Team and Engagement Team saved millions in Cost Aversion (Soft Savings) and Cost Aversion Crystallization (Hard Savings).
Individual Award Highlights: Eduardo Curros: Lead the Black Belt Program, certified four new instructors and the certification of 38 new internal coaches. Each of the Lean Program Team: David Maltese, Maria Baar and Reba Phillips: Completed: Instructorship, Black, and Coaching Brown Belts and Certified a minimum of 40+ Green Belts. Ernest Patterson: Completed: Instructorship, Black, and Coaching Brown Belts and Certified a minimum of 15+ Green Belts and spearheaded multiple large-scale engagements.
It is our pleasure to announce that GuideWell has been awarded Seven Lean Competency Systems Impact Awards.
- Corporate Level Award: GuideWell
- Team Level Award: Lean Program and Engagement Team
- Program Creator, Sr. Director, and Instructor: Eduardo Curros
- Engagement Team Sr. Manager and Instructor: Ernest Patterson
- Lean Program Team Lead and Instructor: David Maltese
- Lean Instructor: Maria Baar
- Lean Instructor: Reba Phillips
- Engagement Specialist: Ashley Butts
- Engagement Specialist: Paulette Kellawon
- Engagement Specialist: David Goldfield
- Engagement Specialist: John Charwinsky
- Individual Awards:
- Program Creator, Sr. Director, and Instructor: Eduardo Curros
- Engagement Team Sr. Manager and Instructor: Ernest Patterson
- Lean Program Team Lead and Instructor: David Maltese
- Lean Instructor: Maria Baar
- Lean Instructor: Reba Phillips
IPO Team Award – Creation of a Bespoke Workplace Booking App
Background
The Intellectual Property Office is the official UK government body responsible for intellectual property rights including patent, designs, trademarks and copyright. With new working practices evolving from the pandemic our organisation needed an innovative approach to site attendance across our estate.
To support these vital changes, we introduced a bespoke workspace booking app and visitors management software, which has significantly transformed the way our organisation operates, providing a transformational return to buildings, enhancing staff autonomy, fostering collaboration, facilitating hybrid working, and eliminating external, fee-bearing desk management and visitor management software.
Activity
One of the key benefits of our app is the empowerment it provides to our people. They have gained full autonomy over their attendance, eliminating the need for coordination with their wider teams. This newfound independence has allowed our people to refocus on their core responsibilities and has greatly influenced the culture of the organisation as more and more people start returning to on-site working.
Furthermore, the introduction of the app has had a positive impact on security operations. The security team can now easily grant site access by simply viewing an iPad screen, which reduces delays at our external main entrance and reception areas. This improvement in operational efficiency contributes to a smoother and more secure building access process.
As our organisation mandates a return to the physical workspace, the app has proven invaluable in supporting all staff through its user-friendly interface, virtual tours, and overall ease of use. It plays a crucial role in facilitating the cultural shift towards increased in-building attendance.
The business area representatives have seamlessly resumed their substantive roles within their departments, contributing to the broader transformation of our organisation. The app’s integration into daily operations has become second nature for our people, fostering a culture of hybrid working, collaboration, and team building.
Impacts
The introduction of the app has allowed our organisation to develop flexible, autonomous and a hybrid ethos, embedding our values:
- Delivering for customers
- Innovating for success
- Valuing our people
Not only has the impact supported the changes, but our app has also enhanced security measures, which has resulted in significant cost savings. By mitigating the need for external software and hardware, we have avoided installation fees amounting to approximately £40,000, along with ongoing yearly administrative fees. Additionally, the reduction in staff time translates to savings of over £45,000.
The streamlined management ownership of our dedicated app team allows for prompt updates, customisation, and troubleshooting, ensuring that the app stays aligned with our organisation’s requirements and any changes in the technological landscape. This structure ensures continuous improvement and the evolving services provided,
In summary, the cost-effectiveness, coupled with efficient management and integration with existing licensing, positions our apps as a sustainable and valuable solution for meeting the dynamic needs of our organisation, supporting transformational change to behaviours and flexibility for site attendance.
