Agenda item

Report of the Assistant Director, Human Resources and SSC, to provide the Staffing and Remuneration Committee with a progress report which will include achievements to date, planned activities for the next quarter, and draft proposals for year two.

The Committee considered the report and presentation on the Workforce Plan, summary of Year One achievements and proposals for Year Two, as presented by Daksha Desai, Head of Workforce Programme. The presentation gave an introduction to the workforce plan, a review of year 1 deliverables, outputs delivered since April 2015, progress against each of the work stream areas, plans for the remainder of year 1 and thoughts about years 2 and 3, and early learning points and challenges.

The Committee asked about My Conversation and whether all staff fully understood  this process; Ms Desai advised that the matrix had been trialled in four services since October and that there were challenges for the organisation in adopting the new process, as this was a completely new way of doing things. Some of the conversations arising out of the assessment of individuals in respect of certain behaviours had the potential to be very challenging and managers would require support from HR to do this. It was noted, however, that this work was needed in order to achieve the culture change that was required.

The Committee expressed concern that at the moment not all staff understood why change was needed and the vision for the future direction of the organisation, and asked what work was being done to convey to everyone where the organisation was aiming to get to and why. Ms Desai agreed that there was a need for further work to engage the whole workforce around these issues and that this would be the key focus of work for the next 18 month period. It was noted that it was essential that all staff understood what was happening and that previous reliance on information being cascaded down from managers had been proven to be ineffective. The data from the staff survey would be used to target those areas of the organisation where greater engagement was needed and the most effective means of reaching people, as a one size fits all approach would not work. Staff induction would also be used to support this. The Committee emphasised that it would only be possible to deliver what the workforce plan aimed to deliver if everyone fully understood the vision for the organisation and how it was going to get to that point.

The Committee noted that there was a particular challenge in engaging with those staff who did not work in one of the central Council buildings, such as frontline staff working in children’s centres, parks, etc. These staff could feel quite isolated from the corporate centre due to the physical distance from the rest of the organisation and because they often had a reduced capacity to attend meetings or respond to consultation emails, etc, due to the requirements of service delivery. Ms Desai agreed that there was a need to make a particular effort to enable frontline staff to participate in events during their working hours and that this covered things like making arrangements to allow staff to take time to attend events in person and addressing people’s digital literacy. The Chief Operating Officer confirmed that there was a very strong emphasis on ensuring that as many staff as possible were reached by initiatives and activities such as the staff survey; this had been a long-standing challenge for the organisation and there was a need for creative solutions. The Committee asked whether it would be possible to see a breakdown of the staff survey data by service area and it was agreed that this would enable the Council to identify where greater efforts to engage staff were required and how successful this had been so far.

The Committee asked what proportion of Council staff were Haringey residents. Ms Desai advised that she would confirm this information outside of the meeting, but that it was understood that the percentage had reduced from around 40% to less than 30%. The Committee were interested in the reasons for this reduction. It was noted that the introduction of exit interviews would help to gather data for reasons why people left the organisation going forward, but that these had not been carried out in the past. Ian Morgan, Reward Strategy Manager, advised that analysis showed that there was little correlation between work and home locations, with people more likely to commute than to move house at the current time. The data also showed that salaries for Haringey residents had increased, but that this was not the case for people who worked within Haringey. It was suggested that the Voluntary Redundancy programme 5 years ago had been such a new approach for the Council that many people may have felt at that time that it was a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity and had left the organisation for that reason. It was noted that the proportion of Council staff resident in the borough was also linked to the Council’s wider aims for all local residents to have a good level of workplace skills and was another reason why this statistic was important.  

The Committee expressed concern about the reduction in the proportion of staff resident in the borough and it was agreed that it would be useful to ascertain what the current statistic was for the organisation and to undertake a piece of work around the reasons for the change. The Chief Operating Officer agreed that this information would be circulated to the Committee outside of the meeting.

Action: Chief Operating Officer

RESOLVED

That the content of the report be noted.