Over a decade of improvement work with The Wilberforce Trust
The partnership
The Wilberforce Trust are a charity based in York who have been supporting people with visual and hearing impairments since 1833. When Philippa Crowther joined The Wilberforce Trust (Wilberforce) back in 2013, she realised that things like strategy, processes, and team development, needed to change.
Before becoming Chief Executive of the Wilberforce Trust, Philippa worked in the private healthcare sector and had done some work on process management & improvement with Ad Esse Consulting. Whilst at a Management level, Philippa became a process improvement champion in the organisation she was working in and continued to engage Ad Esse even when joining new organisations at CEO level.
In a conversation with Philippa, we discussed how the charity developed a clear strategic direction, the transformation project they delivered, how the charity has evolved it’s thinking, and what the future might hold. Read Philippa’s thoughts below.
A clear strategic direction
Our first piece of work with Ad Esse was a strategy workshop with our board of trustees back in 2003. Ad Esse facilitated a session to help us decide who we are, what we wanted to do, and what our outcomes needed to be to achieve our vision.
Rhiannon was great at getting the trustees to engage, using post-it notes, and breaking the conversation down into strategic aims around housing, care, etc. This ensured that everyone took a holistic interest in the charity’s future, rather than just focusing on their own interests. The trustees were blown away by it.
Once the direction of travel was clear from the trustees, the senior leadership team engaged Ad Esse to train up many employees as Continuous Improvement Champions. This supported the charity’s strategic direction and commitment to a culture of continuous improvement within the organisation.
Transformation project: £7M building of new apartments… and processes
Part of that strategy was to invest in a £7M building of new apartments, and related services. Doing this identified a need for more support with process and project management from Ad Esse. Alongside this, Ad Esse helped us to implement our compliance system, operational processes, and redevelop our approach to the delivery of maintenance & repairs services.
Improving repairs & the housing association side
Before we brought in Ad Esse, our operational processes were undefined and a bit ad-hoc, nowhere was this truer than in our repairs and maintenance department. The processes were largely run by competent capable individuals, rather than clearly defined transparent processes. This created problems when people were unavailable and a business risk that needed managing. After our work with Ad Esse, our maintenance and repairs are now all run through one system; before, it was job sheets everywhere. The system we have meets our needs and is underpinned by a well-defined process.
Our repairs have reduced because of our proactive approach. Its more process driven, and operatives are clear on how they should work. Before, we had pieces of paper with ‘tap leaking’, written on them. Now it’s in a process managed way and as a result, the maintenance team has increased productivity.
Improving the care contracting side
For the care contracting side of the charity, we were looking after the people well, but weren’t managing the business side. Many organisations with a social purpose can relate to this. From a financial point of view, on paper we looked very well, and we are. Upon closer review, we were missing income that could have been recovered.
The surprising moment for me was that financially we could have been doing even better; when you’re doing well, you don’t always look to make improvements. It’s only when you’re not doing as well as you thought you should that you start to look at changing things. I don’t think there had been enough scrutiny of the processes that went into finance.
Our care contracts team have added approximately £50K to our bottom line due to optimised process management. Before, we were doing hours of care for free and generally delivering more than we were paid to do… which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a charity. To a certain degree, we still do a little bit of that here and there. Getting on top of this however has financially made a significant impact to the sustainable running of the charity and our financial ability to add greater value for the people we serve.
Measuring what matters, not ticking boxes
I think we were a traditional organisation, measuring everything that moved and thought that everybody read the thousands of reports we were producing. Everybody talked about key performance indicators; they are important, but we were measuring for measuring’s sake, and not necessarily the right things at the right time.
We have important regulatory measures we must monitor and report on, but on a day-to-day basis we now measure what needs to be measured. There is a tendency in the sector to work in a ‘tick box’ way, in case the regulators walk in, however this means you are often doing things that add no value, but you do it to cover yourselves in case of this eventuality. Because of what we do daily to manage our processes, customers and team, I’m very comfortable if the housing or clinical regulators walk in tomorrow, the standards we hold through the process management will be immediately clear to them.
Process management and continuous improvement
Everything here has a process, and we review them like we would policies. Continual review is important, and we need to always be looking to tighten up on our review of the processes. They are talked about all the time, and it’s changed the way the organisation thinks, now a whole company, rather than as a siloed departmental thing.
Sometimes we need to check ourselves and refresh, which is why it’s great to attend the sessions that Ad Esse run. Or have a check-in with Rhiannon or someone at Ad Esse, and say, “this is where we’re up to now, what do you think?”