Ingeus Team Award – Continuous Improvement Academy Team Impact
Summary: Launching a CI Academy drives increased capability, better decisions, effects change
and boosts customer service.
Ingeus is a leading people services provider, delivering long-term, impactful projects to enable better
lives across the employability, health, youth, and justice sectors. It employs 2,300 people, based
remotely and across 100+ office locations. In our mission to harness the talents of our contrasting
teams, and to continuously improve, we launched our three-year Continuous Improvement Strategy
in October 2021.
A 2021 skills audit on CI capability identified a lack of enterprise level awareness around CI Lean Six
Sigma Methodology, with only 7 employees experienced in Continuous Improvement practices and
accredited in Lean Six Sigma.
Without CI awareness and capability, employees were not equipped to identify improvement
opportunities within non-performing workflows and processes. Furthermore, a lack of capability and
knowledge of key tools was affecting the ability to apply root cause analysis techniques to business
problems and make evidence-based decisions on performance improvements.
The Transformation Director and CI team identified this was impeding Ingeus in its goal to improve
the service excellence delivered to customers and commissioners of our services. It also put Ingeus
at a disadvantage as direct competitors had CI capability. It posed a potential business risk as service
commissioners expect providers to invest in continuous improvement.
It was agreed that Investment in an Academy would help employees recognise the role they play in
contributing to CI to achieve service excellence, and to apply its methods day-to-day to become
more efficient, effective and achieve the best outcomes. Flexible Academy pathways would equip
employees in key roles to make better decisions and drive effective change that balances business
risk.
Activity
Fully supported and sponsored by Ingeus Executive team, Transformation Director Lisa Jasper
developed a CI strategy which included an Accredited internal CI Academy to drive up capability.
One of several projects undertaken as part of an ambitious three-year plan, the Academy was
launched in May 22 to support the implementation of our strategy to increase CI awareness and
capability, and a create a culture of continuous improvement.
To ensure the successful achievement of future CI ambitions, which included increased company-
wide CI capability to a minimum of 5% of the Ingeus employee population. Across all divisional
contracts and supporting services that would amount to a CI capability of over 100 people.
Offering a flexible and blended Lean Six Sigma accredited training programme, the first three cohorts
were delivered August 22 – June 2023. Ingeus has achieved a significant increase in CI capability
leading to 141 Change Agents by June 2023.
- Impact
Investment in a CI Academy has helped employees recognise the role they play in contributing to
service excellence for our customers and Ingeus is now achieving a 7% Change Agent capability at
organisation level. Just a few of the impact outcomes are outlined below:
Quantifiable Outcomes - More than 1700 people have completed White Belt training so far creating significant awareness
around CI and Lean Six Sigma. - 51 employees have completed a full programme (36 Yellow Belts and 14 Green Belts) with 1 in
progression towards practitioner accreditation. - Three rounds of refresher training for existing Change Agents have supported the completion of 30
improvement projects, with a further 14 complete by June 2023. - 80 per cent of surveyed Academy completers stated that their CI knowledge at the start of the
process was one out of five, and on completion 90% stated their awareness was four or above.
Qualitative outcomes - White Belt Induction training provides early understanding of our vision for continuous
improvement and the role it plays in team efficiency and effectiveness, and customer excellence. - Academy has created a supportive and collaborative environment, enabling interaction and the
sharing of CI improvement insights from around the business. - Employees have a greater understanding of CI and are keen to get involved – 185 expressions of
interest received for Lean Six Sigma training. - Teams now look for the most efficient and effective ways of doing things and appear more aware
of wasteful process activity.
Adam Hart, Chief Operating Officer, Ingeus UK
“By implementing a continuous improvement methodology across the entire UK business, Ingeus
has successfully and significantly reduced the very real risks of reputational damage and competitive
disadvantage, whilst simultaneously increasing service efficiency and effectiveness. Establishing a
talented team, able to effect real change – at scale and at speed – was paramount.
From a standing start, our Transformation Director supported by a small CI Team, along with central
marketing support, has more than surpassed the Executive Team’s expectations.
