Using WeChange.AI to increase technology utilisation – Folkestone and Hythe District Council

Q. What led you to ask Socitm to review your digital and ICT strategy?

In 2023, Folkestone and Hythe District Council undertook a corporate restructure where we reviewed the whole organisation. This led to bringing together two previously separate sides of ICT and Digital, as one team under one manager from April 2024. Following discussions within the corporate leadership team and having done the restructure, we felt it was the right time to have a proper review of our digital and ICT strategy. One of the principles of the restructure was making best use of ICT and ensuring that we were starting to use systems and products to their best capability and capacity.

We had previously worked with Socitm on benchmarking our service standards; we regularly attend the annual President’s Conference for networking and in 2023 we won a Socitm award for outstanding user satisfaction. Having worked with Socitm before, we thought it was the best partner to work with to achieve what we needed from a corporate review. In the brief, we asked Socitm to review digital and ICT needs from every directorate’s point of view while considering whether our capabilities were aligned with our corporate objectives as well as current and future demands.

Q. What issues were you seeking to address through this project?

Socitm’s review included whether we were utilising our IT equipment and software efficiently. As an example we have Microsoft E5 licences but are not fully maximising the benefits of these licences. Like any council we are trying to save money, so we were interested in where we could utilise licences we already have rather than pay for additional bespoke systems.

Socitm also recommended that we start working with WeChange.AI, which we did from October 2024. We ran WeChange.AI’s survey for staff through November and received reports from early December. The report helped us understand the existing capabilities of our staff in using the Microsoft Office products. As an early client of WeChange.AI we were a pilot council and its work helped us realise that in addition to the original scope we would benefit from a deeper understanding of our staff’s capabilities. WeChange.AI have now widened their approach to include less commonly used Microsoft products enabling us to fully identify the IT skills we have across the council.

Q. What was your experience of using a WeChange.AI survey?

The survey went out to all staff and we had a really good return rate of 76%. Our senior management team was on-board with the process with the chief executive as the driver in the communications that went out stating the importance of the survey and encouraging all staff to respond.

The communication between us and WeChange.AI was absolutely first-class. We had catch-ups on a weekly basis and we looked at the results as they came in. WeChange.AI worked with us and made minor amendments to some of the questions to meet our corporate expectations as it recognised that every local authority has a different communication style.

Q. What did you find from the survey results?

The WeChange.AI survey results showed our staff are pretty confident about the software they currently use, such as Word and Excel. But as well as asking what people knew about IT, it asked about learning styles and how people want to learn. E-learning came out as one of the least popular options – most people want face-to-face training, either in a meeting room or through learning from a co-worker they are sitting beside. We have a drive to get staff back into the building for at least one day a week as a team and this helps us reinforce reasons to be in the building.

One thing that was really useful was the reference library. WeChange.AI analysed the results then came up with recommendations of how we could save time or maximise use of our E5 licences and provided links to reference sites with more explanations.

Q. What have you got out of working with WeChange.AI?

We have information on both the digital intelligence and receptiveness to change of our staff, including whether they see themselves as confident innovators, change agents, innovators, apprehensive innovators or innovators in training. The biggest category was confident innovators and we are considering whether to tap into the skills of these people as ‘change agents’. We could have one person in each service area who others could bounce ideas off, as opposed to this all being IT’s responsibility. It would encourage people to self-serve a bit more and the representatives could come up with ideas and solutions for improvements.

As well as providing a better idea of the confidence and abilities of our staff, it has helped us focus on what we can utilise more in our Microsoft E5 licences. We are looking to develop and utilise the Microsoft approval process to avoid documents being passed around by emails to a number of officers. Another example is producing minutes or notes of a virtual meeting from a transcript, where we are looking at using Microsoft Copilot.

From a people perspective, it was interesting to see the breakdowns of how people like to be trained. E-learning is quick and simple but we know staff don’t always react well to that and for IT skills it is often better to be shown, which helps when planning our organisational development strategy. The overall project has also generated interest in IT and digital from the corporate leadership team far beyond what we have seen for many years.

Q. How would you sum up your use of WeChange.AI so far?

It has helped us focus on the development of our new Digital and ICT strategy and design a roadmap to utilise our Microsoft E5 licences to their full effect, reflecting on the skills the IT team will need to support rolling this out, such as on Power Apps and Copilot. It has also been really interesting to see the number of staff who want to do more with technology. What we need to do now is find ways to enable them to do that, but it is encouraging to see there are people who really want to drive this forward with us.