Agenda item
Report of the Head of HR Shared Services - Workforce Strategy Update
- Meeting of Employment Committee (old), Thursday 6th July, 2017 11.30 am (Item 18.)
- View the background to item 18.
Minutes:
The Head of HR Shared Services presented a report on the Workforce Strategy Update.
The
Committee noted that the Policy and Resources Committee had
approved the Workforce Strategy at its meeting on 29 June 2016 and
had requested that the Employment Committee received a progress
update every six months.
The Head of HR Shared Services advised that she was aware of a
number of questions raised about the Investors in People
accreditation at the last meeting of the Committee and she had
tried to incorporate the answers to those questions in the body of
the report.
The Committee was asked to note areas in the action plan attached as Appendix I to the report where good progress had been made:-
·
Resilience Training
– Two programmes had been developed, one for
recognising stress (aimed at Line Managers) and another for staff
to recognise and manage their stress and reduce the organisational
causes of stress. It was noted that
good feedback had been received from staff as to the usefulness of
this programme.
·
Strive – The feedback on Strive was good from staff who felt it was well
embedded in the Council’s values.
Overall staff felt the organisation was well organised and well
managed.
· Market Supplements – This initiative had worked well and was used in areas that were traditionally been hard to recruit to.
Members
noted that the action plan would be revised to reflect the feedback
received from the IiP
survey.
The
Head of HR Shared Services also advised that the following areas
needed improvement:-
· Apprenticeships
· Encourage staff to feel their voice is heard
· The definition of a Manager and what the Council expects
· Succession Planning
· Leadership Programme
· Officer/Member Relationships
·
Rewards
In response to questions from Members, the Head of HR Shared Service advised that:-
·
Apprenticeships – The drop off was due to the apprenticeship scheme being
very competitive and the Council did not fare well as it did not
pay very well. Therefore a review of
this would be taking place.
·
Succession Planning
– the development framework would be the first
step in ensuring that there is succession planning in
teams.
·
Employee Handbook
– this was updated regularly. New starters were given a hard copy along with the
depot staff who did not have access to a
computer.
·
Rewards Package – the Rewards Package was very competitive but Managers
need to be made aware of all the rewards that can be given to
staff. There was also a Health and
Wellbeing Programme for staff to access.
·
The 360° Feedback Process
- assessment was carefully administered and if there
were any areas where there were red flags, those were brought to
the Council’s attention by the consultants.
·
Investors in People
- Staff time spent on meeting with the IiP Assessor was not factored into the overall
costings and would be difficult to calculate. However, it could be estimated at no more than
£3,000 meaning that the total cost with the assessor’s
time was less than £20,000.
The IiP Accreditation
had just been renewed but there would be another opportunity to
assess what direction the Council wanted to go in two years’
time.
The IiP Assessor’s
report would be circulated to the Committee for
information.
·
Pay Award –
The Council was not bound by the Government’s
1% cap on public sector pay. It was
explained that a discussion was held with the Leader in the first
place and then discussions are held with the Unions in September
before the pay award is agreed by Policy and Resources Committee in
its budget setting.
RESOLVED: That the progress of the actions set out in the Workforce Strategy be noted.
Supporting documents:
- Workforce Strategy Update, item 18. PDF 216 KB View as HTML (18./1) 65 KB
- Enc. 1 for Workforce Strategy Update, item 18. PDF 58 KB View as HTML (18./2) 66 KB