AWARDS
OUTSTANDING HR & SUPPLIER PARTNERSHIP
Sponsored by
Maritime and Coastguard Agency & Lexicon Relocation
T
he winners of this year’s Outstanding HR & Supplier Partnership award demonstrate the value of building firm relationships and playing to each other’s
strengths to deliver fundamental organisational change and quality support to relocatees. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) and Lexicon
Relocation secured the win for what the judges declared was “an entry to be proud of” and one that showed “clear evidence of partnership”. The MCA’s HR team, in partnership with Lexicon Relocation,
successfully implemented the organisation’s significant national restructuring exercise, the Future Coastguard Programme. Through their dedication, commitment and effective communication, the partners moved 86 MCA personnel and their families, ultimately delivering the skills the MCA needed to transition to its new operating model. Crucially, the partnership also ensured that the MCA’s stringent
service levels as the UK’s only national emergency service were maintained seamlessly throughout the three-year project, around the country and around the clock. This business-as-usual, right-first-time approach was vital to
the project’s success, as Matthew Briggs, of the MCA’s HR team, explains. “Throughout this whole transition process, we had to make sure that maritime safety and service delivery were kept at the same high level. This was vital if we were to maintain staff morale and public confidence in HM Coastguard and, more widely, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.”
Facing the future The MCA’s Future Coastguard Programme has its origins in two public consultations, with the UK government publishing its final proposals for modernising Her Majesty’s Coastguard in November 2011. The plans reduced the organisation’s footprint from 18 stations
to 11, linked via an integrated national network managed from the new, state-of-the-art National Maritime Operations Centre at Fareham, Hampshire. This opened in September 2014 and was fully operational by December 2015. The new operating model triggered fundamental changes to
job descriptions and role requirements. The MCA’s restructuring focused on an exercise to identify, then deliver, the core competencies and skillsets required by the new organisation.
Challenging times Top of the MCA HR team’s agenda for transition to the new operating model was matching people with the right skills to the right locations, all the while ensuring the service continuity so important to the project’s success. Delivering such significant and potentially high-profile change,
and managing both the professional and personal uncertainty around it, is a huge and important task, especially in such a vital public service. “Throughout the whole period of the Future Coastguard
Programme, our aim was to keep the round-the-clock, 999 service to seafarers and people using the coastguard,” explains Matthew Briggs. “Morale of staff was also a top priority. This, after all, was a time
when staff and their families were going through three years of uncertainty for their future. People were applying for new roles or redundancy, or relocating through the country to secure jobs in the future organisation.” To address the challenge of maintaining service levels during
times of change and uncertainty, as well as some negative perceptions around the change programme, Lexicon Relocation and the MCA worked together to draw on Lexicon’s prior experience of large-scale group moves and the HR team’s personal touch.
Adding value The Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s plans for the future, and its ongoing service delivery, meant that it was critical to have an inclusive relocation policy that encouraged as many people as possible to relocate once their role in the new organisation was confirmed. Given the period of uncertainty and that people had already had
to apply for new posts, getting the relocation aspect right became key to keeping staff engaged in the future vision and the service able to operate as planned. Establishing, early on, clear communications and the wider vision, in order to manage expectations, the MCA’s HR team and Lexicon
40 | Re:locate | Summer 2016
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