The LCS Impact Awards

Continuous Improvement Culture & Capability Build

Background

Sellafield Ltd Group Business Services (GBS) is a Multi-Functional Shared Service organisation. Delivering operational services in People (HR), Finance and Administration. Their primary customers are the 11,000+ employees that work for Sellafield Ltd.

Newly formed in 2020, GBS were looking to build on the work started by Nuclear Shared Business Services (NSBS), with a focus on 4 key areas:

1. Seeking to transform service performance, efficiency, pace and quality.
2. How? Through Service Management, Digital solutions, E2E process improvement, and driving Business Improvement Culture.
3. Transitioning focus of capability from transacting to assuring and adding value.
4. Seeking to establish credibility and reputation to delivering more of the services they currently deliver, take on new service lines and deliver to new customers.

Summary

• LCS Impact Award category: Team
• Team name: GBS & BI central team, Sellafield Limited
• Award title: Continuous Improvement Culture and Capability Build.

Activity

Paul Dobson, Business Improvement Practitioner at Sellafield, said:

“I made contact with the GBS Lead Team and explained how I would use the Lean Competency System (LCS) programme approach and conceptualise this to support the demand for a GBS wide improvement in performance with a focus on adding value and minimising waste with the aim being to remove obstacles and frustrations within processes.

The GBS Lead Team signed off on the approach and a roll out plan was formulated, recognising firstly the need for a baseline of current levels of Business Improvement tools and techniques in use to be established. They also recognised the immediate need for a capability build within their area and the longer-term requirement for a Business Improvement culture to be embedded in the area.

With regards to the delivery of 1a and 1b, adding some area specific information to the content has proven to be extremely effective. We also wanted all attendees to understand what we expect from a 1b so a role profile was created. All 1b’s were also to have a specific improvement project to work on which would cover at least 75% of workbook content.”

Impact

No other enabling function at Sellafield Ltd has such a focus on Business Improvements and that is down to the work the Central Business Improvements team has completed in collaboration with GBS over the last 12 months; using the LCS approach to successfully build capability and create the culture.
By building capability and creating this culture of Business Improvements, GBS have ensured that they maximise value across the whole organisation; working together with other areas of the business proactively.

Through the 1a and 1b, GBS employees have developed the skills, values, behaviours and culture that will drive performance. The GBS teams have focused on process optimisation and identification of waste, ensuring they perform collaboratively and effectively.

They now have a defined vision and mission which feeds down into design principles with clear links to the Manifesto.

Error rates have reduced; productivity has increased; Team Leaders are no longer spending half their days dealing with problems raised to them and the introduction of SQCDP has brought multiple benefits across all teams.

130 GBS employees have attended the 1a and 10 employees have completed their 1b modules. 2 out of the 10 1b’s have been certified as Level 1b Business Improvement Practitioners in line with the Lean Competency system. It is expected the other 8 will be signed off in June 2022. This is impressive as the first 1b module was in November 2021, giving an overall time of between 7 to 8 months from start to completion.

All 1b’s have a project to work on which is specific to GBS and this approach has enabled each workbook to be completed in an average of 4 to 5 weeks in between modules and each project has brought immediate benefits to different areas of GBS.