Issue - meetings

The committee to consider proposals for the re-organisation and refocusing of the Council’s Organisational Development and Learning function.

The Assistant Chief  Executive presented the Committee with the proposals  for the re-organisation and refocusing of the  Council’s Organisational Development and Learning function in order to deliver 50% budget reduction in back office services and 35% budget reductions in what were ABG grant funding streams for social work and social care development .  The reorganisation would deliver a total saving of £908k. Members were asked to consider paragraph 7.4 of the report which set out the current number and future number of posts in the service. This included posts which were funded by ABG funding and overall meant that 14 posts would be deleted in this service.   The Committee were advised that as the posts in the new structure had changed substantially from the old structure, the proposed recruitment method for most posts was by a series of open ring fence interviews.  This was with the exception of the OD Consultant for E- learning. 

Members were asked to note that Appendix E of the report contained responses to the staff and union comments on the reorganisation. There was engagement with staff that were involved in more than one ringfence about how  they wanted their interviews to be managed. The key focus of the restructured service would be to support the transformation agenda within the whole of the organisation together with helping the implementation of the budget decisions.  The service would continue to provide short courses which would be commissioned externally.  Moving forward into later financial years, the Assistant Chief Executive envisaged a closer working relationship between Human Resources, HESP (Haringey Efficiency savings Programme) and Communications under the Chief Executive’s service.  There would follow a report to a forthcoming Committee about the transformation agenda of the Council. This would provide information on how the Council will manage its transformation and efficiency going forward with an explanation of how the CE’s services will work together.

The Committee learned that, where there was a position to be made vacant by means of a voluntary redundancy, and if there was a need to continue with this post then the service would seek to transfer the saving and find an appropriate displaced employee.

Clarification was sought on how the developmental aspect of the service could continue. In answer to this, the Committee were asked to note that the short Course programme, which staff relied upon to access to improve skills in their chosen area, was continuing with a manager to commission these courses for staff.

The Assistant Chief Executive continued to outline the changing function of the Organisational and Development service which would need to accord with the culture change in the organisation and support it. This was translated in the proposed new posts which were set out in Appendix D.  The Committee recommended that the term consultant should not be used to describe a Council employee post as  this was a term mainly associated with externally contracted staff and could also cause confusion when data  is collected and analysed on the use of  this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 104