Helen Taylor: Break Free From Bureaucracy with Pre-Approval

How much money would you trust your employees to spend, without checking with their manager first? £50? £100? How about £50,000? Helen Taylor from the London Borough of Hounslow, who is currently enrolled on the Level 7 Senior Leadership Apprenticeship Programme, explained in this talk from the 2023 Happy Workplaces Conference how she has implemented a system where her staff are Pre-Approved to spend £100,000.

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Read the transcripts

Henry: So, Helen is again on our Level 7 course, been there for a year and a half. And she is from London Borough of Hounslow. And so, we’re going to talk to her about preapproval in the public sector. So, Helen, tell us about your experience of that.

Helen: Hi, can everyone hear me, okay? Yeah. Great, because I’m in a really hot tent in the Isle of Wight.

I One of the many things that I’ve learned on the Level 7 course is around having more trust for your staff. So, my position in the local authority is Head of Service for Learning Disabilities and Mental Health, but I’ve learned over the duration of the course that given your staff more trust and autonomy to make their own decisions actually enables them to feel more confident and more skilled.

And just because I’m in a senior position, it doesn’t mean that I have to take control of all the decisions and one of the things that I’ve allowed staff to do is around placement. So, the council uses. certain providers in mental health and learning disability. I’ve allowed team managers to make the decision whether or not to fund a placement for someone and the ceiling limit is 100, 000 per year. And when the decision comes to me, it comes through a funding request, but it’s already made, so it’s already, they’ve got that power to make that decision, and over the year, or however long it’s been implemented there isn’t one decision that I’ve disagreed with.

Henry: And previously that had to go to a panel, didn’t it?

Helen: Yes. it was a panel, and which requires time and paperwork and justification of why you’re spending that public money. So, the process is also a lot slicker the client, for the staff, and it gives the team manager just that responsibility and with that, develops confidence.

Henry: So, it can be done in the public sector, you can actually even do 100k.

Helen: It can be done, and I hope to extend it to different areas of packages of support. So that’s domiciliary care. So, I’m going to see how it goes. in the next six months, but I do intend to expand and build upon it.

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One of the biggest problems with processes that require approval at every step is agility. Having to send a request for approval from a line manager means one first needs to write a summary to their line manager explaining why they need the funding, waiting for them to read it, process it and respond and then, finally, submit the paperwork for which the funding was needed in the first place.

This is slow and clunky, and every extra step along the process is taking up the time of your staff that would be spent doing something more productive.

“Just because I’m in a senior position, it doesn’t mean that I have to take control of all the decisions, and one of the things that I’ve allowed staff to do is around placement,” explains Helen. “The council uses certain providers in mental health and learning disability. I’ve allowed team managers to make the decision whether or not to fund a placement for someone and the ceiling limit is £100,000 per year.

“When the decision comes to me, it comes through a funding request, but it’s already made so they’ve got the power to make that decision. Over the year, there isn’t one decision that I’ve disagreed with.”

If you would like to learn how to be the sort of leader that people would choose to be led by and create more agile processes, take a look at Happy’s extensive Leadership and Management programmes. We are leading a movement to help people find joy in at least 80% of their work, by creating workplaces based on trust and working to strengths.

Our Level 7 Senior Leadership Apprenticeship Programme is designed for CEOs and senior leaders who want a cultural transformation of their workplace. You must be ready to apply the concepts you learn within your organisation. This is possible even in organisations that are more traditionally hierarchical and have regulations and processes to follow, like Hounslow.

What you will learn in this video

How Helen streamlined funding applications in her workplace
How you can give your people autonomy, even in a traditionally hierarchical organisation like a council
Benefits of the Level 7 Senior Leadership apprenticeship programme

Related resources

How TypeFi is Creating a Happy Workplace with the Level 7 Programme — Jason Michell of TypeFi explains his experience of the Level 7 programme and how it’s revolutionised how he manages his staff.
Pre-Approval in Practice at TLC: Talk, Listen, Change — Michelle Hill of charity TLC: Talk, Listen, Change has used pre-approval in practice in this two minute video
How You Can Create a Culture of Trust in Your Workplace by Using Pre-Approval — Henry Stewart, Happy’s Chief Happiness Officer, explains how you can create a workplace culture based on trust using Pre-Approval.
The Importance of Trust in the National Audit Office — In this short three-minute video, Susan Ronaldson and Steve Mirfin of the National Audit Office explain about why they have made trust the centre of their workplace culture.
Alun Pomfrett: Why It’s Important To Make Pre-Approval Work — In this talk from the 2023 Happy Workplaces Conference, Alun Pomfrett from Cocoa Amore explains how he has created a framework for Pre-Approval.

Learn the 10 core principles to create a happy and productive workplace in Henry Stewart's book, The Happy Manifesto.

Support your aspiring and current managers to be empowering and confident leaders with Happy

Happy offers leadership programmes at Level 3, Level 5 and Level 7, from new managers/supervisor level all the way up to senior leadership teams and CEOs. These programmes are based on the ideas of trusting your people. They are practical and based on applying what yo’ve learnt. We aim to inspire and ignite change in your organisation, as well as giving you valuable management skills such as business strategy, decision-making, negotiation and project management.

We also offer programmes tailored specifically to people from Global Majority backgrounds. The content is the same, but have been designed to give new and experienced managers the skills they need to navigate organisational culture with a clearer perspective on their own potential, as well as building their confidence and expanding their professional strengths.

Ben Rogers

Ben Rogers is a Project Manager and IT expert, who was a permanent member of staff at for Happy for 5 years. He now works freelance as a project manager and writer. He is a big fan of Excel spreadsheets, especially Pivot Tables and XLOOKUP.

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