Issue - meetings

*RESOLVED –

(1)       That the Joint Cabinet and Employment and General Committee recommend that the Workforce Strategy be approved by full Council.

(2)       That the cost of reassessment against the IiP standard in June 2016 and the review of ongoing IiP assessment be approved.

(3)       That the Senior Leadership Team be asked to consider how best to provide opportunities for members of the Employment and General Committee to engage on a structured basis with the Council’s employees.

The HR Manager submitted a report recommending for approval the Council’s Workforce Strategy for 2015-19 and a review of Investors in People scheduled for June 2016 which would provide a further 18 months accreditation.

To support the achievement of the 2015-19 Corporate Plan, the Council’s Workforce Strategy had been rewritten with priorities informed by the employee survey, council plan, Investors in People and workforce strategy group. The priorities included:

·        Pay and reward

·        Leadership, skills and capabilities

·        Talent management

·        Employee engagement

·        Health and wellbeing

The strategy had been prepared to focus and guide activities and included a detailed action plan that would be regularly updated. A shorter summary with endorsements from the Cabinet Member for Business Transformation, Leader and Chief Executive, would be prepared for use as part of a wider communication approach to support delivery of the GPGS transformation programme. In addition, there would be further refinement and development of the intranet pages to support managers.

The headline measures in the strategy would be monitored by feeding in data from the annual employee surveys, employee performance and development interviews; and from the periodic weeks of workforce profiles and learning and development activities.

The report provided details on the next generation standard of the Investors in People Framework which provided for assessment against 9 key areas. The report suggested that there was potential for the same results to be achieved through embedding practices and outcomes into the workforce strategy and self-assessing against the standard as opposed to submitting the Council to external assessment and the associated costs of doing so. This would provide a more structured approach and evidence of key tangible success measures; however this would require further debate and discussion.

Once the strategy had been agreed, the timescales in the action plan would be reconsidered and more detail included for implementation and review. The strategy would be reviewed on a quarterly basis with an annual report to Cabinet setting out progress against the Workforce Strategy and Action Plan.

The report also outlined the financial and equalities implications, and the potential risks with proposed actions to mitigate these.

*RESOLVED –

1)   That the Joint Cabinet and Employment and General Committee recommend that the Workforce Strategy be approved by full Council.

2)   That the cost of reassessment against the IiP standard in June 2016 and the review of ongoing IiP assessment be approved.

3)   That the Senior Leadership Team be asked to consider how best to provide opportunities for members of the Employment and General Committee to engage on a structured basis with the Council’s employees.