No redundancies
The impact of the restructuring on jobs had not involved
any staff redundancies.The London Borough of Barnet Housing Department
measured the impact of the culture change in terms of
cost savings, the effect on employees', team leaders'
and managers' job roles, and the benefits of the new
team structures.Cost savings
The restructuring of staff into teams of generic
housing officers has removed the reliance on
temporary agency workers, resulting in considerable
savings.Through a more personalised
relationship between housing officers and customers,
and the use of more holistic assessments of need, the
number of appeals against the housing decisions is
expected to decrease, with a resultant reduction in the
resources needed for appeals processes.Now, the team leaders are identifying
gaps in their skill sets and taking on more intensive
coaching roles within their teams, asking front-line
staff what they want from their leaders.Many had witnessed several waves
of restructuring and cost-saving exercises within the
organisation, which had resulted in many redundancies
over a number of years.There has also been an immediate impact on
reducing the average time it takes to let regeneration
properties, resulting in cost savings from properties
not remaining vacant.The roles of team leaders and managers
Lean requires new behaviours of team leaders and
managers, away from a 'command and control' style
to a 'participative and empowering' style.However, as a result of there
not being redundancies, a number of staff indicated that
they had got involved in shaping the new service, and
others in supporting the changes, because they believed
that senior managers were authentic in saying that they
wanted to cut waste before losing jobs.Five posts were removed from the previous
structure, which had previously been filled by agency
workers.