Skip to main content

Appendix one - How we will know if we have achieved our objectives?

Share(Opens Share panel)

We invite our performance to be judged through measures.

Objective one - To ensure that all ICO teams have clarity of purpose, effective leadership and harness diversity of thought and perspective to achieve their objectives.

Objective	Measures
Embed our values, shifts in approach and behaviours.	Increase in awareness and understanding of the values, shifts in approach and behavioural framework among our colleagues, as evidenced through employee engagement survey scores. Workforce diversity demographics are representative of the society by sex, disability and ethnicity.
Embed a common understanding of the principles of our high-performance culture to harness team strengths.	Increase in knowledge and understanding of the principles of high performance as evidenced through employee engagement survey scores.
Build the confidence and capability of all leaders and people managers to lead, develop and coach teams by adopting inclusive and adaptive leadership styles.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: feel supported by their line manager; feel they receive clear direction from their leaders; believe they are given the opportunities and support they need to develop, continuously learn and grow; receive regular feedback on their performance; and as leaders, have the right knowledge and tools to influence their teams and external stakeholders.
Ensure our reward framework recognises our people for their contribution, impact and living our values, and maximising recruitment and retention of talent.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: feel recognised for the work they do; feel fairly rewarded for the work they do; and believe recognition and reward is based equally on both what is delivered and how it is delivered (values/behaviours). Reduction in attrition rates. Improvements in time to hire metrics. Improvements in quality of hire metrics.
Ensure that all our people feel psychologically safe to contribute openly to the work of the ICO. This includes understanding what it means to create psychological safety for others and being accountable for doing so.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: feel valued for the work they do; are respected for individual differences, ideas and working styles; and are encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things. Increased awareness of psychological safety.
Embed a culture of respect and deliver our equality, diversity and inclusion objectives.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: are treated with respect at work; treated equitably at work; are encouraged to share different views and perspectives; and provided with adjustments at work seamlessly Deliver the EDI action plan within the time frames set. Improvements in gender and ethnicity pay metrics. Sustain positive metrics on disability pay. Improved EqIA completion rates ahead of system implementations and change initiatives. Improved awareness of reasonable adjustment requirements for colleagues.
Build on our supportive approach to make sure we are all well at work, providing our people with as much control as possible over where they work and the type of work they do.	Increase in number of colleagues accessing our wellbeing services (EAP, health cash plans). Increase in proportion of colleagues working in a hybrid way (eg flexible hours, more office-based collaboration, and colleagues working from non-office based locations). Increase in colleagues reporting that they: feel trusted and empowered to do their work at a time and in a place that works for them and the organisation; feel included and engaged in hybrid meetings and as part of a blended team; and are aware of the wellbeing support available to colleagues. Decrease in both short-term and long-term absence rates relating to wellbeing.
Ensure our leaders build capacity in teams to deliver priorities with agility to support a healthy work and life balance.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they believe their set objectives are realistic and support a healthy work-life balance. Reduction in number of open vacancies at any one time, minimising time to hire.

Objective two - To continuously improve through experimentation, transforming the ICO to achieve our purpose whilst empowering our people to deliver and feel accountable in their roles.

Objective	Measures
Empower, support and expect our leaders to promote experimentation to drive continuous improvement through their people, using this approach as the basis for supporting people through strategic change.	Percentage of change portfolio projects that utilise experimentation to increase year-on-year, to demonstrate this is being more widely adopted.
Embed project principles and approaches to the way we work to support agile and effective ways of working.	Improved performance when assessing the change project portfolio against the government functional standard for project working to demonstrate that we have embedded the project principles.
Encourage diverse views in our change initiatives, listening to one another as we make decisions on how we work and what we do whilst maintaining the important momentum behind our transformation.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they feel empowered to share their views, that those views are listened to, and agree that the ICO is a collaborative and inclusive place to work through employee engagement survey scores.

