Robert Shilliday is looking at the latest entries for a competition seeking photos of employees wearing the organisation's branded T-shirts in unusual places. "It brings togetherness," says the communications manager at the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) in Northern Ireland. Two members of staff are pictured on a sightseeing cruise in New York and another is perched at the top of a mountain. This sense of pride in the public sector body illustrates a transformation as impressive as that of the city of Belfast, where it is based. In the mid-1990s CCEA, which advises the Department of Education, Northern Ireland, was forced to make public apologies for mistakes in exam results which meant some school leavers missing their place at university. Morale was at rock bottom and staff were embarrassed to work for it. Today things are very different. CCEA gets a 77% positive score for pride among its employees. Moreover, staff are happy, motivated and loyal — one in four of the 336 workers has been on the payroll for at least 10 years. Gavin Boyd, former managing director of Cawoods Coal Division, who was brought in to turn CCEA around, said on his last day as chief executive in January: "We had good people, all they wanted was good leadership." Boyd, who is moving on to become head of the new Education and Skills Authority, instilled the values of quality and excellence, improvement and collaboration. He also introduced a culture of learning — more than 130 people have been on courses in the past four years. Staff praise the usefulness of their training, the 78% positive score here ranking CCEA seventh among all 100 organisations on this list, and they feel their job is good for their own growth (81%, a top 25 score). "There is a sense of teamwork," says quality and risk management executive Marisa Getgood. Employees go out of their way to help each other, are confident in their workmates' abilities (both 81%) and care a lot about each other (80%). Benefits include career breaks, a final salary pension scheme and flexible starts and finishes. As he heads to a meeting, Shilliday and others walking with him get signed up to do a leg of the Belfast marathon, giving them another excuse to wear those T-shirts. Accordingly, staff feel their efforts to help causes outside of work are well supported, the 78% positive score ranking eighth.
