Case Study

Continuous improvement in action

10 May 2024

Learning at Work Week 2024, ran by the Campaign for Learning, takes place from the 13th to 19th May and focuses on building learning cultures in the workplace. The theme for 2024 is ‘Learning Power’, which emphasizes the importance of lifelong learning and development within organisations.  

The Ingeus Continuous Improvement (CI) Academy provides opportunities to help  Ingeus employees learn new skills and think differently about their roles. 

As colleagues prepare for this year’s graduation, Ingeus Head of Legal, Carla Raffinetti, is leading her team with more refined and efficient ways of working. We caught up with Carla to hear about her CI journey is helping the legal function move from being ‘stuck in the weeds’ to navigating open waters – and the benefits it’s delivering for all. 

American broadcaster Lloyd Dobyns described continual improvement as an ‘unending journey’. For Carla, who heads Ingeus’ team of legal eagles, completing her CI Academy Lean Six Sigma Green Belt was just the start of greater things to come. 

“For me, the most important thing was learning the skills to implement positive changes,” says Carla, who became one of Ingeus’ first Change Agents. “Law school taught me academic skills, how to be a good solicitor. But lawyers are not generally trained to think operationally about how we work.” 

Putting her newly acquired skills into action, Carla identified bottlenecks in the team’s workflow and set about streamlining processes to free up her solicitors’ time for the most strategically important matters:  

“The first thing I did was to allow business leaders to sign low risk, low value contracts themselves. We then spent a year producing template contracts that the business could access easily, without reinventing the wheel each time. It was clear we’d been spending unnecessary time on unimportant, repetitive tasks. We were stuck in the weeds and the volume of work was becoming unsustainable.   

“These changes have taken careful planning and time to implement. It’s been a real team effort and we’re seeing the results now. CI improvements have changed the way we do law here at Ingeus and are making a significant difference to the legal team’s working lives.” 

The Ingeus Academy partners with the Lean Competency System and provides training in Lean and Six Sigma tools and techniques.  

“The modular top up training and Change Agent forums help refresh my focus,” continues Carla. “Next up for us is a contract lifecycle management system; an easy to use, on-demand service which will again make life easier for us and the rest of the business. 

“Seeing CI theory being put into action and positively changing the way we work is hugely satisfying and, of course, it will continue!"