Working tirelessly to educate, motivate and enable Ingeus colleagues to refine and improve their
performance has been a real labour of love – and the results speak for themselves.
Change is positive when it’s owned and driven by the people at its heart – not imposed on them but
developed by them. Our CI Team is expertly making that happen and the excitement around the
business is palpable.”
Ingeus Organisation Award – Continuous Improvement Strategy Execution
Ingeus is a leading people services provider, delivering long-term, impactful projects to enable better
lives. Working for commissioners at national and regional level, and hundreds of partner
organisations it delivers programmes across the employability, health, youth, and justice sectors. It
employs 2,300 people, based remotely and across 100+ UK office locations.
As a customer-focused business our goal is to deliver excellent customer service and achieve high-
quality performance outcomes. Taking time to understand our customers is essential to ensure our
services meet their needs.
Our Transformation Director Lisa Jasper identified that a continuous improvement culture and
strategy was required to enable Ingeus to deliver excellent customer service and achieve
consistently high-quality performance outcomes.
Increasingly, service commissioners including Ministry of Justice, Department for Work and Pensions
and the NHS have expectations that require us to invest in continuous improvement and a
structured methodology.
With this in mind, in 2021, Ingeus UK embarked on a journey to create and embed a culture of
Continuous Improvement (CI) across all division, contracts, and services. In our mission to harness
the talents of our contrasting teams, and to continuously improve, we launched our three-year
Continuous Improvement Strategy in October 2021.
Key milestones set and delivered included
- Increasing Leadership and All staff Engagement in CI.
- Increasing CI capability across Ingeus with the aim of four per cent of the Ingeus employee
population accredited as Change Agents. - Implementing a programme of process standardisation with a supporting framework to
eliminate variation. - Mapping, standardising and enhancing our Customer Journeys
- Aligning continuous improvement activity with Compliance, Quality, Assurance and Risk
activity. - Introducing Visual management.
- Launching an internal accredited Continuous Improvement Academy for over 2300
employees. - Create a CI Toolkit accessible to all employees and Change Agents to enable them to identify
and deliver improvements.
Activity
Fully supported and sponsored by Ingeus Executive team our Transformation Director Lisa Jasper
launched a three-year CI Strategic plan. The strategy was designed to create and embed a
continuous improvement culture to enable Ingeus UK to deliver excellent customer service and
achieve high quality performance outcomes. Activities were carried out using Lean and Six Sigma
principles.
- The programme commenced with the creation of an Ingeus CI House used as an easy visual prompt
for colleagues to understand and engage with the strategy. Using the CI House, the team set out the
strong foundations including a Continuous Improvement Academy, Governance and Quality
Assurance Framework, and Leadership and Engagement, supported by three pillars: Standardisation,
Visual Management and Continuous Improvement.
In April 2021 a skills audit across all teams established only seven employees had a qualification in a
CI Methodology and highlighted that 68 per cent of employees had no CI experience. Baseline data
indicated a lack of capability across the business. Root cause analysis around capability and CI
experience was attributed to a lack of strategic and enterprise level CI awareness, engagement, and
training opportunities for all levels, including Senior Leaders.
Key strategic solutions included: - Effective comms and awareness for leaders and staff to introduce CI strategy including
monthly CI updates for the Executive team, detailing strategy execution, and feeding back - Executive expectations to leaders and teams4% target for minimum team CI capability reviewed frequently to ensure capability is being
maintained - Investment in external Green and Yellow Belt creating initial and guiding coalition
- Standardised Customer Journey for greater visibility of value streams and process health
White Belt Awareness to all employees - Programme of variation elimination from Processes and implementation of Process
Management - Launch of Accredited CI Academy for Lean & Six Sigma training
- Implementation of a CI CQAF (Compliance Quality Assurance Framework) evaluation
- Creation of a knowledge bank to centralise the capture of CI projects for the sharing of
information, insight and benefit realisation. - Introduction of Visual Management to provide contractual data insight across Ingeus;
balanced scorecard and dashboard reporting available on contracts to provide insight to
analyse performance and identify what can be done better. - Quarterly Change Agent forums revamped for 2023 introducing a CI channel to ensure two-
way communications and help track improvement projects in progress.
