Building an Integrated Work Force Through Shared Values: the Worcester Library and History Centre

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the need to integrate staff from a number of services from the public and academic sectors who will be working together in a new joint-use library. Staff workshops aimed at producing agreed core values were used as a way of starting the process of integration and engaging all staff with the vision of the new library.

Design/methodology/approach – The decision to focus on core values and to actively involve staff in their development is explained with reference to other work on vision and values. The format of the workshops is described, and an overview given of the qualitative and quantitative feedback from staff at the workshops, which was used to assess the success of the approach and inform future work, which is briefly outlined.

Findings – The paper concludes that the workshops were successful in helping staff start to get to know about each other's services and develop joint values. The opportunity to participate and be consulted by managers was welcomed.

Practical implications – Practical workshops can be an effective way of bringing together staff from different services and organisations and start engaging them with a vision. The authors intend to continue the process by working to embed the values and providing more of these opportunities for their staff, looking next at training needs.

Originality/value – Merging staff from different services can be difficult and threaten the success of joint-use libraries. As partnership work is increasingly promoted amongst libraries, this case study suggests one effective way of encouraging integration.