Why Verto’s Cloud-based Software Will Make You a Better Employer
We designed Verto’s software to make it easier for you to manage projects and work in partnership with others.
And that’s exactly what Verto does. Its tools and cloud-based platform mean you can do all this, in an instant, whenever you need to and wherever you are:
- Manage risk
- Create reports
- Share information
- Communicate with one or more people
- See the status of all your projects at a glance
- Manage your team’s workload and performance
- Track your project’s progress and monitor its costs
There’s more to Verto
So Verto does what it promises. But it has other, less immediately obvious benefits. One is that Verto makes flexible working easy to put into practice and manage.
Increasingly, flexible working is becoming the norm. This is because it is good for both employees and employers. According to the 2009 Flexible Working Taskforce report:
65% of employers said flexible working practices had a positive effect on recruitment and retention
70% of employers noted some or significant improvement in employee relations
How to make flexible working work
Flexible working requires trust and confidence on both sides if it is to be a success. Staff need to be confident their managers are committed to flexible working and trust them not to abuse it. Likewise, managers need to allow their team members to have more control over their working week and trust them to maintain their performance.
Verto’s tools make it easy to manage a team, manage projects and maintain contact even when people are working in different places at different times. Exactly the support flexible working needs to be a success.
Key benefits of flexible working
One of the key strengths of flexible working is that it’s attractive to employees. So, as noted in the Flexible Working Taskforce report, it will appeal to candidates when you’re recruiting, it will help you retain skilled and experienced staff and it will help improve your employee relations.
There is a wealth of evidence to show (for example, Scandura and Lankau 1997) that flexible working leads to higher levels of commitment and job satisfaction.
This is because flexible working motivates and empowers your staff by giving them more control. For example, they’ll be able to more easily meet their family and other commitments. As an added benefit, they’re also more likely to take a flexible approach to work. So when you need people to put in some extra hours they’re more likely to do so willingly.
Less direct benefits can include cuts to travel time and costs, which can also contribute to your organization’s carbon management and reporting. Staff who are able to avoid the rush hour will probably arrive at work in a more positive frame of mind too!
At its simplest, trusting your staff to work flexibly shows that you’re committed to them not just the organization.
To find out more about how Verto can help your project management - and as a result, flexible working - please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.
How Verto is helping the NHS deliver improvements
Health services are under constant and increasing demand. So the best way for healthcare staff to respond to this demand and meet the needs of their patients is through partnership working. As experts in collaboration, Verto is well placed to support the NHS in these partnerships.
In 44 areas covering the whole of England, the NHS, local councils and other providers are working together to improve health and care. Each area has developed a proposal, called a sustainability and transformation plan (STP), that focuses on the needs of the local population.
We have been working closely with the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) area.
The BNSSG STP
The whole of the local health and social care community in BNSSG has been involved in developing the STP. This includes hospitals, local authorities, community providers, mental health organizations, the ambulance service, GPs and other commissioners.
Their aim, under the STP, is to design and deliver health and care services that are affordable and sustainable. The different organisations are working together under one vision that focuses on keeping people well rather than treating illness.
We’ve worked in partnership with them to create a collaboration hub that makes it easier for them to work together and successfully deliver their STP.
The key numbers
1 vision
Covering 21 overarching projects
For 15 partner organisations
With more than 48,000 staff
Serving a population of nearly 1 million
Spending nearly £1.5 billion every year
What Verto is providing
We have created a cloud-based collaboration hub where staff can:
Manage projects and programmes together
Access their project toolkit
Read the STP and other project documents
Find information on new processes
Access a shared calendar with dates for events, meetings and workshops as well as key project deadlines
Find out the names and contact details of people working on projects
Complete standardised project management approaches
Complete and review reports
Share files and documents
Because Verto is based in the cloud it supports mobile working so staff can access the hub from any device, whenever they need to and from wherever they are.
It also means staff will receive real-time updates. These will keep them up to date with everything that’s going on. They’ll know when actions are complete and they’ll know if things start to fall behind. This will help make sure the STP stays on track to deliver its 21 key projects.
And Verto’s instant messaging tool means staff can communicate with each other quickly and easily. Whenever they need to they can chat to one person, a specific team or everyone involved in a project.
We’ll include a case study of our work with the BNSSG STP area in a future post. In the meantime, to find out more about how we can support your partnership working, please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.
Why it’s Worth Investing in Collaborative Working
No one ever said collaborative working is easy. To make it a success definitely takes effort. But making that effort is worthwhile because the benefits of collaborative working can be significant, for both your service users and the organisations taking part.
In future posts we’ll look at some of the barriers to collaborative working, what can go wrong, and how you can make it easier.
But for now, perhaps because we’re still in a positive New Year frame of mind, we’re going to focus on the benefits of collaborative working.
What is collaborative working?
Before we start, it’s worth being clear what we mean when we say collaborative working.
There are many definitions posted on the web and published in guidance documents, some of which will suit your organisation and specific collaboration better than others.
From our experience supporting people and organisations involved in collaborative working, we’re happy with:
Collaborative working is two or more departments or organisations working together. This may be to contribute to a particular activity, function or project, or to contribute to a new organisation. The arrangement may be for a fixed time or it may be permanent.
Why do we work in collaboration?
It’s also worth looking at what’s driving us to work in collaboration.
The impetus may come from public opinion, government policy and the ongoing public sector drive for improved efficiency and effectiveness – most likely it’s a combination of all three.
However, what initially led to the collaboration is less important that what the outcomes may be. Because when collaborative working goes well, these can be extremely positive.
- Collaborative working helps you save money
Organisations working together are usually much more cost-effective than, what we now call, silo-based working. From joint procurement to cutting duplication, there are many ways that collaborative working can lead to savings. As evidence of this, our clients are currently using Verto to help them track £13.2 billion of planned savings.
- Collaborative working helps you be more effective
At the heart of collaborative working is improving outcomes for service users. When we focus more on why we’re providing a particular service and work together to find solutions, both of which collaborative working makes us do, we’re more likely to make a positive difference.
- Collaborative working helps you learn, share and repeat success
Closely linked to the point above, working with others and learning from their knowledge and experience, helps us understand more about what we really need to provide and how best to do this. Over time, services can become more resilient and expertise in teams can grow.
- Collaborative working helps you build a strong and united voice
When we share our knowledge and experience, we may also uncover shared problems and concerns. If we then need to lobby for change, one clear message sent by many will have much greater impact.
We designed Verto to help make collaborative working easier and more successful for you. In future blogs we’ll look in more detail at how Verto’s specific tools do this. Because whether you want to make communication, reporting, risk analysis, task management, resource management, performance planning or document storage and sharing easier, we can help.
For more information please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.
Verto available now on G-Cloud 8
What is G-Cloud?
The UK Government G-Cloud is an initiative targeted at easing procurement of commodity information technology services, that use cloud computing, by public sector bodies in departments of the United Kingdom Government.
G-Cloud allows public sector organisations to call off services without needing to run a full tender or competition procurement process, thanks to a series of framework agreements with suppliers.
Public sector bodies are able to search for services that are covered by the G-Cloud frameworks by visiting an online store - the "Digital Marketplace".
Verto is a UK Government G-Cloud Supplier
Verto has again successfully completed the G-Cloud tender process and is now available through the recently published G-Cloud 8 framework.
Verto is available under Lot 3, Software as a Service with a further listing under Lot 4 available for Specialist Cloud Services.
Find Verto in the Digital Marketplace here: Verto G8