Agenda item

Report of the Assistant Director, Human Resources, to provide the Committee with data regarding the workforce, including non-employed workers, absence rates and equalities data for the period July to September 2015.

The Committee considered the report on People Management Data, presented by Jacquie McGeachie, Assistant Director of Human Resources. In respect of actions taking place to reduce spend on consultants, interims and agency staff, it was reported that the Chief Executive had met with all assistant directors to look at ways of reducing the use of interims, and that a procurement exercise had been undertaken resulting in a pay rate reduction for the majority of consultants from 1 September 2015. The Chief Operating Officer had also issued an instruction for interims to take the three day break between Christmas and New Year.

The Committee expressed concern at some of the longer-term consultants set out in the report, particularly in IT Services. The Chief Executive advised that IT was a specialist area that was very difficult to recruit to, and that Cabinet would be considering proposals in the New Year to look at alternative ways of delivering these services, which would help address the issue of dependence on agency staff.

The Committee noted that it was important for them to have the opportunity to see this data, and to have a discussion with officers around the issues arising. It was suggested that it would be useful for the report to include gross cost figures, for even greater transparency. The Committee felt that overall things were moving in a positive direction, however the Council was not yet where it would wish to be in terms of figure around consultants, interims and agency staff.

The Chief Executive acknowledged that there were concerns around recruitment issues, for example in children’s social work, as discussed earlier on the agenda, leading to a dependency on agency staff, and that these pressures would continue to cause the figures to fluctuate. It was also felt that there was further opportunity to reduce the costs associated with the use of agency staff. In response to a request from the Committee, the Chief Executive agreed that a breakdown of spend by service area on agency staff and consultants and interims would be provided and it was noted that all service areas had a target for where they should be in a year’s time. In response to a question from the Committee regarding whether Haringey’s spend on agency staff and consultants was in line with other local authorities, it was reported that this was difficult to assess, as such figures were inevitably affected by significant transformation programmes.

The Committee welcomed Dan Hawthorn, Assistant Director for Regeneration, to the meeting to give an overview of the use of consultants and interims in his service area, and the actions taken to monitor and manage this.

Mr Hawthorn advised that the use of consultants and interim staff in his area of responsibility could be broadly divided in two – on the Housing side, significant changes had been taking place; a review of the purpose, function and structure of that team was due for completion shortly, and a new Housing Strategy was also currently under development against a background of very fast-moving policy changes. The majority of the consultants and interims in his area were employed in this service and it was anticipated that their number would reduce significantly as staff began to be recruited on a permanent basis to the new structure. The other consultants and interims in his service were reported as those working on specialist, time-limited projects – there would always be a need for such pieces of work and it was not therefore expected that this number, which made up the minority of consultants and interims he was responsible for, would reduce significantly. Mr Hawthorn advised the Committee that his main priority in managing the use of consultants was that their use created no additional budgetary pressure. In response to a point raised regarding the Housing Transformation Project Manager Post, the Assistant Director for Regeneration agreed that, where it was known that the post related to a long-lasting project, consideration would be given to appointing someone to a fixed-term contract.

Cllr Bull, in attendance at the meeting, asked for a clarification of the terms ‘consultant’ and ‘interim’, in response to which the Assistant Director of Human Resources advised that interims were those covering an established post, whereas consultants were coving supernumerary posts or undertaking pieces of transformation work. It was noted that the reduction of day rate that had been negotiated affected both consultants and interims, regardless of the work they were responsible for. In response to a further question from Cllr Bull as to whether the Council considered in-house expertise for projects, the Chief Executive advised, as an example, that there had been significant success in investing in the Council’s in-house business analysis service in order to reduce the dependency on external expertise in this area. A further example was the customer service transformation programme, which was being largely managed by internal staff, but there would be some highly specialist pieces of work for which external support would be required. It was reported that the Council’s spend on consultants was a very small proportion of the Council’s overall budget, and that they tended to use small, specialist firms rather than large consultancy organisations. The Chief Executive advised that there was a need to identify areas of spend that were not aligned to the Council’s corporate priorities, and stop spending in those areas.

Cllr Bull asked how Members could receive assurance in respect of the performance of external consultants. It was noted that Members had a range of sources of information about performance available to them, such as the reviews undertaken by the CDU, asking questions of Cabinet Members, contacting officers directly, attending the relevant committees and it was important for Members to take responsibility for asking for the information they required. The Assistant Director of Regeneration noted that he encouraged his project officers to interact with Members, as they had the first-hand knowledge of the work being undertaken, and he was therefore confident that Members were aware of what staff members, including consultants and interims, were working on.

The Committee asked if it was possible to issue details of the day rates for consultants and interims, and it was agreed that this information would be supplied. In response to a question regarding how performance was managed for large contractors such as iMpower, it was reported that this would be using dedicated project boards for large-scale projects, client managers on the procurement side and agreements such as payment on results.

The Committee noted the current rate of sickness absence, and the measures in place to improve this. It was noted that Human Resources were hosting workshops with managers to support absence monitoring processes, and that there was a specific focus on addressing single-day absences on Mondays and Fridays. It was emphasised that there was a need to address sickness absence rates not only for savings, but also as part of the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

In respect of the diversity statistics, the Chief Executive noted with concern that the number of BAME employees undergoing disciplinary and grievance procedures was disproportionate and work was needed in order to explore the reasons for this. The Committee agreed that it was important for this to be looked into, and welcomed that it had now been formally identified as an area for action.

RESOLVED

That the Committee note the report.