Objective three - To plan and deploy our skills and resources with agility to meet the needs of our customers and stakeholders

Objective	Measures
Ensure we have the right capabilities and professional skills all levels of the ICO.	All colleagues mapped to a profession in line with the ICO professions framework. Identified skills gaps (as per workforce planning methodology) successfully closed.
Enable all teams to know the capability we have across the ICO and be better able to deploy our skills through the organisation quickly to anticipate and respond to demand.	Succession plan and professions in place for each directorate with immediate successors identified, or mitigating plans in place where no immediate successor identified. Increase in knowledge and understanding of the principles of hybrid working and cross-functional teams as evidenced through employee engagement survey scores.
Deploy our workforce on demand, enabled by clear financial and workforce plans to inform succession and capability planning of teams.	Workforce plans are in place for the organisation and all directorates, with skills gaps closed quickly.
Ensure we focus on efficient use of our resources, prioritising customer experience and maximising outcomes.	Increase in number of projects delivered where we have deployed colleagues across the organisation.
Increase our use of digital self-service channels to enable our customers to access our more routine or repetitive work as quickly as possible.	Increase in the percentage of actual customer interactions that are completed fully self-service. Reduction in the average cost to serve across key service journeys. Increase in service journeys that are resolved “right first time”.
Reshape the ICO and our teams through increased use of technology and automation, enabling our people to focus on our most complex and impactful work. Enhance people-based customer contact channels with knowledge and automation.	Increase in hours’ effort (customer and employee) saved as a result of automation.
Offer a joined-up (omnichannel) experience, whether human or digital.	Increase in the percentage of key customer journeys that are available as an omnichannel experience (ie the experience is available via more than one channel, is consistent from channel to channel and customer is persistently remembered from channel to channel).
Stop offering services via channels that underperform from a customer experience, efficiency or outcomes perspective.	Increase in the proportion of services through all channels that meet the threshold of service performance (calculated through creating a score based on a blend of customer experience + cost to serve + successful outcomes).

Objective four - To make the ICO’s critical and most useful data and insights available while keeping our systems safe

Objective	Measures
Be curious and led by data and evidence in the way we work.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they use data and insights every day in making decisions and that curiosity is encouraged and witnessed at the ICO.
Use technology and data to enable our processes, improve our reporting and monitoring and provide efficient customer focused services to our colleagues and our stakeholders.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they have the data and insights they need to provide a good service to customers and/or stakeholders. Increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS) of our digital experiences Meeting our availability standards for key systems and thresholds for satisfaction with the IT service resolution experience.
Make our data available internally and externally via a single data platform, stopping building unnecessary data silos. We'll prioritise data and capabilities based on use cases with the highest relative value. We'll equip our people with data and analytical skills.	Achieving the goal of all of our critical data being available in a single data platform. Delivery of value enabled from data use cases, where value is a combination of financial and societal impact. Increase in colleagues reporting that they have the data analytical skills needed to do their jobs.
Keep ICO’s systems safe and secure by ensuring effective external horizon scanning to continually assess the threat landscape as well as implementing secure by design principles, ensuring cyber hygiene is adhered to and continually tested against best practices.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they understand how to keep ICO’s information safe and secure.
Ensure that as a leading regulator we manage all data appropriately by delivering proportionate information management best practices, assessments, policies, procedures and frameworks.	Increase in our data maturity score (a blend of data governance and management maturity measures benchmarked against industry norms).

Objective five - To fund our highest priorities and ensure value for money.

Objective	Measures
Allocate funding against the highest ICO priorities, enabling the flexing of our funding allocation to respond to changing needs and priorities, whilst ensuring we operate within our funding limits.	Financial year-end outturn within +/-3% variance.
Demonstrate value for money by having clear financial benefits realisation plans in place, ensuring that we measure, track and report benefits and outcomes.	Individual project outcomes and financial benefits are achieved in line with business case objectives.
Ensure that the ICO has a robust funding model in place to meet the longer-term needs of the organisation through the structure of our fee income and grant in aid funding provision, and through longer-term financial scenario planning that supports our strategic workforce plan to aid strategic decision making.	Financial year-end outturn within +/-3% variance.
Utilise procurement pipelines to improve planning, enabling the procurement function to proactively partner the business, delivering quality, value for money and compliant outcomes via efficient processes.	Reduction of backlogs within procurement. Increase in colleagues reporting that they had a positive experience of the procurement process and outcomes. Improved performance when assessing against the government functional standard for commercial working to demonstrate that we are embedding best practice principles. Improved contract management within the business ensuring all supplier KPIs are fully achieved.

