Products and services

The Organisational Scan

A clear review of your organisation: employee experience, processes and room for improvement set out side by side, with practical places to start.

We are building a product that makes research into people and organisations as approachable as DAM makes mobility data. Want to help shape it?

Organisational improvement programme

Together we streamline your processes, cut out waste and disruption, and build a habit of continuous improvement, with the knowledge of your own people as the foundation.

Internal quality audit

Policy, procedures and work instructions describe how the work is meant to go. What happens in practice is another matter, and that gap is exactly what an internal audit is for. Not to settle scores, but to find where an agreement chafes, where practice has overtaken it, and where staff either worked out a better way long ago or are letting things slip and need to realign.

We hold your policy up against reality. We read what has been laid down, follow the process through your own records and talk to the people who do the work. That shows whether the process does what it promises, whether agreements are kept, and whether they still serve any purpose.

You get more than a list of deviations. The findings are specific enough to act on in the short term, and they separate the one-off incident from the fault built into the process. And because the audit comes round again, you also see whether earlier improvements stuck: plan, do, check, act, rather than plan alone.

It works as a standing part of a quality management system such as ISO 9001, as preparation for an external audit, or simply as a one-off look at a process you have a bad feeling about.

Workplace mediation

Friction between colleagues, between someone and their manager, or across a whole team changes how work feels, and then the work itself. Through mediation, or premediation, we look at what is possible and work towards better relationships.

A mediator guides the conversation, so that you start talking to one another properly again and can see a way forward. With or without each other.

Friction at work costs the people in it, and the organisation, a great deal of time, money and energy. Colleagues start working around the situation, absence rises, and sometimes someone leaves for a reason that was never said out loud. A mediator guides the conversation in situations like that, as an impartial third party who takes nobody's side.

The conversations are confidential and taking part is voluntary. Those involved decide the outcome themselves: workable arrangements for working together, a different division of duties or roles, or, if that is the honest answer, a decent end to the employment.

Family mediation

Family mediation is also something an organisation can bring in, as support for an employee caught up in trouble at home, or when interests in a family business start pulling in every direction. When problems in the family threaten to push a valued employee into absence, the organisation can offer family mediation to support them. What the organisation gets back is an employee who is present, valuable and often more engaged than before. And for the employee, it takes away a great deal of worry.

Because conversations stall in families too. Over a divorce and the arrangements for the children, over dividing an estate, over care for an ageing parent, or in a family business where being a relative and being a colleague start pulling against each other, mediation can help.

What makes it hard is that more than the matter itself is at stake. There is a history, there are old expectations, and the relationship carries on once the matter is settled, comfortably or otherwise. That is why a court ruling is rarely the best answer: it settles the case, but not the relationship.

A mediator guides that conversation as an impartial third party, taking nobody's side and not inventing the solution. Everyone's interests reach the table, the practical and the emotional alike, and the agreements that come out of it are ones everyone can stand behind. The conversations are confidential and you keep control; the route to court stays open throughout.

Conflict coaching

Sometimes mediation is not the answer. The other person cannot or will not take part, the situation is not ready for it, or you want to work out for yourself what you actually want first. Conflict coaching is the one-person version: support for you, rather than a conversation between two.

Together we look at what is going on, what your own part in it is, and what you really want out of it. Then it gets practical: how to open the conversation, how to hold a line without slamming the door, and which response moves things on instead of shutting them down.

The aim is not to prove you right, but to leave you able to act again: calmer, steadier and with more choice than the situation seems to allow you now. Often that heads off further escalation, and with it the absence or the resignation nobody wanted.

It is just as useful without an open clash: preparing for a difficult conversation, supporting a manager who has to handle tension in the team, or working through the personal questions a period of change tends to raise.

Employee experience research

Employee experience is what you see when you look at the workplace rather than the org chart. Does someone feel heard, is the workload right, is it clear what is expected of them, and is there room to speak up when it is not going well? Those questions decide whether people stay, how much absence there is, and how much of any change actually comes about.

We do not reduce that to a single score. With (online) questionnaires, interviews and time spent in the workplace we set out how the work is experienced, by team, by role and by location, and what sits underneath it: collaboration, leadership, autonomy and recognition.

We show what varies from team to team, and where action would make the most difference. Often the next step is small and specific; sometimes something structural turns out to lie underneath.

Life-stage HR policy

A career now runs for forty years or more, and what someone needs in order to work well changes all the way through. People starting out want a footing and a chance to develop; people with young children or a relative to care for mostly want room; people nearing the end of their career want to pass on what they know without burning out. Policy that treats everyone the same fits almost nobody exactly.

Life-stage policy starts with who actually works for you, not with a set of schemes. We set that out: the make-up of the workforce, turnover and absence by age group and role, and what people themselves say about workload, development and the balance with home.

From there you can see where policy would do the most good for your organisation.

Questionnaire research

Qualitative and quantitative evidence from (online) questionnaires: from satisfaction and employee experience surveys through to impact measurement, clearly visualised and reported.

Interview research

A close reading of experience, motives and how things stand, through structured interviews with the right people.

Observation research

Behaviour as it actually happens: from watching the work in the workplace to traffic counts in the field.