…at GVA, as you might expect from the UK’s largest independent commercial property consultant. We spoke to Sharon Walton, GVA’s Chief Operating Officer – Property Management Accounts, to find out more.
GVA has an outstanding reputation with its clients and its prestige has continued to grow in line with its strategic expansion. Headquartered in London and with 12 offices and 700 fee earners across the UK, GVA offers the country’s largest and most diverse multidisciplinary property consultancy outside of the capital. For Sharon Walton, who joined GVA’s Property Management Accounts team as Chief Operating Officer in May 2011 after major organisational expansion in 2010, GVA’s formula for success is directly attributable to continuously improving processes driven by continuously improving people.
GVA Property Management Consultancy’s expansion in 2010 was followed by an 18-month change programme which took a ‘back to basics’ approach in its scrutiny of people and processes. Already familiar with Investors in Excellence, having worked with our business improvement experts at two other organisations in the housing sector, Sharon is quick to point out that GVA’s Property Management Accounts team – which expanded from 40 to 120 staff – was kept on track by our no-nonsense approach to process improvement. By engaging and enabling team members at all levels with relevant training delivered in our characteristically down-to-earth manner, the right people were equipped to deliver the right processes right first time.
Sharon and her collective team set up a Performance Improvement Group (PIG), a cross-functional pool of staff drawn from every level of the wider team and acting as the ‘sponsors’ for continuous improvement. Supported by Investors in Excellence, the PIG ensured that everyone became an owner of a process – without exception – with each individual team producing a SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, Customers) for each of their processes and each SIPOC being reviewed and approved by the Leadership Group. In this way, process mapping became the ‘everyday norm’, as Sharon describes it, and this has created a culture where proactive processes delivered by confident, upskilled staff are achieving – and often exceeding – KPIs.
In Sharon’s own words, Investors in Excellence have helped GVA’s Property Management Accounts team create ‘a completely different, positive working environment’. When asked if she would recommend Investors in Excellence to other organisations, Sharon responds:
‘I have now worked with Investors in Excellence in three different companies and I would have absolutely no hesitation in employing their services again. They are professional and pragmatic, and they deliver results. Most importantly, they achieve this by enabling our own staff so improvement does not stop happening when Investors in Excellence leave the building. They have trained a broad cross section of our teams, including: directors, associate directors, and ledger clerks. The training was appropriate to all levels and they worked with us to tailor the courses to meet our needs. Thanks to this training, we have a competent and confident team of people able to identify processes which could be improved and, more importantly, a clear idea of how to improve them without our being bogged down with highly supercilious ‘consultancy speak’. The Investors in Excellence approach is clear and it works. It’s helped us identify risk and put effective controls in place and we are very happy with the results.’
To find out more about the Investors in Excellence Standard or our business improvements programmes call the team on +44 (0)1564 711004 or request a call back.