Case Study

SJA Map

St John Ambulance: Embedding Peace

The Challenge

St John Ambulance recognised the need for culture change to address conflict and bullying.

The leadership understood that culture change required unique solutions that would support the 800-year-old organisation in continuing to achieve its purpose of providing first aid in a health emergency.

The organisation at the time had a workforce of over 1700 paid staff and over 27,000 volunteers who delivered a range of services from providing first aid at public events to running the SJA museum.

The implementation phase: Deep Discovery.

Resolve consultants began by using its systemic change process (implementation, embedding, innovating, and sustaining) to understand the context of both a large and historic organisation.

This involved working with a steering group that included leadership development, internal comms, Governance functions, HR and Equalities and a representative the Executive Committee (Ex-co) with a direct link to the CEO. The steering group would oversee the workstreams to address the organisational challenge.
This was followed by a range of stakeholder interviews with different parts and functions of the organisation to understand how conflict and bullying were understood.
The breath of activities SJA undertakes meant that there was not one culture but “cultures” depending on function, geographical location and most importantly relationships.

The implementation phase: Recognising the Lived Experience.

From the discovery phase, a range of issues emerged:

Historic conflicts unresolved could affect present working relationships.
Relational conflicts could become formalised very quickly and would take up management time.
Function conflicts could affect where resources were allocated.
Cultural conflicts e.g. volunteer versus paid staff, or different teams being at the same event.

The profound discovery meant that the goal of conflict resolution had to address “relational conflict” as a means of changing other forms of conflict.

Interconnecting Workstreams: A unique Model for St John.

In response to issues of conflict and bullying with St John Ambulance, the Executive Leadership has developed a range of workstreams to address various issue. However, there was a lack of an interconnecting model to ensure that combined benefits of the workstream could be fully utilised.

During the development of Conflict Resolution Leading through conflict will be part of the Leaders with H.E.A.R.T programme which will act as a bridging concept between the wider culture workstream at SJA, and the specific Conflict Resolution workstream.

The purpose will be to develop competent leadership model which enables all leaders to be confident and capable of address certain forms of conflict which arise at SJA.

Linking Values to Process

Resolve Consultants worked with SJA to understand how its organizational values could be aligned with the Conflict Resolution Initiative.

The organizational values were also developed to be part of a leadership program to enable leaders to behave and display these values. The Conflict Resolution Initiative at St John had the potential to support leadership when there were conflicts with a process that supported the values in the organization.

Defining Conflict Resolution in SJA:

A shared definition of what can be achieved beyond the conflict was needed. A definition of conflict resolution which could be used across the organisation was created and then tested with SJA People:

“The process by which St John People transform conflict into a creative opportunity to enable perspectives to be shared, empathy to be established and solutions to be created, allow all participants to peacefully co-exist”.

At first the idea of peace was actively resisted in the organisation, preferring respect, but over time the steering group and newly on-board project lead saw that this was essential to building and maintaining community at SJA.

Training on Conflict Resolution – Delivering on Peace

The delivery model for such a large and complex organisations required developing a community of conflict resolution practitioners.

Multiple training sessions were delivered across the country to provide access for those based on interest and location.
In addition, a unique peer support model was developed along side c-designed practitioner sessions to deep dive into areas of interest and concern.

A service map was developed to help understand how to ensure quality of service for SJA people to be able to refer their conflicts for impartial facilitation.

Building a Community of Practice:

The conflict resolution training was very successful in enthusing practitioners, however, with referral process and still in development and so many practitioners being trained across the organisation it was decided to hold a Community of Practice day.

A message from the CEO welcomed the practitioners followed by facilitated sessions covering aspects of the training refresh and engage practitioners and encourage connection across different training cohorts.
One SJA participant said: ‘This was the first time I did not see volunteers or paid staff, all I was SJA people wanting to make a difference’.

Ensuring quality of practice:

After the training, all practitioners were partnered to create peer support.

This allowed for both formal and informal practitioner support with the community of practice.

They were also supported with virtual and in-person sessions covering key issues which emerged from practice. As one practitioner stated: ‘I need these days to reconnect with myself and this group, the energy is amazing’.

The culture of practice that developed in the community of practice was crucial to the successful retention of practitioners.

Developing internal comms to support: CR

Due to the size of SJA it was clear that an internal comms strategy was needed to inform the organisation of what Conflict Resolution, why it was being used and how the process worked.

This was important as SJA had a range of initiatives which staff and volunteers could use, hence CR had to demonstrate a clear purpose. In addition, the history of various forms of conflict resolution had been done with little or no process, as well as at various time these processes had been weaponised and therefore there was a scepticism based on legacy concerns within the organisation.

The internal comms strategy would be vital to generate confidence the organisation that conflicts could be resolved using a process which was trusted by the people in the organisation.

Getting internal comms right:

With such a high level of diversity and geographical reach, it became clear that the Community of Practice needed its own internal communications.

Process maps, a clear referral process and promotion of the benefits of conflict resolution were all developed.

In addition, a series of short videos was created with Scriberia to support practitioners with key skills. (Add link) .
Conflict Resolution was mentioned at key conferences and events to promote the service to all SJA people.

The second Community of Practice event:

The second community of practice event was held a year later with practitioners.

This event focused on the experiences of practitioners in supporting SJA people in conflict and the forms of peace that were created.

The day also focused on what would be needed to truly embed Conflict Resolution Practice in the organisation and what success indicators would need to be developed.

As one practitioner stated: “I get the difference between conflict management and conflict resolution, as a manager I can hold the conflict but a practitioner I know the process of how to resolve it”.

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