See how our partner Snook has helped care organisation Car Gomm take a design approach to improving services and developing the innovation capacity of staff.
Carr Gomm is a national charity supporting people to have independent lives. Snook worked with the organisation to develop a strategy, embed design capacity and a future blueprint on how Carr Gomm can improve their customer services and capacity to innovate.
The challenge
With an ageing population and increased self-directed support, Snook supported Carr Gomm in developing in-house skills to respond to the changing landscape.
Carr Gomm is a national charity supporting people to have independent lives. Snook worked with the organisation to develop a strategy, embed design capacity and a future blueprint on how Carr Gomm can improve their customer services and capacity to innovate.
The solution
Over the course of twelve months, Snook coached cross-organisational teams of senior executives to frontline staff to research the needs and behaviour of the people they support. In response to their research, the teams designed and implemented new concepts into their frontline services.
The programme was developed after Snook’s research team had undertaken organisational ethnography (an approach where researchers spend time learning about how every element of an organisation works and delivers their services).
With these insights, Snook developed the programme ‘Carr Gomm Futures’, an in-house training programme focused on improving services and the design and innovation capacity of staff.
To ensure this work was continued, Snook developed a strategy for Carr Gomm Futures to continue to scale across the organisation and repeat the process with a supportive toolkit that could be re-used across a series of new projects.
The impact (including cost savings/income generated if applicable):
Snook delivered a research report outlining gaps within the organisation’s capacity. This included a strategy for the next 36 months on how Carr Gomm could embed design capabilities in order to design new and improved services, in-house, using a service design approach.
Snook also supported a team to develop and test a problem solving tool for team leaders who run focus groups with frontline staff and service user groups to become more solution focused.
As an example of a prototype, Snook supported one team to create a visual one page profile to support staff in care homes to understand how individuals like to be supported and live, particularly for cover staff who didn’t have the time to look at individual care plans.
The project culminated in pitches made by the staff teams to the Chief Executive and senior team, showcasing their prototypes and future plans for the service and products they had created.
How is the new approach being sustained?
Carr Gomm Futures has appointed a full-time role to continue to deliver the innovation projects and repeat the model. A Service Design award has been created for staff to show their innovation capabilities around customer experience and prototyping future services.
The marketing project from Carr Gomm Futures has been used to inform the future re-brand and the one page profile has been successfully implemented to improve the service experience of people living in a Carr Gomm home.
Lessons learned
Prototyping and testing with users is an important element of service design. The problem solving toolkit has been tested across groups in the organisation and has supported both customers and staff to respond to problems with solutions.