The Organisation
NCP is the leading UK car park business and celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2006. The company provides the broader transport sector with a range of services including car park management, London buses, airport parking and transportation consultancy. It is also the leading provider of parking enforcement and related services to local authorities in the UK.
Well known as a car park operator, NCP has over 600 car parks in towns and cities across the UK. While this is a well-established part of NCP, it only employs 1,500 of its 5,800 strong team. Originally a property-led business, NCP changed direction in May 2002 when it was acquired from its original owners and was bought subsequently by 3i in 2005 for £555 million. During this period, NCP has diversified into many different areas and now employs over 3,000 people in its On Street Enforcement business. Its interests in this area range from congestion charge handling, CCTV bus lane enforcement, the running of Task Force bailiff operation, and a DVLA recovery business responsible for clamping and removing untaxed vehicles.
NCP employees also work on a large number of rail and airport parking contracts, offering parking, valet services and booking systems. The company’s parking-related services include a specialist street design and urban regeneration consultancy through its subsidiary Project Centre Ltd.
In addition, it operates red bus routes in London and coaching services at airport locations. Other activities include customer contact centres and park and ride schemes.
As a result of its diversification strategy, NCP has more than doubled in size in three years. It has also moved away from its origins in property management and has become a service-led business.
The Challenge
NCP was traditionally an owner and operator of car parks. That was the way the business was established and has grown over 75 years. This meant that the bulk of profits were really derived from the ownership of property and that NCP was to a large extent a property company. However, as the property market has developed and the value of land has increased, it has become difficult to continue to grow the business through acquisition of new car parks. It also meant that NCP had tended not to look at the opportunities to provide services to other asset owners, particularly in the area of parking and transportation. A shift in strategy towards being a service company in the wider transportation market has provided significant new growth opportunities, particularly working with the public sector.
NCP’s culture had been dominated by an autocratic management style borne out of its previous property-led focus. This culture needed to change to enable the organisation to become more customer focused.
Bob Macnaughton, Chief Executive of NCP comments, ”NCP’s previous management style and structure had shaped a workforce that rarely took the initiative and was unused to generating ideas. Generally, people lacked the confidence to do more. Members of our workforce who were frustrated by this, either left the business or simply failed to perform to the best of their capabilities.”
The new diversity of NCP’s businesses both in terms of type of operation and geography also came under scrutiny. The staff working environment could be on the street, in a car park booth, or in a control room, with many working in a degree of isolation. Furthermore, diversity extended to the workers themselves who varied enormously in nationality, age, background and skills. This meant that careful planning would be needed to ensure their development and training needs were met.
Bob Macnaughton continues, “Whilst we recognised that we had a large team of very committed employees, the business had traditionally experienced high turnover, with a number of staff seeing their jobs as stop gaps or post-retirement options. Some are on the minimum wage and many had not chosen NCP as an employer, but had joined through TUPE transfer as we have won new contracts from other providers or local authorities. Faced with so many business and operational issues we could have taken the view that focusing on the people agenda would have been too difficult. However, with over 5,000 front line customer-facing roles, we were very much aware of the need to listen to our existing staff ideas and help them to develop a customer service approach into their work and create a service-focused culture for our business.”
“We also felt that by providing staff with the opportunity to develop their skills and careers, and by leading and managing in a positive and inclusive way, both NCP and our people would be successful,” adds Macnaughton. “This made our task seem exciting rather than impossible.”
The Strategy
Bob Macnaughton’s conclusions on the value of investing in NCP’s people have driven the company’s approach to people practices and improvement processes. As the new CEO, Bob challenged NCP’s ‘old ways’ recognising that they wouldn’t work for a business focused around people. One of his first tasks was to redefine the company strategy and set the values that would demonstrate the culture required for the business to succeed. NCP firmly believes that people make the difference and has Board level human resources representation. The HR Director was instrumental in developing an HR strategy which included a significant investment to develop and manage people. With this in mind, a Learning and Development (L&D) function was launched. The L&D strategy and plans were created around Investors in People to ensure that NCP focused on the right priorities.
