Agenda item

INFORMATION NOTE OF THE HUMAN RESOURCES SERVICES MANAGER

To update the Joint Staff Consultative Committee on the progress made in the last quarter completing HR work and projects and supporting people issues.

The Human Resources Services Manager presented the Information Note entitled ‘HR Update’, following which Members asked questions.

Audio recording – 7 minutes 2 seconds

The Human Resources Services Manager presented the Information Note entitled ‘HR Update’ and advised that:

·             A comparison of recruitment data from Q2 2025 with Q2 2024 and 2023 had been shown in paragraph 3.2 of the report.

·             The 75% recruitment target had been met in Q2 2025.

·             Two positions had remained vacant, however, the casual role in Careline had since been filled and the Senior Planning Officer vacancy had been readvertised and would be followed by shortlisting for interviews.

·             Labour turnover was 8.5% for 2025, which was higher than turnover in 2024 but lower than 2023 as described in paragraph 3.3.

·             There had been a downward trend in long-term absences through 2025.

·             Short-term absences had remained steady with a small decrease in summer and an increase in winter due to cold and flu as expected.

·             A new Applicant Tracking System (ATS) would be delivered in 2026 to better manage the end-to-end recruitment process and form positive first impressions with candidates.

·             A pay claim for 2026 had been submitted by the Unions in December for a £3,000 increase on all spinal pay points or a 10% increase in pay.

·             10 apprentices were currently in post, and recruitment was planned to replace those who were ending their apprenticeships in 2026.

·             Graduates continued to have a positive impact across the Council including the launch of a new Council app, preparation for the Warm Homes Local Grants Scheme and the implementation of AI.

·             Personal development mornings continued to be run monthly, with recent mornings focused on cyber awareness, meeting management and customer service.

·             Work to provide skills to the Senior Managers Group to support staff through Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) would continue.

·             Another wellbeing walk had been scheduled to coincide with the Samaritans campaign of Brew Monday following the success of the last walk.

·             The October Inclusion Group meeting had discussed the Gender Pay Gap and the learnings from the Active Bystander Webinar.

·             The next Inclusion Group meeting would focus on race inclusion as the Council would be participating in the 5 Day Challenge on Race Equality Matters.

·             A steady decline on both the mean and median percentages for the Gender Pay Gap (GPC) had been seen at the Council over recent years.

·             Work to reduce the GPG was ongoing as there was no quick fix, and this would include support for true flexible working, encouraging female applicants for senior roles, developing confident female employees, providing unconscious bias training to managers, and carrying out stay interviews with senior female employees to improve retention.

·             Stay interviews would be one to one conversations with staff on why they might leave or stay which would help to improve retention and inform the Council on employee experiences.

The following Members asked questions:

·             Councillor Daniel Allen

·             Councillor Bryony May

·             Councillor Claire Strong

In response to questions, the Human Resources Services Manager advised that:

·             Frequency of stay interviews would depend on resourcing but they would be started this year with a select group of employees, with the plan to conduct them again next year with a different group of staff.

·             There were no plans to change the apprenticeship scheme due to LGR as apprentices would be transferred to one of the new unitary authorities along with other staff.

·             Stay interviews would be targeted at senior females first, then rolled out to more staff if successful.

·             Workshops on being a confident female leader were planned, as well as a mentoring scheme for senior females.

·             The Staff Consultation Forum had discussed the use of AI and the skills gap associated, and they would be working with IT to develop e-learning to address this.   

·             Some apprenticeships were focused on data and AI to enable development in this area.

·             IT continued to run bitesize and drop-in sessions on anything IT related.

·             Changes had been made to the Regular Performance Review framework to enable conversations between managers and employees on the skills and development that they felt were required for them now and in the future.

·             The ATS would contact candidates automatically throughout the recruitment process, but it would also enable them to manually send reminders to candidates that had only partially completed an application when a deadline was approaching and this would improve engagement, particularly for harder to fill roles.

The Chair thanked the Human Resources Services Manager for their presentation.