The importance of Birmingham's Chamberlain Awards

Dec 18 2008 Agenda

Birmingham City Council’s personnel chief Alan Rudge on the importance of rewarding excellence.

The fourth annual Chamberlain Awards took place this month to recognise and celebrate the outstanding contribution that Birmingham City Council staff make to the efficient running of our city.

The awards took place at the ICC: a glittering evening that was enjoyed by all but some may ask if this is money well spent in the current climate.

It is important to note that the Chamberlain Awards are largely funded by sponsorship with 18 organisations and commercial enterprises supporting the event, but more than this, it would be a very false economy to cut back on rewarding and recognising the contribution that employees make to the success of a business.

These awards are a vital component of a drive by Birmingham City Council to invest in staff, in the relationship between each individual member of staff and their line manager, in engaging employees and leadership. They are one of a number of my initiatives that includes BEST and the Excellence in People Management programme.

The BEST programme represents the values of belief, excellence, success and trust. The passion, energy and commitment that has been shown by the staff involved in BEST has enabled Birmingham City Council to set new standards of best practice with this ground breaking programme.

BEST helps us all work together as one organisation, with one objective, to deliver an exemplary service to the citizens of Birmingham. It is designed to improve motivation and job satisfaction and result in better organisational performance. The programme creates a ‘can-do’ culture amongst employees and develops a sense of pride and commitment in working for Birmingham City Council.

The Excellence in People Management programme supports BEST in aiming to transform the way people are managed, motivating employees to succeed and proving more clarity about their goals.

Improvements in performance and raising standards are both key components that contribute to an organisation’s success in utilising the right skills of the right people at the right time.

The current economic climate increases the need for all organisations to be highly effective and competitive and to deliver the highest levels of performance whilst still controlling their staff costs. This is particularly so for the public sector, we may not have to answer to shareholders but we are accountable (and quite rightly) to the people of Birmingham. We also have to work with fixed budgets and resources that are controlled by political decisions at local and national government level. The financial pressures can be more stringent as demand increases for our services, from an ageing population for example without a corresponding rise in resources or budget.

Along with the private sector, we are also experiencing a sharp rise in customer expectations which requires us to deliver improvements and excellence in service without extra money to invest.

This can only be done by a committed and loyal workforce and these do not appear by magic but are influenced enormously by the nature of the organisation’s leadership and culture.

It is the responsibility of the organisation to increase and sustain motivation, job satisfaction and commitment in order to improve performance.

Key to understanding how these ultimately affect performance at an individual, team and organisational level, is the concept of ‘engagement’ which is fast becoming the ‘holy grail’ of organisational success.

The rewards for high engagement are considerable with several recent studies having shown indisputable links between engagement and various measures of success.

A Watson Wyatt study (2005) asserts that a company with highly engaged employees achieves a financial performance 4 times greater than a company with poor employee attitudes.

Another recent study completed by Dr Beverley Alimo-Metcalfe in the NHS has shown that teams with high engagement combined with high levels of capabilities are significantly more effective and have staff with higher levels of well-being and commitment (so performance is sustained) than those where these features are poor.

The problems that the NHS has experienced in recent years provides us with another illustration that performance cannot be improved by money alone – throwing more money into an organisation is not necessarily going to make it better managed and more productive if engagement is overlooked or not addressed.

Effectively run award ceremonies are a vital part of engagement. They can be anything from award dinners like the Chamberlain Awards at one end of the spectrum through to public acknowledgements at the end of meetings but the point is to say thank you in a public way. At Birmingham City Council we have many different ways to say thank you and to remind all levels of staff that their contribution is valued.

There is a distinction to be made between award ceremonies for staff and industry awards. Whilst industry awards can recognise and reward the best in the industry and promote excellence they cannot unleash talent and commitment from individuals, inspire innovation and a better service delivery the way that a staff award ceremony can.

For me there is a clear business case for The Chamberlain Awards. Birmingham City Council is the largest employer in the West Midlands Region employing over 55,000 workers and it pays to reward their achievements.

This year hundreds of nominations were made of teams and individuals, who have gone the extra mile, innovated or succeeded against adversity. Those who won deserved their moment on the red carpet and all of those who were not nominated also deserve thanks for their contribution.

I am very proud of the Chamberlain Awards and delighted that they are firmly established as a high point of the council’s year.

The scheme is named after Joseph Chamberlain, one of Birmingham’s most distinguished civic leaders. Under his leadership Birmingham was described as the best-governed city in the world and our aspiration is to truly follow in his footsteps.