The Brief

Care UK work in close partnership with Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts as a leading independent provider of health and social care services.

Care UK is operating in a growing and increasingly competitive market in which they have to be the number one choice for potential customers while providing a quality service to existing patients and service users.

At the same time, Care UK has itself been growing through acquisition, newly acquired businesses are being absorbed into Care UK's ownership and banner. This is not an easy process with the challenge being to build a shared sense of identity, common purpose and engage all businesses emotionally with the Care UK brand.

To meet these internal and external challenges, Care UK decided to refresh their corporate identity, mission and core values. This led to the 'Fulfilling Lives' mission statement. Care UK's aim as an organisation is to enable people to live fulfilling lives whatever their health and care needs.

However, a mission requires change and Care UK recognised that to make this new identity visible to their customers on the outside they had to consider how they worked together on the inside.

What we did

To help us with the transformation, Care UK worked in partnership with t-three on an innovative organisational-wide Leadership Development and Employee Engagement Programme which incorporated both a customised 360 degree feedback tool and the Facet5 psychometric. This proved to be as much about cultures and mindsets as about practical ways of leading, managing and operating in more joined up ways.

Around 400 managers from across the business joined the 'Fulfilling Lives' Journey with the programme being cascaded from the Executive Team downwards, securing senior manager buy-in. Participants completed the Facet5 psychometric tool and customised 360 tool built on Care UK's Leadership Behaviour Framework at the programme outset and then receiving combined feedback on both tools.

The incorporation of both of these development tools encouraged Care UK's task orientated leaders and managers people to reflect, resulting in a greater understanding of themselves, but also of others and an appreciation of diversity and difference. They have also provided managers with a shared language with which to discuss behaviours openly and constructively.

We also drew out the composite data from both the 360 and Facet5 tools to look at the themes and existing culture in the organisation as a first step to changing it and understanding why they are as they are. This data also informed the content of the programme workshops and also enabled Care UK to plan their future development needs.

Facet5's team profiling tool, Teamscape, has been introduced within Care UK's management teams, overlaying team members' profiles to create a collective picture of the team and its preferences. This increased has awareness within teams of how they interact, enabled them to work together more effectively, have better quality discussions and decision making and given them a shared language to constructively challenge.

Alongside the design and delivery of the programme, t-three ran an in-house skills transfer programme which equipped Care UK with a team of 21 internal staff trained in the delivery of Facet5, 360 feedback and workshop facilitation. These trainers currently deliver the Facet5 and 360 to the wider management population, and are doing so across organisational divisions, giving the programme real momentum and strengthening best practice and in-house capacity.

The Results

The 'Fulfilling Lives' journey is an organisational change initiative which has been running for over a year, and is sustaining across the entire group. It has improved the way Care UK see and do things as an organisation. 'Fulfilling Lives' is becoming a "Way of Working" for Care UK so that each individual recognises equally their contribution in making a difference to Care UK's customers and service users.

Both Facet5 and the 360 degree feedback tool have raised awareness amongst the Care UK's managers, enabling them to understand their impact on bringing alive Fulfilling Lives, helping them learn new behaviours, improving team working and their leadership of teams.

On an organisational level, these development tools have built a collective picture of Care UK, raising the organisation's self awareness. It has also given Care UK a shared language which its employees are using to speak to one another.

Care UK are continuing to embed the Facet5 and 360 more widely into the organisation including using Facet5 people selection tool, Audition within their recruitment process.