Why it’s essential for people-development consultancies and HR teams to work together

The background to the partnership between MatchFit and the Ministry of Justice

For the last five years MatchFit has worked in partnership with the Civil Service HR Casework Team. The teams’ close working relationship has been a major driver behind the successful impact of this partnership with Civil Service clients.

We sat down with Finola Neligan, an HR Technical Consultant within the MOJ who has worked closely with MatchFit consultants over several years to get her view of the partnership.

“I am an HR Technical Consultant, sitting within the HR Casework Team,” says Finola. “Our overarching aim is to upskill and improve the outcomes line managers across the Civil Service can achieve in the course of their people management. My role specifically is to work with business areas across the Civil Service, not only within my department, but others as well, to support them when it comes to challenges such as performance, sickness management or cultural concerns. I then support them to achieve positive outcomes and they upskill in the process.”

Finola was first introduced to MatchFit when they worked with her team internally, providing internal L&D support including one-to-one coaching. From there, a formal partnership was created to deliver a service for clients (other departments and agencies) across the Civil Service. It was at that stage that Finola moved into the role of HR Technical Consultant to work within the framework of the partnership.

Setting high performance goals

The partnership’s aim, and the work undertaken with numerous clients over the years, was to enable and support sustainable high performance in Government departments and the teams within. The activity has been instrumental in improving not only culture, but also the performance of business units.

“We worked closely with MatchFit to create a programme of analysis and delivery that helps to support not only leadership teams, but also management teams within these business areas,” continued Finola. “The purpose of the analysis is to explore line management capability and the employee experience, identifying what is working well and where the challenges may lie. Coming from an HR background I have access to the rich HR data in relation to those business areas and can bring that expertise to the table. We look at the people issues in terms of HR cases— attendance management or performance etc.—and MatchFit comes in to gather and act on the qualitative data around what it’s like to be a member of staff in that business and how that can be improved. It works really well, because we’re able to combine both that quantitative data and HR insights with their qualitative findings, which provides a really robust analysis of what is actually going on in that business unit.”

Why the partnership approach was a key success factor

In terms of the need for a close working relationship with a consultancy like MatchFit and Civil Service HR Casework, Finola was very positive.

“It was pivotal, to be honest,” she says. “We needed to ensure there was constant communication between the two parties, because MatchFit was supporting in relation to the leadership aspect of the teams we were involved with. They would deliver the CLIMB programme, which would include one-to-one sessions and group sessions with the senior leadership team. Working in tandem, we would then deliver a number of training interventions at a management level.”

There was a need to be very clear on the objectives of that work, the analysis findings and how that fed into the work undertaken with staff within the businesses.

“Our constant communication meant that any kind of issue or theme either at the senior leadership level or at the management level, could be fed into both aspects of the programme, so that ultimately we were helping to improve communication in the business,” said Finola. “There needed to be, and was, a synergy to the work we were doing. That would feed into the outcomes towards the end of the programme that we could then present back to the client in terms of our consistent approach at different levels. And this is why it’s been successful.”

For Finola and her colleagues, how joined up they were as a team to capture and deal with issues coming out of the workshops was central to their success.

“If I was delivering a workshop on how to manage performance with a number of line managers and they were talking about concerns around workload, or their ability to make independent and autonomous decisions, we could feed that into the Senior Leadeship Team (SLT). The CLIMB programme provided space for the SLT to reflect on these types of issues and incorporate them into their strategic direction. And that ultimately improves the experience for all employees within the business area, and enable positive change” said Finola.

Why MatchFit?

Asked if she would recommend MatchFit to other clients, Finola was very positive in her response.

“Yes, absolutely. I would recommend them to any business that really wants to get to grips with what’s going on below the surface of their team dynamics,” continued Finola. “Their consultants have rich and varied work experiences and qualifications. They’ve all got specialist areas and it’s really helpful to have that breadth and knowledge. They’ve been able to independently challenge senior leaders across the teams we’ve worked in, which has led to some really positive outcomes. As an organisation, we’ve had a really successful partnership with excellent governance and communication. So absolutely, I’d recommend them, if you are looking after a business area and really want to see how you can start to enable change.”