Laura Stringer Email & Phone Number

London, England, Gb

London, Gb

I lead the HMCTS Employee Engagement and Wellbeing team and contribute to the wider People and Culture Strategy for HMCTS as a member of the HR Senior Leadership Team. I am implementing four new Wellbeing Priorities for HMCTS, which will move us towards a less issues-focused and more person-centred approach to wellbeing. While continuing to ensure staff make good use of our various wellbeing support mechanisms, I am also challenging teams and leaders to do more to create an environment where wellbeing can thrive and consider the people impacts of what they do. I oversee the management of our annual People Survey, advising HMCTS's senior leadership team and Board about the priorities we need to focus on as an organisation, based on an in-depth analysis of the results and comments. I ensure engagement is a year-round approach (not just an annual survey) by overseeing a network of Lead Engagement Champions across the business who drive improvements at a local level.

I oversee most of our business as usual communications with colleagues on our intranet site, email (using Poppulo) and other channels (posters, video, webinar, e-newsletters, and much more). For 2019 I'm also heavily involved in employee engagement work - as the lead for Ofsted's completion of the 2019 Civil Service People Survey. This involves working closely with HR and representatives from every Ofsted team to build an accurate and detailed model of our organisational structure for the purposes of the People Survey reports - ensuring every colleague's results are attributed to the correct team. I will also be building an internal communications plan to promote the survey and ensure we get the highest possible response rate. After the survey closes, I'll be working closely with senior leaders of Ofsted to analyse the results, what they mean (both for Ofsted as a whole and individual teams) and running a webinar (alongside other communications) so senior leaders can engage with colleagues about the findings and subsequent action-planning. As a member of Ofsted's Smarter Working Board, I work on a level with our heads of Property, IT, Operational Improvement, Organisational Development and HR representatives to maintain and build on Ofsted's Smarter working culture, helping us reach 'Mature' status as part of the Government Property Agency's 'Smarter Working Maturity Matrix'. This includes: using visual communications (to bring smarter working to life and promote best practice around flexible working), preparing engaging presentations (for other Board members to use with our Exectutive Board, Senior Civil Servants and other teams we need to engage with), giving strategic internal communications advice to the Chair of the Board and supporting them to draft impactful announcements to the organisation, designing, running and analysing an organisation-wide survey to review existing cultures and attitudes to smarter working, and much more.

Putting together our organisation's weekly internal newsletter - including sourcing, drafting or proofing articles. I have also recently used MailChimp to develop a much improved, modern and interactive format for this newsletter using HTML coding which I have been teaching myself. This will also enable us to pull valuable evaluation data (such as 'open' and 'click-through' rates) from this publication going forwards.Helping to source or draft 'Top Stories' for our intranet page.Coordinating internal communications, including 'all Ofsted' emails.Working with teams or project groups to draw up internal communication plans to ensure the rest of the organisation are informed about and can engage with what is happening across Ofsted.Supporting the planning, promotion and broadcasting of live, interactive 'webinar' sessions hosted by many teams and senior leaders across the organisation.Administering surveys using SurveyMonkey to inform vital research: e.g. help HR Business Partners with workforce planning, evaluate key communications, inform awareness campaigns, etc.Assisting with engagement events such as: post-People Survey action planning, directorate 'Away Days'.Administrating and promoting Yammer (our corporate social network - currently in pilot phase).Promoting our corporate social responsibility (CSR) through monthly organisation-wide fundraisers.Evaluating communications to maintain a quality service and continuously improve our strategies. Contributing to a monthly dashboard to aid Cabinet Office returns, evaluating progress against our baseline and success targets.

Duties as Line Manager to HR Advisor team: - Checking processing and correspondence- Improving ways of working (e.g. updating and/or re-writing templates, checklists and guidance) - Monitoring workloads and delegating work appropriately - Monitoring inboxes (ensuring we are meeting our targets and dealing with queries consistently)- Running monthly analysis reports to monitor DBS re-check progress, key dates for Maternity/Adoption leave, etc. - Holding weekly team meetings to discuss important updates, team issues and individual workloads - Supporting the team's personal development (monthly 1-2-1s, assistance with job applications, competency workshops etc.)- Supporting team members throughout short or long-term sickness - Interviewing, recruiting, inducting and training new HR Advisors Duties to other HR colleagues: - Responding to queries from senior HR colleagues needing updates about work processed by the team - Working with Pay and Pensions manager to plan payroll tasks, projects and resources - Liaising with Business Partners and Organisational Development to ensure high profile recruitment and new starter induction (e.g. Senior Civil Servant level) runs smoothly- Working with Strategy team to resolve employee database anomalies/errors- Liaising with Policy team to review our templates, processes and the advice we provide - Liaising with Casework to resolve complex queries and communicate appropriately on sensitive cases Duties to the business: - Taking HR queries from colleagues and responding to complex queries/complaints escalated to myself from the team- Running reports for other departments, e.g. Starters/Leavers report for Communications team to add to the Ofsted newsletter

London, England, Gb

- Completing the ACAS training course in Employment Law, ‘Call Handling’ technique and Early Dispute Resolution.- Taking calls from employers and employees and providing them with accurate facts about employment law, impartial guidance and explaining what options they had going forward in their individual circumstances, based on a variety of key factors. - Persuading both employers and employees of the benefits of positive working relationships and Early Dispute Resolution in the workplace. Despite only working with ACAS for 5 months, I feel I made many personal achievements. Firstly, I greatly improved my communication skills – understanding how to judge personality types, even over the phone, and using this knowledge to tailor my approach whilst giving my advice and explaining specific aspects of employment law. Secondly, I further demonstrated my already well developed skill of fast-learning – having only 6 weeks to grasp every aspect of Employment Law was quite a challenge, but I feel the efforts I made to create learning materials for myself, in addition to those provided, really paid off in that I was soon confident enough in my own knowledge to be taking calls from the public seeking Employment Law advice.

Within the VOA I not only fulfilled my main role of supporting the Caseworkers through inputting, filing and administration, but also took on several higher-grade projects and responsibilities which enabled me to both challenge myself to learn new skills, and go above and beyond my position to be of greater help to the department in times of need. Firstly, I improved the efficiency of my team (who had become very set in their ways over the years) by introducing a work-rota to more equally share tasks and knowledge within the group.Secondly, I regularly drew up scaled site-plans and completed additional ad-hoc research for Referencers at times when their case-loads become overwhelming. Thirdly, I taught myself the basic principles of Referencing (2 grades higher than my AA position) in order to take on the challenge of calculating the total net internal areas and, eventually, provisional taxable values, of three new BBC studios and office blocks in the BBC Media City development, Salford.

Westminster, London, Gb

I met or exceeded all competencies required my grade and exceeded many of my business objectives:- Developing a large library of case studies to widen knowledge of Community Resilience in Local Resilience Forums (LRFs).- Interviewing stakeholders and responders as research for many case studies, developing both face-to-face and telephone interpersonal skills.- Completing several research projects using a range of software systems and computer databases.- Meeting with many higher grades across departments (HMRC, DEFRA, HMIC, Home Office etc.) to gain invaluable career advice and widen my knowledge of the Civil Service.- Reporting back to my department on my progress towards both individual and team objectives at regular meetings.

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), English Language And Literature

A Levels And A/S Levels, English Literature, French, Philosophy, Critical Thinking, Fine Art, General Studies