The Challenge
BCEO undertook a three month staff engagement process, which “captured BCEO’s & individual staff member’s needs which were distilled into an Aspirational Brief to help us more clearly define our role in supporting schools,” says Jennifer Adams, Change Manager of the BCEO Relocation Project.
Technology was identified as a critical component in aligning the new workplace, how staff connect across multiple locations. Another priority was enabling staff to more effectively use their time.
A clear goal was to reduce email, in favour of sharing information and using online co-authoring via centralised access to single documents, and prioritising Skype over physically jumping in a car to work together. “Information is one of our greatest assets and we wanted our staff to have the skills to manage it more effectively,” Jennifer says.
BCEO rolled out new PC & Apple devices and Microsoft Office 365 (O365) to benefit from its team-focused features and cloud services. Key to the investment was the enabling power of a comprehensive training program.
All BCEO staff were initially invited to respond to the Gartner Digital Skills self-assessment. “We ended up with great data about attitudes to technology, what our people did and didn’t know, which skills the staff thought they needed and the gaps the business identified heading into the future,” Jennifer says.