Bob Macnaughton explains, “We needed a catalyst to change people’s perception of the importance and value of people. Investors in People provided an ideal benchmarking tool to educate and introduce the people practices that we needed. We introduced our learning and development initiatives company wide gaining interest and involvement from across the business and used the Investors in People indicators as an internal benchmarking tool at first, so our people didn’t view accreditation as simply gaining a badge of achievement. There is a danger that the Standard can be viewed as an HR tool, it is not, it’s very much a business development tool and we wanted this to become engrained in our culture.”
A number of key initiatives were implemented at managerial level, including leadership development and managers’ delivery of vision and values training, and customer focus development to their own staff teams. These initiatives helped to persuade managers of the need to develop their own management skills and to understand the value of supporting staff. This enabled managers to shift their mindsets away from an operational focus towards people development. It was at this stage that NCP’s intention to gain Investors in People was communicated. Macnaughton adds, “We then set about communicating our people development plan throughout the organisation. Formal activities and milestones were planned so that we could monitor progress and make improvements.”
Following the implementation of the L&D function, further people improvement plans were put in place. A Development Directory of leadership and management programmes for managers and a new performance management approach, were introduced. This enables managers and staff at all levels to monitor performance against job roles and development objectives. NCP also launched the NCP Academy which provides a structured approach to training, development and career progression for everyone in the business. New internal and external recruitment methods were implemented to ensure a fair employment process. Two way communications were also improved, with the introduction of a company newsletter, employee consultation committee and a cascade process for meetings and information.
To ensure that managers truly understood and acted upon the value of these initiatives and so that they could embed them throughout NCP, Managers Action Plans, based on Investors in People principles, were introduced.
Managers are scored against these plans and reviewed twice a year. This has driven the identification of best practice, challenged inconsistencies and helped to improve performance. A recognition scheme was also established which rewarded individuals demonstrating the Company’s corporate values.
A genuine desire to share best practice has also been an important part of NCP’s overall development strategy. Critical to this is an ability to look beyond the organisation and to involve itself in industry forums to influence change. Macnaughton comments, “As the largest operator in a small industry sector, we must develop the right skills and behaviours to remain competitive. By looking outwards we will gain new perspectives that continue to challenge the way we do things.”
The Result
Since embarking on its process of change and as a consequence of its commitment to the Standard, NCP’s staff and its customers have experienced many true business benefits.
The induction process and customer service training has contributed to an 18 per cent reduction in staff turnover in the first three months of employment, providing a £500,000 annual cost saving for the business. In all business areas NCP has reduced its staff turnover by over 30 per cent. Staff morale has also improved due to increased staff involvement, manager coaching and training. This has resulted in a 100 per cent reduction in customer complaints and clients now invariably provide NCP with excellent references.
Leadership development and greater provision of induction and development training through the Standard has led to an improved ability to meet new business tender requests. This, coupled with strong customer endorsement, has helped to increase new contract wins and led to contract retention of 87 per cent against an industry average of 40 per cent.
NCP’s ability to recruit, retain and develop people has not only led to company growth of 2,500 employees but has boosted annual revenues by £100 million in turnover in just three years.
In the three years prior to accreditation, NCP has also seen major improvements in management style, increased skills levels, improved motivation and people progression.
Macnaughton concludes, “Our people and our customers have all noticed a vast positive change and we intend to continue our drive for ongoing improvement. With positive feedback from employees and proven business results, we’re planning ahead for even greater growth with up to 10,000 employees by 2009. We’re proud of the many successful changes we’ve made and the results are proof that we’ve made huge strides towards becoming a customer and people-led organisation for the 21st century. At NCP we have put people at the heart of our strategy. Given the sectors in which we operate, which are quite challenging, I believe that we are setting new standards for maximising the performance of our people.”