Within this project, Meridian has worked with the merged Finance department of 6 CCGs. Initial 2-week analysis has identified the following issues:
- Merged practices remaining in silo
- Variation in Method across the roles
- No oversight of capacity
- Duplication of effort The organisation then commissioned an implementation piece of work to translate the ideas into practical changes.
The 18-week programme has covered all aspects of the finance department operations and focussed on identifying and agreeing what constitutes ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ activities for the department, installing role-specific management expectations around core work, and providing the tools to track against KPIs.
A key workstream has been documenting core activities across all functions to ensure there is a single consistent formalised way of doing things which solves the issues associated with method variation across individuals. It has also enabled the organisation to form an induction training manual supporting new team members to work effectively.
4 management training workshops have been delivered to ensure staff are equipped with knowledge and practice of effective managerial behaviours.
The process implemented within the finance department has allowed to make the function more effective, free up time to do the value adding work and to re-focus on supporting other teams within the CCGs to deliver great outcomes.
The main results of the programme are:
- Productivity measures as core workload proportion has increased from 41% to 55% in Commissioning Finance, 28% to 75% within Financial Control, and 16% to 61% within Financial Planning;
- 75 hours of the weekly workload reduction opportunity have been identified which equates to an annual improvement £64,839;
- 26 Procedure Control Documents have been completed with staff;
- A granular view of the department’s workload and capacity, by role, has been achieved for the first time.