Our Clients

VOSA

Executive summary
Connecting with core values

Couravel undertook a long-term programme of communication improvement to help VOSA's leadership build confidence amongst staff and lead a programme of change during a period of great uncertainty.

The issues

The three triangles of the VOSA kite mark have stood for road safety for years. The Agency monitors the performance of 19,000 garages that conduct annual MOT tests, and it also provides a range of direct licensing, testing and enforcement services for operators of buses, coaches and Heavy Goods Vehicles throughout the UK.

But like all parts of the public sector, VOSA is undergoing major changes driven by:

The increasing demand for value for money from public services
Rising customer expectations for more efficient on-line services and a higher standard of care at the point of delivery
More effective targeting of work to focus enforcement activities on non-compliant operators
More educational services to help people avoid infringing regulations

The Agency needed to respond to a poor set of opinion survey results highlighting a lack of understanding of corporate direction, low trust and confidence in leadership and high resistance to change.

The approach

Our support has involved a variety of specialists in Strategic Dialogue, communication planning and change communication. Particular activities have included:

Conducting an initial Insight process that identified that road safety and saving lives (two deeply held values amongst VOSA staff) were rarely used to explain the rationale for changes at the Agency
Creating a Strategic Dialogue in which

The executive management team articulated their vision as a Journey
The values became a central part of the story
This became a renewable engagement tool used to cascade and discuss the Journey throughout VOSA

Helping front line communication by

Advice and support for the Corporate Senior Management Team's quarterly meetings
Advice and support for the annual Management Conference
Development of a Core Narrative for the business

Creation of communication plans for specific changes in the use of technology and ways of working
Measurement of the effectiveness of communication.

The results

Over the course of our work with VOSA, we have measured some dramatic positive shifts in feedback because of our work:

% of employees who agree...	Change
I understand where we are trying to get to	+ 39
I can trust leadership	+ 30
I think we have an exciting future	+ 26

"Couravel acts as a reality check for our communication. They helped identify that we were not appealing to our peoples core values, and they translated our business strategy into a Journey that is easier to communicate. They have encouraged us to measure the impact of our communication and helped us identify the less tangible, but no less important, benefits of our communication."

Miranda Roberts, Head of Corporate Communications, VOSA