Local Authority - Leicester City Council

Leicester is a large City Council providing services to an ethnically diverse urban area with a developing economy but also significant areas of deprivation. It has a very large workforce encompassing the varied activities of a typical City Council.

Cygnet initially partnered with the authority's own Management Development Section (led by Raj Patel) to help develop the 160 most senior managers from the top three management tiers including Corporate Directors, Service Directors and Heads of Service. Cygnet's particular contribution has been to design and run a 360-degree process in co-operation with Leicester City Council called " Encompass 360 ". This is based on the authority's own competency framework.

The process involves each manager receiving feedback on their performance in a way that helps them identify their own strengths and weaknesses and therefore enables them to play more to their strengths and work on their most important weaknesses. Managers are also tested psychometrically which gives a similar insight on their strengths and weaknesses, but from a different perspective. The process is based on human (as opposed to machine produced) feedback and is accompanied with 1:1 coaching to help participants interpret their results and transform them into a practical action plan.

The work has proved so successful that it is now being rolled out to the next level of over 400 team leaders.

"This is the best thing that has happened in HR for a long time" - Corporate Director

"Excellent programme" - Service Director

"The 360 has been very helpful" - Service Manager

"The one to ones were very informative" - Head of Service

"I was sceptical at first, but can now see the value" - Head of Service