Introduction of communities of practices (Summer 2023) for the sharing of CI Insight, project
success and best practice. - Annual quality appraisal of Academy activity to assess impact, benefits from projects and
value added
The impact
Our approach to continuous improvement has been gradual and as with most continuous
improvement methodologies, we have focussed our efforts on the people who deliver the services
and interact with customers, drawing on their ideas around what will make the experience excellent
and what needs to be improved.
Some of our successful outcomes Included:
Increased maturity from 1 to 4 in Leadership and engagement a result of a supportive and
progressive Executive Board willing to commit to investing in Continuous Improvement for
the future of the business
- Significant increase Lean & Six Sigma accredited Change Agents from 7 employees to 141 to
support and deliver our strategy - Increased CI capability to 5% and above within 98% of teams and an overall capability of 7%
at organisation level - An increase in CI awareness from 32 to 85%
- 6,659 employee views of our CI SharePoint created to provide a central point of information,
tools, and access to training. - More than 1700 people completed White Belt training creating significant awareness around
Standardisation, CI, and Lean Six Sigma - In April 2021 only four (15%) teams were using a centralised process management approach.
As a result of the actions taken as part of the Ingeus CI strategy 30 out of 31(98%) teams are
now using a centralised approach to process management - More than 300 hours of Academy training delivered
Qualitative outcomes - Early engagement with leaders and all staff has created a CI culture where leaders and
change agents drive, promote, and realise the benefits of CI as part of day-to-day work. - Employees develop early understanding of the CI strategy and how they can support
efficiency, effectiveness, and customer excellence. - Employees in key roles now equipped to make better decisions and drive effective change
that balances business risk. - Increased maturity in Compliance & Quality Assurance Framework collaboration
Fiona Monahan, Chief Executive, Ingeus UK
“The last year has proven to be a journey of discovery for Ingeus colleagues. From the Executive and
senior management teams to our talented front-line staff and new starters, we have been guided
and supported into new ways of thinking and working.
“Our Transformation Director Lisa Jasper and her small but mighty team have delivered outstanding
results in the first year of our CI Strategy – their very own masterclass in project implementation.
Feedback to the Executive team has been timely and robust, and our resilient teams have seized
opportunities for uptake.
“We may be a large and somewhat disparate set of teams, delivering multiple contrasting services
with differing demands, yet our uniting purpose to enable better lives can only be strengthened by
fresh thinking, embracing change, and minimising waste, exactly what our CI strategy is now
achieving.”
Ingeus
Background
Ingeus is a leading people services provider, delivering impactful projects to enable better lives at both national and regional level and delivers programmes across the employability, health, youth, and justice sectors. It employs 2,300 people, based remotely and across 100+ UK office locations. In our mission to continuously improve, we launched our three-year Continuous Improvement Strategy in October 2021.
In 2021 Collette was instrumental in launching Ingeus’ Continuous Improvement strategy. She believed this approach would create opportunities for greater collaboration between operational teams and key stakeholders within Ingeus.
Exploration of process management techniques in April 2021 highlighted that only four (15%) teams were using a centralised process management approach.
In addition, an informal opinion poll from existing CI Change Agents in November 21 highlighted that 36 per cent believed their teams’ processes were not centrally managed and 17 per cent were undocumented. Initial Promapp licence capture also highlighted that of 2700 licences, only 477 (18 per cent) were being used and if left unaddressed, this may have resulted in a wasted cost of £33,132.16.
Activity
An improvement project was undertaken by Collette Westerman, Continuous Improvement Academy Development Manager, as part of an ambitious three-year CI strategic plan and its aim was to eliminate variation and siloed process development, to introduce standardise approaches to process mapping process analysis and ensure at least 85 per cent of teams were centrally capturing baseline processes for ongoing improvement.
