Harnessing staff ideas for improving efficiency and quality: CAF-based self-assessments in Hessen in Germany

Change management

A CAF-based self-assessment starts in each service unit of the Agency with a staff meeting lasting several hours. The meeting is kicked off by a statement from the head of service and the responsible CAF manager of the service unit concerned, as well as a presentation by the President or Vice-President of the Agency. In most cases, the representative of the staff council will also make a statement supporting the assessment. The purpose of the meeting is to recruit volunteers for the self-assessment group, which will include about 15-20 staff, depending on the size of the service unit. 

The Agency ensures that the self-assessment group consists of staff representing different job grades. There also needs to be an equal number of women and men. If more staff apply than needed, the choice of members is made randomly. The self-assessment group also includes the head of service, the staff council and the equalities manager.

Typically, a CAF-based self-assessment includes the following phases (using an example from the self-assessment process in 2011): 

1. Training 

After setting up the self-assessment groups, all members receive training at a one-day workshop. The purpose is to make the participants familiar with the methodology of the CAF self-assessment framework. This is very similiar to the EFQM Excellence Model but slightly adapted to the public sector context. For example, the CAF not only talks about ‚‘customers' but also uses the term ‘citizens'. More details on the CAF can be found at www.eipa.nl

2. Self-assessment by self-assessment teams

Typically, the self-assessment takes one day, as the voluntary assessors need to answer questions (and identify evidence to support a score) in relation to nine themes:

Furthermore, the assessors need to make suggestions for improvement in each of the nine themes. The results of the individual assessments are analysed with particular attention to divergent assessments. At this stage, the Agency invites the eight self-assessment teams to another half-day workshop to reflect on the results of the first evaluation. A half-day workshop is also organised for the CAF manager of each service unit to reflect on the assessment process and results. 

3. Second and final self-assessment

The final scores do not require each self-assessment team to find a consensus but the Agency for Land Surveys and Geo-Data simply requests the votes of each assessor for each indicator so that the final score is determined by the average of all individual scores for each service unit.    

4. Priorities for improvement

The next phase focuses on the suggestions for improvement. The President, Vice-President, heads of service and CAF managers of each service unit discuss and prioritise the suggestions gathered during the self-assessment process in a two-day workshop which is facilitated externally. The managers also decide whether an improvement suggestion applies to the whole agency or only to specific service units.The improvement suggestions which are to be implemented are also considered in the budget.

5. Implementation of suggestions for improvement

Finally, the service heads inform their staff about the projects resulting from the improvement suggestions and the time frame for implementation in staff meetings. The results of the self-assessment and the improvement suggestions are also made available to staff through the knowledge management system of the Agency. 

So what did the Agency learn from the self-assessment undertaken in 2011? Let us take the example of the learning outcomes from the assessment around criterion 1 of the theme People Management which asked the self-assessment teams to „consider evidence on what the organisation is doing to plan, manage and improve human resources transparently with regard to strategy and planning”.