Rhiannon has been great at working with the board of trustees as well. She’s been able to keep them focused on their vision and what it is they want to be doing, rather than relying on me as the Chief Exec to guide them. There’s a lovely focus on what is it you’re trying to achieve, followed by how to do that and by when. So, it’s very different to how it was when I first arrived at the charity.
Restructure of roles
We had great people doing great jobs in the wrong places at the wrong time. We didn’t know that until we started process management and saw a better way of doing things. Out of the process management came a real restructure of roles that the people bought in to because they’d done the work behind the process management re-engineering. In reality, they re-organised themselves and their jobs. We weren’t making people redundant and saying, “your job is changing.” It evolved because of the process management work with Ad Esse. We brought the people with us, and some are still with us today.
Originally, we looked at all our processes and realised, we didn’t have the right person, or right number of people doing part of a process. Enormous gaps became instantly visible. This work changed the structure of our process management and made us look closer at job roles; we created a responsibility flow chart with Ad Esse.
Meetings and Information Centres
Critical to embedding a continuous improvement culture at the Wilberforce Trust is our Information Centres; we have a physical board on display in the main office for managers, we gather around these in teams regularly, and we also have a senior leadership meeting once a week. We don’t need to spend long in these meetings, but it has enabled us to be much more agile. We’re quicker at making things happen and making decisions.
They’re a refreshing step away from traditional meetings, where you minute it all and distribute copies. We still have regular trustee meetings and some minuted team meetings that have to be recorded and monitored, but our ‘go getter’ (go and get on with it) meetings are amazing. We hadn’t really done that until we were doing the transformation project with Ad Esse. The biggest change you can see is that people talk about their Information Centre boards, they talk about their process management, and they talk about measurement in a way that’s meaningful.
“It’s been very successful here. I leave the organisation at the end of August 2024 after 11 years. I look back at this small organisation I took on, that has doubled in size, it’s got double the accommodation that we had, it passes the CQC with a ‘good’ rating – it’s just a very different organisation. I put that success down to having a strategic direction that’s measured and monitored through our process management.”
Final thoughts on working with Ad Esse Consulting
I can’t speak too highly of the consultants at Ad Esse – they’ve been amazing. I don’t think I’ve met anybody in the company that I haven’t enjoyed working with.
Yeukai was fantastic – we extended our engagement with her many times. She was fantastic with the team, and she got everything set up for us to be able to run with our system very easily once the team had understood it, etc. I would recommend any of the consultants I’ve worked with. Very approachable, very reactive – honestly, I can’t speak too highly of the company.
It’s been amazing working with them in all the years I have. I can’t imagine ever going to a different consultancy for work, because Ad Esse have the ability to be able to support us in most things due to the different skillsets people have.
Philippa’s hopes for the future of The Wilberforce Trust
Housing for more complex needs
I’d like to see the charity deliver more housing. We have land at the back of us where there is an opportunity for more planning, and I know there’s a need for it. Not necessarily more apartments, probably for more complex needs people with blindness and partial sight who are at the stage where they can’t manage in a flat.
Extend reach beyond York
I’d like to see The Wilberforce Trust extend their reach out of York because the organisation now has some fantastic skills. For example, we are just expanding our Club Wilber, our charity arm for children and their families with sensory impairments. We have 60 families that are part of that club, who come to events and activities, and we take them on trips, and learn new things. I’d like to see the organisation expand that by learning into some value adding partnerships.
Embracing new technology
Especially in the rehabilitation services, technology is going to be critical for blind people. Siri, Alexa, Soundscape – technology is going to be important for those people, but how you introduce technology is about processes again. You can’t just say, “here’s a piece of kit, get on with it.” You need to blend it in with what your offering is.
We always used to say, “it isn’t about software and it’s not about systems. It’s about how you do things.” Today with so much technology that allows blind people to live more independently, how and when you introduce the technology into their rehabilitation process is really important.
The team at Ad Esse Consulting are proud to have supported The Wilberforce Trust in their improvement journey over the years and wish Philippa all the best in the next endeavours.
At Ad Esse, we work with social purpose organisations, like charities, social housing, healthcare, hospices, local authorities, and more. Let’s have a chat about how we can help you to improve performance in your organisation. Email hello@ad-esse.com to get started today.
Philippa Crowther
Chief Executive at The Wilberforce Trust
Philippa is retiring from the Wilberforce Trust after more than 11 years as Chief Executive. In that time, she has taken the charity off in new and exciting directions and greatly extended both their reach and impact.