Objective six – To enable simple and transparent decision-making throughout the ICO, empowering through appropriate delegation and ensuring we can be held to account for our performance.

Objective	Measures
Ensure our decision-making approach is proportionate and transparent. This means greater individual ownership and responsibility for decisions, enabling us to move quickly, empowering our teams and leaders. While most decision-making will be collaborative and take account of the views of others, we will focus on empowering personal control, accountability and responsibility and minimising unnecessary escalation when progressing our work.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: understand when decisions are theirs to take; know that, when a decision is not theirs to take, where it should be taken; believe leaders at the ICO take responsibility for their decisions and actions; believe people managers take responsibility for their decisions and actions; and believe everyone at the ICO takes responsibility for their decisions and actions.
Embed a proportionate risk management framework to identify and manage risks and opportunities. This framework, and in particular our clearly articulated risk appetite, will inform how we make decisions, enabling us to work in an agile way and at pace with a clear and consistent approach to how we prioritise our resources.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: understand the ICO’s risk appetite and apply it in their everyday work; agree that resourcing and prioritisation are linked to risk and risk appetite and our risk profile drive our decisions on where we put our greatest effort; and agree that where decisions are made, they are within the risk appetite, or if not, have been escalated appropriately.
Have a modern and agile governance structure which will enable us to prioritise simply, quickly and transparently.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: agree that the ICO is transparent in how it operates; believe staff are aware of what we are going to prioritise and deprioritise and how we make these decisions; agree that the ICO’s governance structure supports staff in the work they do; agree that we make decisions quickly; and agree that we take action promptly after a decision.
Report the impact and outcomes of our work, as well as the output, to enable our stakeholders to hold us to account.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they: agree that the ICO takes responsibility for its decisions and actions externally; and staff would feel able to tell someone the impact that their work has. Increased performance reporting including enhanced focus in our external reporting of our performance and inclusion of impact and outcomes measurement in our reporting to our stakeholders.

Objective seven – To efficiently create a flexible and accessible work environment with compatible and integrated technology.

Objective	Measures
Offer a modern hybrid experience that enables people to work and collaborate wherever they are.	Increase in colleagues reporting that they have the technology to work in the location that best suits them.
We will enable our colleagues to improve their efficiency and productivity by enhancing our existing technology capability.	Increase in colleagues reporting that our technology has increased their efficiency and productivity in the last 12 months.
We will enable improvements in productivity and collaboration by having modern, flexible and accessible office accommodation that includes a range of workspaces with compatible, accessible and integrated technology.	Increase in the compliance of our internal and external-facing digital services to meet government accessibility standards. Increase in the percentage of ICO people with specified accessibility needs who rate ICO digital services as “good” or “very good” for accessibility.
We will promote innovation through the investment of new tools, systems and knowledge, to ensure the ongoing availability, performance and capacity of our technology estate.	Increase in our “innovation index”, using a blend of measures.
Anticipate a reduction in the footprint of our Wilmslow head office over time, whilst having an appropriately scaled estates footprint across key UK locations and help our people to work where they are most productive.	Increased desk utilisation within our offices. Increase in colleagues reporting that our offices provide necessary facilities, in a location that suits them. Improved performance when assessing against the government functional standard for property working to demonstrate that we are embedding best practice principles.
Deliver against the government net zero strategy by developing a carbon management plan and sustainability policy, delivering these to achieve a reduction in our carbon footprint.	Awareness from our employees and stakeholders of the things we have done to improve our sustainability and reduce our carbon footprint. Reduction in number of recyclable items that are used for energy recovery.