Baldrige Improvements to the City Organization#
The City began the Baldrige journey in 2011. Through the application process, on-site examinations and feedback reports, the City of Fort Collins identified and implemented many improvements, including:
2012 - Strategic Planning Process#
Currently in its third iteration, the City’s strategic planning process includes citizen and business input. Based on Community input, the strategic plan provides Council with a framework for planning and budgeting services that are important to the Community.
2013 - Community Dashboard#
The Community Dashboard is reinforces the City of Fort Collins’ steadfast commitment to accountability and continuous improvement. Through the Community Dashboard and other performance measurement initiatives the City tracks and reports overall progress toward community goals.
2014 - Strategic Plan/Budget Improvements#
The BFO process began in 2005. Baldrige feedback prompted the City to look at how to improve the strategic planning and budgeting processes to include customers, stakeholders and partners. The City conducted community outreach by meeting with over 15 community stakeholders for input on the City’s strategic plan.
2015 - Volunteer Program#
A Volunteer Coordinator was hired to centralize and organize the over 9,000 volunteers providing 161,000 hours of services across the City. The Volunteer Program is designed to creatively engage people in their unique talents, and to promote volunteer involvement to improve services and create community.
2016 - Business Engagement Plan#
Based on comments in the 2016 Feedback Report, a Business Engagement Plan was developed and presented to Council in 2017. The plan includes components to:
- Understand the voice of the customer
- Survey and capture business customer satisfaction
- Understand current/anticipated business issues, and 4) identify what services to improve and how to provide them.
2017 Organizational Improvements & Innovation:
To foster efficiency, two process improvement experts were hired in 2017. FC Lean was implemented to teach staff and leaders tools and techniques to improve services and processes. The City also implemented Program Evaluation to ensure program effectiveness, and City as a Platform to continue leading edge innovation efforts.
2017 City Staff Engagement
A focus on workplace health and safety, as well as workforce engagement, has resulted in annual increases in wellness participation and lower recordable injury rates. In 2017, a Blessing White (Core 34) survey engagement tool was implemented for a better understanding of overall staff satisfaction drivers and engagement factors. These results are benchmarked and the City outperformed other government agencies in 20 of the core questions.