Agenda item

INFORMATION NOTE OF THE CORPORATE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER

To consider the People Strategy Update Information Note.

The Committee received a People Strategy Update Information Note presented by the Corporate Human Resources Manager.

Audio Recording – Start of Item – 13 Minutes, 38 Seconds

The Committee received a People Strategy Update Information Note presented by the Corporate Human Resources Manager as follows:-

The Work Plan had already been declared for the coming financial year, and updates would be provided to Members at the next Meeting of the Joint Staff Consultative Committee in June 2019.

Recruitment

The Human Resource department have had a very busy time during restructure through support of moves, changes and recruitment.

Equal Pay and Equalities

·                A working group had been formed to consider actions to reduce the Council’s identified gender pay gap. 

·                The report for 2018 would be published on 30 March 2019.

·                The figures had shown that the figures had improved since 2017.

·                An Action Plan had been developed.

·                There was a 10% differential in the numbers of women at grades 9 and above.

·                The workforce profile was 73% female – a positive opportunity to produce more of the leaders from existing staff.

·                Career development of women, looking at succession planning of staff - survey of Staff to assess their career aspirations.

·                Equality Data had been collected which had been published and was on NHDC’s Website.

Pay and Benefits

·                The year ahead would be extremely busy as the Human Resources department had started procuring for a new payroll service; and

·                Implementation of that payroll service, ensuring a smooth transfer from one provider to another.

Pay

·                The Pay Policy Statement for 2019/20 had been published on the Council’s website.

National Pay Bargaining – There would be a bottom loaded pay increase in April 2019, however this would be the last year of such an increase.

Benefits

There were 2 key contracts:

(1)       Employee Assistance Programme; and

(2)       Occupational Health

Regular Performance Review

·                A new cycle was in process;

·                Organisational Restructures; and

·                The Learning and Development team were continuing to develop activities that supported change and workshops had been designed to support staff through those changes.

Absence

·                Using the data provided from March last year enabled forecasting for the only month that was missing from the report;

·                Short term absence was 0.75% over target, however November and December figures were considerably lower than perhaps expected; and

·                Long Term Absence – by February there was no-one on long term sick leave.

In response to questions from Councillors Lovewell and Aspinwall, The Human Resources Manager advised as follows:

·                There had been, as in the past, a significant take up for the flu vaccination program –well over one hundred staff had received.

·                Whilst it was difficult to discern as to whether the flu vaccination had assisted with absence figures, it was felt it did indeed make a difference.  The long term absence figures were low, and staff suffering from flu rather than a cold would be absent from work for longer.

·                Pay Bargaining – National Living Wage Rate - different rates were applied to staff who were under the age of 24.

·                Apprentices were not paid an apprentice rate, they were paid over £9 an hour alongside grade one employees.

·                The Grow Zone System was used for Performance Reviews.

·                Measuring of Absence – Best Practice Performance indicated the way in which information had always been gathered in local government, which was how NHDC compared themselves to other similar authorities.

·                There was a scale of performance around local authorities in order to view how NHDC measured up.

·                The data gathered was valuable when trying to improve absence rates across the organisation. Whilst, an alteration in the way that information had to be gathered, especially to define between the different services, through structural changes, it was very closely managed by HR with the added support of Business Partners.

·                There was an Annual Workforce Development Survey carried out.

·                The Deputy Chief Executive further stated the Best Value Performance Indicator allowed NHDC to bench-mark itself against other authorities.