IMC News?Minding your Peace and Queues at Kew

Not many people would know where to start looking for the Domesday Book (1086), Bligh’s account of the mutiny on the Bounty, Guy Fawkes’ confessions or Shakespeare’s will. They can all be found under one roof on 90 miles of shelves at the Public Record Office (PRO) in Kew, West London. This government department and Executive Agency preserves and maintains all government records and its Reader Services Department (RSD) enables the public to consult documents which are over 30 years old.

About 170,000 members of the public visit the PRO reading rooms each year, to study over 535,000 records.

In 1994, Roger Hughes’ firm, Magna Consulting, an IMC Registered Practice, provided consultancy to the PRO on the amalgamation of two separate sections of the RSD, and the improvement of service provision to the public. The consolidation meant bringing together the Chancery Lane staff, who were working in a very different environment often dealing with highly specialised enquiries about older records, with the staff at Kew, who were dealing with a wider cross-section of enquiries related to the “modern” era and to Admiralty and War Office documents.

Throughout the assignment Magna Consulting worked closely with the Services Development Team, consisting of four PRO staff with Ann Morton as project leader, reporting to the Keeper of Public Records who in turn reports to the Lord Chancellor. Hughes had daily contact with Morton and the team had frequent project meetings with the consultants. The rest of the RSD staff were kept informed and were encouraged to provide feedback to the consultants at all stages of the assignment.

The project became known as the “Readers First Programme” and started with a thorough survey of PRO users or “readers” to determine their opinions of the services provided and their future needs. The majority of readers are family researchers, the rest consisting of academics (students and lecturers), historians, authors, professional researchers and business people. Incognito visits to both sites were followed by a questionnaire on training, development and career opportunities, and insecurity about change.

Phase Three of the assignment examined the skills, knowledge and working practices of the RSD staff. The requirement to cover longer opening hours as well as daily and seasonal peaks and troughs, issues such as automation of indexes, documents and reader guidance, would all have an impact on the numbers of staff required, their experience, knowledge and training.

These were assessed using job evaluation, interview and review techniques in order to identify any gaps between existing attributes and those required to support the new PRO.

Having agreed their recommendations with the Service Development Team, the consultants were ready to make their presentation to the PRO management board and the Keeper. The main proposals were as follows:

preparation of a policy statement outlining RSD’s service commitment and providing a point of reference for all staff;

changes in working patterns in order to cover the longer working hours i.e. shiftworking rotas;

staff rotation on the enquiry and help desks with maximum two-hour stints, interspersed with other duties such as postal and phone enquiries, research and receiving coach parties;

revised organisation structure of RSD: different teams with greater specialisation, new performance agreements;

increased administrative support;

more Reader Service staff;

allocated time for personal development with training in technical and customer service skills;

redesign of the rooms and improved signposting to allow easier access, reduce queues, help desks to deal with general enquiries, zones within the reading rooms according to level of noise;

repository counter screened off from reading room to reduce disturbance;

increased computerisation of finding aids;

department meetings and team briefings with agendas and minutes to keep staff informed of all developments;

improved communications between RSD and other departments.

The recommendations were approved at the PRO Corporate Planning Seminar and Magna Consulting held meetings throughout the autumn for all 450 PRO staff in order to gain their commitment. The consultants were then asked to prepare the business case for the proposed changes giving costings (and savings) for each of the projects.

Just three months after the appointment of consultants, the Readers First programme moved towards implementation with a target of end 1996 for complete consolidation at Kew.

Two years later, after a period of hand-over to the in-house team, the transfer of all records to Kew is now complete and the results are already impressive with a document delivery time of 35 minutes or less for 98 per cent of requests, compared to 69 per cent in 1994.

Feedback from readers is extremely positive with 89 per cent now rating services as “good” or “better” compared to 82 per cent in 1994.

Staff morale is greatly improved and training is underway in records knowledge, supervisory skills, customer contact and complaints handling.

RSD has been restructured and an expertise register introduced.

Two medievalists have been appointed and further recruitment is underway to fill the identified knowledge gaps. A paid search service has been tried and implemented. A customer care group and quality team have been established together with a system for handling complaints and comments.

“Regular Readers” focus groups and open days are held frequently. PRO has a home page on the Internet and 120,000 records are now available on CD-Rom.

As in all successful assignments the key seems to have been the relationship between consultant and client. Hughes sums up: “The commitment to the project at senior levels was such that we soon developed a relationship that was both open and positive in handling problems and in seeking practical and workable solutions.”

For PRO the work is just beginning, as expressed by project leader Morton: “This has been a very successful programme and the consultants gave us the impetus to change, however we now know that we need to be looking at continuous improvements – we must not stand still and rest on our laurels”.

Magna Consulting is an IMC Registered Practice which specialises in improving business performance and project management for both public and private sector clients, including several overseas governments. Roger Hughes can be contacted on 01372 741642.