About us

Public World was founded as a social enterprise in 2010 to provide learning and development supports and other consultancy services to organisations seeking to improve service quality and resource use by empowering and improving the wellbeing of their staff.

We help frontline teams learn how to manage themselves and function well, coach their organisation’s leaders about the cultural and mindset changes needed to empower them, and work with their back offices to repurpose from ‘command and control’ to ‘serve and support’.

Our commitment to effective and efficient services and fair and supportive work environments means we also tackle underlying challenges that obstruct those goals, such as discrimination and other employment practices that undermine individual happiness and collective unity of purpose.

Our team of experienced consultants in Britain works closely with our partners in the Netherlands. Combining our expertise, we support radical change not only in health and social care but also in other service sectors in which self-management can bring transformative improvement.

Our Work

We help our clients to succeed by mobilising the intrinsic motivation and knowledge of their people in support of their shared organisational purpose. We do this by:

  • Working with senior leaders to clarify their organisation’s purpose and understand what that means for the daily practice of their people.
  • Providing learning and development support to enable self-managed team work within clear guidelines about standards and resource use.
  • Supporting changes in managerial and ‘back office’ roles so that self-managed staff are well supported through coaching and agile administration.

Testimonials

Public World has helped us build bridges with non-traditional partners through a careful balancing act: Evenhandedness without detachment. Expertise without technocracy. Values without dogma.

Meike van Ginneken, World Bank

On behalf of the ITF, I would like to thank you very much for all your work. The project has provided information and analysis of an extremely high quality which has benefited the political and industrial work of the ITF, and stimulated new policies and relationships. The ITF looks forward to an ongoing programme of work with Public World.

David Cockroft, International Transport Workers’ Federation

Public World produced the first research on international cooperation between global unions on precarious work. This was a sensitive and difficult process which the team handled brilliantly. The work proved to be central in building international solidarity between unions

Elizabeth Cotton, Founder of Surviving Work, and former Head of Education at ICEM

Clients & partners

Commonwealth Secretariat
Department for International Development
European Federation of Public Service Unions
Government of South Africa
Government of Uganda
International Labour Organization
OxfamGB
World Bank

Clients & Partners

Join our mailing list