Agenda item

Please see the attached PIDs x 5 regarding the People Strategy:

1. People Strategy Programme Definition and documents Appx 1 – 4
2. Common Operating Module
3. Pay and Benefits Review
4. Leadership & Management development
5. Developing Skills Capacity
6. Recruitment

P Maginnis noted that these documents had been completed before the electronic ‘Pentana’ system had been set up. The principal document was the Programme Definition Document (PDD), which set out what the purposes and objectives officers were looking to achieve and set out the work programmes in order to achieve these goals. It would also set out any financial objectives or benefits. Currently officers were looking to make savings of £1.5million by way of the Peoples Strategy.

The Peoples Strategy would be coming up for review in the new financial year as it had been going for some time and deadlines within the project had moved on. Officers had just started a consultation process on the junior levels of management and would recruit to these rolls in the near future. This was all tied in with the recruitment strategy.

A key project being undertaken was the Pay and Benefits Review and they were still negotiating with the Trade Union side on this.  In short there was still lots of ongoing work taking place.

Councillor Patel asked if we needed to capture the risks associated with the strategy outlined in the PDD document. P Maginnis said that they did. They worked with the Transformation Team to put this information into Pentana and it was reviewed regularly.

Councillor Patel looking at Appendix 1 asked if there should be a column for risks. He was told that this was shown in Pentana and was in the same format as the corporate risks table including impact and likelihood, which was how it was assessed.

Councillor Patel noted that there were lots of different projects, how did we prioritise one over another. He was told that they were discussed at Management Board to establish the priorities and establish a common operating model. Councillor Patel asked if we should not state how we prioritise one project over another. P Maginnis said that she would take this suggestion back for consideration. Councillor Mohindra noted that the project officers would have prioritised the projects at their start and he was hesitant to now, at this late stage, to ask for justification of these projects.

Councillor Whitehouse noted that there was a summary of risks on section 16 and asked if an update could be given. P Maginnis replied that they had identified the capacity in HR as a risk due to the number of projects. They had now taken on more staff to support the projects and carry out business as usual. She continued that there were no issues with the iTrent system and with working with other authorities. The Accommodation Review has, so far, not had much impact. There were no member issues to be reported. Workshops on the Pay and Benefits review had been held. The Council was still experiencing low level employee issues due to the ongoing change but there had been no reduction in customer satisfaction, so far.

Councillor Mohindra noted that the Audit and Governance Committee did keep an eye on this as well.

Councillor Lion asked where we were in terms of the budget and delays. P Maginnis said that they had made savings in year 1 and were about £60k ahead at present. P Maddock added that a further saving of about £100k would be added to this, but it was still difficult to see if we would make the £1.5million saving at the end of the year.

Councillor Owen asked if the Council published any information on the gender pay gap. He was told that yes we published this information and it was available on our website. Currently the gap was running at 16% but officers were hoping to see an improvement in the near future.

Councillor Whitehouse asked what was behind the statement “the Council will have a better balance of employees by age profile”. P Maginnis said that currently we had an older workforce. We now had apprentices working for us and were hoping to retain them once they had passed their apprenticeship. The Council was also looking to have ‘higher level’ apprentices that came in at degree level. By this and other means they were trying to bring down the average age.

Councillor Whitehouse asked how far things had moved on over disability and equalities. She was told that officers were talking about structures and this had been monitored, but there had been no changes so far.

Councillor Mohindra asked about the PID on developing the skills and capacity of the workforce and if this included members. He was told that would be separate from this.

Councillor Patel asked about the PID on the Peoples Strategy and the sections on the approach. He asked who we compared best practice and retention models with. P Maginnis thought it was probably Braintree and Colchester but was unsure and would find out.

Councillor Lion noted we had difficulties in getting graduate entry recruits, was there something in the strategy about this. He was told that was what the ‘Higher level’ apprenticeship scheme was about. They had just heard that Town Planning could now join in the apprenticeship scheme and they would be looking into this. Councillor Lion suggested that this should be publicised.

Councillor Whitehouse noted that this PID had a lot of bullet points scoping the review to inform the recruitment and retention strategy; had there been any changes so far? She was told that actions were still being planned and final inputs were to happen in the next few weeks.

Councillor Patel asked about retention and was told that recruitment and retention were two different things. Retention would come under the Pay and Benefits Review and a new project called the “Wellbeing Strategy”.

The Chairman thanked the Service Director, Business Services for that update and clarification of the PID documents.