Agenda item

5.05 pm – Progress Report on Workforce Strategy attached.

The Customer, Commissioning and Change Manager presented the progress report prepared by the Human Resources Manager on developing a workforce fit for the future, following the previous report to the Committee in July, 2017 (Minute No. 5).

It was reported that the Workforce Strategy Group had worked on the following issues during 2017:

·        Development of a competency framework (to be rolled out with service managers and above for 2018/19);

·        Guidance on team meetings and communication and use of a core brief for all Council services;

·        Governance and decision making and appropriate levels of decision making.

Service manager meetings had been refocused to link with the workforce strategy agenda, and the core brief process had been devised by the communications team and supported by CMT.

The Workforce strategy would be updated once the Investor in People report had been issued in March, 2018.

Since the introduction of the online learning platform, Aspire learning, in March 2017 approximately 50% of staff had completed mandatory training for safeguarding and data protection and a further 665 courses had been completed online. Additional training had been provided to over 200 staff to ensure that all staff could access the online training and intranet.

The development of an online annual appraisal had enabled the Council to achieve a completion rate of 89% for appraisals in 2017.

An online corporate induction package would be formally launched in February 2018.

Following the introduction of an apprentice levy (0.5% of the paybill) in April 2017, the Council had procured training from four different providers delivering nine apprenticeship programmes to 23 apprentices (including 16 existing employees) covering customer service, business administration, digital marketing, legal executive and management as well as traditional trades apprenticeships. Apprenticeship requests were currently being collated from annual appraisals to feed into the next round of recruitment for apprentices starting in September 2018.

Following the commercial awareness training workshops which had been delivered for Venues, Visitor Information and Museum staff a range of activities had been developed to generate further income, and recommendations would be considered for rolling this model out to other service areas.

The Senior Leadership Team had decided to seek accreditation under Investor in People (IiP) - the process of review had begun in November 2017 with an online survey being issued to all staff and Members. A 37% completion rate was achieved, enabling progression to the next stage of the assessment process - submission of data and evidence relating to workforce management and leadership in addition to interviews on site with a selection of staff and Members during January 2018. The final report would be submitted to the Council in March 2018.

Arising from Members’ questions it was explained that the reasons why team meetings did not happen regularly in all areas and why all staff had not yet completed online mandatory training modules were being investigated with managers, taking account of differing circumstances in different areas to enable these issues to be addressed.

It was confirmed that the online appraisal system enabled managers to see where appraisals had not been completed, and that individual records could only be accessed by an individual’s manager, their manager and Human Resources staff in order to collate learning needs.

The Chair thanked the Customer, Commissioning and Change Manager for her contribution to the meeting.  

RESOLVED -

(1)        That the report be noted and the work undertaken in developing the workforce strategy be supported.

(2)        That a progress report be submitted to a future meeting of the Committee, subject to confirmation through the Scrutiny annual work programming process for 2018/19.