Royal College of Nursing (RCN)

The Royal College of Nursing is the largest professional union for nursing in the UK, representing over 380,000 nurses, health care assistants and nursing students, both in the NHS and the private sector.

Business Situation:

Following their success at RCND – the RCN members’ advice and guidance call centre – Lighthouse Consultants was invited to review the back office processes in the RCN regional boards, with the aim of improving and standardising RCN’s service delivery.

Each of the 12 UK regional boards had strong individual cultures and corporate identities, which had created a postcode lottery with respect to service level delivery, varying widely from Northern Ireland to the South East.

Business Solution:

A Lean Review and analysis was undertaken in each region, mapping service delivery and back office functions related to trade union activity.

 An initial pilot in three areas was rolled out across the whole of the UK over the course of a year.  5 days were spent in each region, mapping processes, identifying opportunities for improvement and training internal teams.

These were analysed to identify best practice, taking necessary local variations into account, in order to develop a standardised future process.

Results:

Quick Win recommendations were developed for each local regional director, enabling improvements to be made even before the final future state design was implemented.

A future state map of service delivery was developed for all 12 regions, including a bespoke in-house web enabled case management database.  This allowed, for the first time, managers the ability to performance manage the 12 regions with respect to service delivery.

Lighthouse Consultants then rolled out this software, including training in software, forms and processes.

Lighthouse Consultants has also been able to develop the further understanding of Lean within the RCN, helping them grow in maturity as a whole, as well as the team deployed.