Covalent for Fire Authorities
Covalent addresses the very specific needs of Fire Authorities.
Fire Authorities are subject to the Audit Commission CPA regime process, and need to provide Inspectors with evidence that you're acting on results, and focussed on improvement management, not just monitoring and reporting Performance Indicators.
Covalent Scorecards manages an 'Objective Hierarchy' which cascades from corporate-level, through departments, service units down to personalised scorecards for individual employees if desired. This will support the so-called 'Golden Thread' that CPA inspectors speak of, by reinforcing an approach of translating corporate ambitions and objectives into operational and service priorities that employees can relate to. Current progress can be immediately understood through the use of traffic-lighting that highlights performance above, in line or below expectations.
Covalent provides a very intuitive, visually-rich approach to tracking statutory and local indicators. The software consolidates performance data from various systems, and gives users personalised views specific to their area of interest. Whilst the disciplines and processes for managing financial performance are well established, regular tracking of non-financial performance measures is typically very under-developed in trusts.
Covalent can provide this evidence of actions taken based on performance results that back up your achievements, and can directly help Fire Authorities address the key areas Inspectors are looking at.
Involving members and senior officers in the performance management process. A wide variety of intuitive and visually interesting reports can be created in Covalent to ensure senior decision makers automatically receive regular performance reports. Covalent also ensures senior people get actively involved in monitoring corporate priorities by establishing clear lines of performance measure ownership and accountability.
Articulating corporate priorities and objectives and using performance information to track progress in achieving this. With the reporting facilities in Covalent, the authority’s performance in each of its key priority areas can clearly be seen. It can also demonstrate what actions, effort and resources are being directed to these priority areas, supporting an investigation into whether the authority is making its resources work in the best way to deliver value for money.
Aligning staff work with such corporate priorities so that staff know what is expected of them and managers know if they are achieving it. Covalent could become part of the staff appraisals process if you wanted to cascade the system down to develop individual, team or business unit scorecards, derived from a corporate scorecard.