WHY
Financial pressures are a reality of public services and West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue (WYFRS) is no different. In 2020, they established a “Smarter Working” department to lead functional reviews and deliver a range of service improvements.
WYFRS wanted to place service users closer to the centre of organisational decisions and to ensure an embedded decision-making culture around changes that impacted communities.
Using the question ‘How does this process help make West Yorkshire Safer?’ we kept service users at the heart of the reviews, ensuring interventions were designed to improve services holistically, not just as standalone improvements.
HOW
We partnered with subject matter experts from each area to lead the transformation. In collaboration, we mapped out each end-to-end process and uncovered both successes and pain points.
We created visual assets to theme and highlight cross-organisational activities that added to or reduced quality of service.
Reviewing the insights with senior leadership, we then explored opportunities for the future. Bringing the key decision makers together, we created a ‘proof of concept’ for process improvements.
It demonstrated specific changes that were needed and how they could be achieved. This empowered the teams to own and build action plans that delivered large-scale changes within their existing delivery frameworks.
WHAT
The work connected the voices of many and identified many previously unseen opportunities to improve services and process, especially those connected to front-line operations:
- The new way of working for Property Repairs will avoid a spend of up to £75,000 over the next 2 years and improved morale on stations
- Expenses processing improvements claiming back hundreds of hours for frontline firefighters
- New training and competency monitoring system provides improved insight and data audit capabilities
- Removal of waste in over 20 processes and associated lost energy
£200,000
Savings in the following 2 years
12 days to 2
Procurement Process efficiency increased
79%
Return on Investment of working with ICE
"I was impressed at how quickly the ICE consultants became part of the WYFRS team, taking time to listen and understand how we as an organisation function and the goals and values we place at the heart of our service to the community.
Having been through previous organisational and cultural change programmes we really noticed how differently ICE worked and how this fresh approach helped us to tackle known issues. Their 7E’s excellence model allowed us to identify the key workstreams we needed to focus on and their approach to facilitated change and behavioural development ensured that our staff were engaged from day one in all aspects of planning, problem solving, decision making and implementation.
Speaking to our employees it is clear they are now more confident, more knowledgeable, more engaged and have the sustainable skills to own our on-going efficiency-led improvement programmes. We have already seen excellent demonstrable cost savings through our work with ICE. "
John Roberts
Chief Fire Officer
