Better health cover for regional Australia with Westfund
→ Case Study
Services Australia
Team coaching to uplift capability within Services Australia.
Services Australia exists to deliver accessible social, health and child support services to all Australians.
As one of the largest technology organisations in the southern hemisphere, we worked together to redefine a learning culture that would democratise design so any individual could apply new practices practically to their everyday problem
/f/94997/1080x810/0f10d7c54e/services-aus-4.jpg)
The problem
The Digital Academy at Services Australia had been set up to build a culture of curiosity and learning for the Technology Services Group. As one of their foundational priorities, they wanted to conduct some research to better understand staff learning needs and pain-points.
The team also recognised they needed to codify their own ways of working that would act as an exemplar for other parts of the organisation, while also building the individual and team capabilities they needed to thrive.
The solution.
We applied our Team Acceleration method to support this newly formed team to establish effective ways of working, communicating and collaborating, as well as uplift their core skills in user research and human centred design.
Bringing a focus beyond individual skills, and exploring the universal attributes the multi-disciplinary team needed to solve problems together, and refining the team’s ways of working so they could continue to apply those learnings into the future, was key to success.
“It was so rewarding seeing the Digital Academy team deliver the final showcase and just how far they came in 8 weeks. To see the team achieve their learning goals and apply new skills in the context of solving a real-world problem was amazing. It means we were able to build immediate progress, but leave behind lasting value.”— Violet Rish, Strategist, Future Friendly
The approach.
We take a learn by doing approach, coaching the team in new ways of working, while conducting user research on the learning needs of staff.
In addition to coaching the team through their core work program, we ran a baseline survey of strengths and learning goals and a series of one-on-one coaching sessions, to support these goals.
We embedded new or modified agile ways of working including daily stand ups, bi-weekly check-ins and fortnightly demonstrations and team retrospectives.
“It was great to see my team evolve from being eager to learn, through to being passionate adopters and implementers of the skills they were seeing in practice. As coaches and practitioners, real world advice grounded in our reality was provided in a way that is always friendly, contextual and professional.”— Services Australia Project Sponsor
The impact.
Service Australia can continue to improve the citizens experiences of government by putting customer needs at the centre of when they design and deliver our services.
By redefining their learning practices to be more adaptive, practical and focused on real world outcomes. They will be able to attract, train and keep the best talent - in a world where modern tech teams are given more space to test and learn and become agile
A united team built around values of transparency, authenticity, and a growth mindset that was able to function as a beacon for other teams for what good looked like when it came to adopting new ways of working.
Individuals were enabled to go out to any part of the organisation and lead the introduction of new ways of working as result of being trained how to manage complexity, demonstrate how to apply design to solve problems and make decisions autonomously.