Actions taken included:
- An enterprise level launch of a centralised process management system
- Implementation of a process management framework
- Launch of a standardised customer journey to help teams visualise existing and required processes
- Process standardisation scoping exercise to help teams capture their process and identify gaps and improvements
- Awareness and Leader Engagement sessions – including breakout sessions on standardisation
- Awareness and training was supported by a newly launched internal CI Academy and a programme of standardisation training using Lean Six Sigma accredited Change Agents as mentors.
Impact
As a result of the actions taken as part of the Ingeus CI strategy 30 out of 31 teams are now using a centralised approach to process management and the project has significantly improved process activities including increased levels of interaction with centralised processes, overall process quality, and visibility and reducing duplication and variation. Some of the additional impacts include:
- Promapp System access increased to 77 per cent after just one round of standardisation training.
- Promapp awareness training increased licence uptake by 439 per cent between April 21 and April 22.
- 130 employees appointed process writers following training; all teams now have appointed process owners increasing accountability for ongoing management and improvement.
- System training through the Academy has increased Promapp interaction/Process views by 998 per cent between April 21 and April 22. A year on, this increase stands at 2,881 per cent.
- 50 processes centrally captured in April 21; to date there are 861 processes.
- Using Promapp allows colleagues to receive an immediate update when there has been a process change – meaning communication around changes is now much quicker.
- Silo working has decreased significantly and teams work collaboratively with stakeholders.
- Teams are joined up in their approach to new starter training – Learning and Development has access to ‘single truth’ operational processes that support accurate induction training.
- Reduction in duplication, variation, firefighting – giving time back to managers because their teams have the information needed to do their job.
Speak Greek®
Background
As there were many Greek tutors offering private or group lessons to students who would like to learn Greek, I tried to identify my unique selling point which I summarised to the motto: ‘Passion for teaching our native language’. Being passionate about my business and equipped with data from analysing what competitors were offering at that time and what customers would like to see on offer, I decided to expand services for customers (students, teachers-competitors, parents, businesses).
Services included free conversation classes for adults, support groups for Greek language & Culture, ebooks, webinars, educational projects, free resources. Despite the range of services available, the number of new students was limited and since 2018 that I included translation services, I found it really hard to attract new customers.
Activity
Experiencing lean thinking started in 2018 but a structured approach towards its tools and techniques evolved later. Within the last 12 months lean was fully embraced to all the operations and lessons. To identify why there wasn’t a steady increase of students to take up my services, I used cause and effect diagram.
Through this process, I managed to visually present myself with areas that required improvement with an immediate action plan. To identify how I could be more competitive in the translation industry as there were more established translators than me with more experience and qualifications specifically for translating services, I used A3 problem solving.
I had to attract some of their customers and new customers by adapting an ambitious approach offering competitive charges that included as standard completion of translation within 24 hours, paid 1st class postage and scanned documents to customers. Once I had more students enrolling to either private lessons or classes, I used flow for adult students to identify clearly how I can support customers through a transition period of limited time for myself to be able to deliver lessons.
Impact
By fully immersing myself to lean thinking, Speak Greek® now has a steadily increased income and visitors on the website. Processes that could be automated (enrolling new students, replying to messages with simple queries about availability and prices, scheduling lessons, issuing invoices etc.) are now automated saving a considerable amount of time that is invested in improving quality of services and developing new services.
Also, standardisation of forms (e.g. GDPR consent, Registration form) and fact sheets has led to a reduction of errors and satisfied customers who are becoming our Ambassadors, introducing new customers to our services. Customers are receiving a tailored service and they appreciate the hard work we are putting in to deliver our services.
They also enjoy our commitment to reply to any messages within 24 hours regardless of bank holidays or festive periods/holidays. Customers’ feedback on TrustPilot is amazing, highlighting both the quality and cost-effectiveness of our services: https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/speak-greek.com
Recently, Speak Greek won the SME News Northern Enterprise Award ‘Best Greek Language & Culture Lessons Provider – North West’. Next steps include collaboration with qualified teachers to deliver webinars on specific topics, publishing ebooks of other teachers and introducing customer immersion sessions to become even better!
