Anna Morton
Organisation Design and Development Lead
HM Revenue & Customs
As an Organisation Design and Development Lead, I get involved in various pieces of work. For example, as part of the Culture and Engagement team, I work with others within the sub team to plan for culture change and guide people through it. Individually, I am also responsible for helping to shape and articulate culture ambition, where we want to get to in the next few years.
I am also working on a target operating model rich picture, what it would look like in 2030 and beyond. We aim to produce a plan about how to launch the picture and how to land it. As well as helping people to understand and be involved in the transformation work.
A lot of the time I am either on calls or working in collaboration with someone else. We are a very dispersed team, and colleagues are not in the same office usually, but we choose to work collaboratively and share ideas. As an example, in a recent project, we were asked to work on moving towards a customer centred approach. We worked with a group of stakeholders and looked at what has stopped us from adopting this model in the past. Thus, if we were to do this change, what would customers notice, what would managers notice, what would others notice, etc. Recently, we were asked to work with Deloitte UK, working alongside them to shape the organisational effectiveness strategy for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). This work included: how would we guide people through change; what do we know about change from HMRC data insights; or do we need to obtain more data or generate the data ourselves. I have also been involved in delivering frontline employee listening sessions, which focused on our organisational ‘rich picture’ for the future. We generated and analysed data that was originally designed for managers. However, we were able to demonstrate that it was important for the frontline workforce to also see it. We were able to evidence this through speaking to people and representing their viewpoint. We are using the insights from these sessions to help shape the engagement approach to land the messages and involve people in a more authentic way.
In summary, my role involves a lot of collaboration, a lot of speaking about the work, because that is what moves things on. I need to connect quite frequently with others in the sub team, as pieces of works are separate, but they are interconnected. A lot of the time, we have good discussions about what we have been doing and getting feedback. This improves the next steps of our work and our approach for the wider organisation.
Primarily, developing my skills in the organisational change area. I suppose, I had not planned to go into organisational design or development, that was accidental. When I did this, I thought it was quite a big and intimidating area, as I quite like dealing with individual people or managers. But real change does not happen with individual people. Real change happens at an organisational change level. The shift to HMRC helped me to see that the two aspects are not mutually exclusive, in fact they help each other. Working in a bigger organisation has helped me to appreciate that working in a more strategic space is important in supporting individuals’ experiences of change. Additionally, in some of my more challenging roles, I have been told ‘you’d be good at that, do you think you’d want to help?’. It is good to demonstrate you can help making a difference. Thus, talking about what your skillset is more generally – even if not working as a psychologist directly – can bring about new opportunities for you or your clients where you can add value.
I joined the Civil Service in January 2009 as a Work Psychologist and then I moved into a Higher Work Psychologist role. My job was typically based in job centres seeing customers with specific learning difficulties, e.g. brain injuries, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), etc. This involved one-to-one interviews, doing psychological testing, and having a good conversation about their motivation for work. I would then write a report about what they need to do, or what additional support they might need.
In 2013 I moved to Edinburgh where I found my new job – Learning and Organisational Development Adviser, which was when I moved into HR. It was not necessarily a planned move away from the occupational psychology field, but the role is what appealed to me. Part of the role involved the design and delivery of training programmes for employees and leaders, including coaching, training, supporting staff with mental health conditions, and developing management capability. This job helped me to complete my chartership, as I was offered a broader remit in my role. But my chartership journey was far from smooth. I had to request a break, because I was unable to locate a locally-based supervisor or work on projects which met my final ‘gaps’ in my logbook, and this was out of my control. In the end, I worked with a supervisor based in York. I would travel to see her in my own time. In 2015 I moved to the manager role in the team.
After a few years in HR, I completed a secondment to a higher role to help make change happen in an operations department. I was there for six months before I went on maternity leave.
On my return, I worked as an Organisational Development Practitioner, where I oversaw a small team, responsible for redesigning the performance management approach for the organisation. After that, I moved to HMRC to my current role.