Central Government Owned Company – Target Operating Model Design

For a Government owned company that mobilised in a short period of time with no handover, a lot of work was required to establish a baseline so that upcoming changes could be tracked. 

Circa 1000 staff were transferred across to this newly formed company, spread across almost 50 geographically disperse sites. There was always a high turnover of staff and a high level of agency staff in place to fulfil roles. This made it difficult to track what staff were working  at each site at any given time across the engineering various trades. This challenge led to an inability to manage recruitment, control costs and effectively manage productivity, safety and wellbeing of staff.

There was no single source of truth; therefore we had to analyse a number of reports from several sources to establish a baseline, including external data sources from partner-agencies. Whilst undertaking this analysis, there were changes in staffing taking place daily so we had to implement a new process to capture these activities in real-time to avoid the data becoming out of date and invalid.

Through implementation of a new process, albeit manual whilst new technology was being setup, and establishing a baseline from which to build upon, we were able to effectively monitor and manage staffing levels across all sites, develop and control the Target Operating Model and manage recruitment and costs effectively.

Once the baseline was known and the new tracking mechanisms and processes had stabilised, we worked with the senior leadership team, performance analysts and operational managers to define a brand-new, fit-for-purpose Target Operating Model that responded to the needs of each individual site and department.

Despite the process for managing the Target Operating Model being manual, it was a critical stepping-stone to enabling the automation of the process.

The benefits include;

• Management of resourcing levels and associated costs.
• A key enabler for recruitment and a wider project focussed on transferring individuals from temporary contracts onto permanent contracts. The data allowed the company to understand where there were vacancies and recruitment gaps.
• A key enabler for enabling the development of a new Target Operating Model.
• Identification of opportunities to reduce agency spend which led to a saving of over £700k p/annum.
•  Improvements in productivity. 
• A sustainable process and approach to ensure ongoing accuracy control and accuracy of people-related data.