Agenda item

The Wales Audit Officer reported on the Corporate Assessment Follow on Review of Human Resources.

It was concluded that there has been good progress in planning, managing and engaging the workforce.  There is good support from the HR team and ICT systems are being developed e.g. return to work interviews and sickness information.  There is evidence that the Council is acting on feedback from staff; it has held its first staff and has also established Monminds.

The Corporate Assessment report’s proposals for improvement needing further work were summarised as follows:

·         Engage more effectively with staff to ensure the Council’s values are clearly evident across the organisation;

·         Ensure that the planned revisions and changes made to ‘Check In Check Out’ deliver a clear process of assessing and improving the performance of all staff and that department, team and individual objective setting is in line with the Council’s corporate objectives; and

·         Develop the Council’s workforce planning arrangements by including accurate data and key management information around workforce issues and statistics, reporting regularly to Senior Leadership and Management Teams to enable effective monitoring of progress and management of these issues on an ongoing basis.

The HR Corporate Assessment identified the following new proposals for improvement:

·         P1 Develop further workforce data to include staff establishment, contract status, vacancies, agency use, age, gender, and grade/pay distribution, to better inform future workforce planning activity.

·         P2 Improve oversight and ongoing implementation of the staff appraisal process. In particular:

1.    Ensure staff appraisal completion is uploaded onto the Council’s Hub to accurately reflect the numbers of staff in receipt of an annual appraisal; and

2.    Increase the appraisal completion rate.

·         P3 Further develop HR ICT systems to better support operational managers and improve recording of sickness and disciplinary matters.

·         P4 Improve the evaluation of HR improvement actions to better measure the impact and outcomes.

The Management response was presented and the following points noted:

·         The first two proposals follow on from previous proposals for improvement and strengthen arrangements. 

·         It was agreed that the authority is good at measuring activities but not outcomes, and a change in management practice is required to provide evidence that the changes to systems, policy and guidance results in a change in management practices e.g. better sickness levels, less grievances etc.  The intention is to improve HR practice and responses, and to work much closer with managers to identify and address concerns.

·         The proposals were welcomed and will be reported upon in the Annual People Report in July 2017.

A Member queried, if managers don’t have profile information of their workers, how redundancies (and any particular demographic thereof) can be monitored. Additionally, the point that senior managers and members find it difficult to assess if progress has been made was questioned.  It was asked if there was confidence in the progress made and whether or not managers can be challenged on underperformance.  It was also queried if there will be demonstrably better outcomes when they are reported in July.

It was responded that the data has been available but not in an easily accessible format for managers. Consequently, a dashboard containing information such as Full Time Equivalent (FTE), gender, turnover, sickness level, grade, age profile and length of service, is being developed and is close to launch.  An offer was made to demonstrate the dashboard at a future meeting.  Work is in progress to assure data protection, and then the intention is that managers will access the data to aid future workforce planning.

It was explained that, for example managing ill health, is to do with changing management practice referring to the new return to work video.  It is also about encouraging the workforce to have responsibility for its own health and wellbeing with clear expectations and identification of underperformance as required.  Impact could then be measured by monitoring the number of capability, grievances and disciplinaries cases.  In the wider context, the organisation will also develop a broader range of indicators to include complaints, freedom of information requests and training to refine where HR services for managers are required.

In response to a question, it was confirmed that the dashboard will be launched on 1st April 2017. A question was asked about the adequacy of the IT systems underpinning the dashboard and replied that there has been minimal development capacity within the Payroll and HR team who are developing Resource Link.  There has been a staff restructure with modest investment in systems to enable the team to explore the capability of systems and options.

It was agreed that a presentation on the dashboard would be provided at the next meeting.  Members welcomed the opinion of the Wales Audit Office, looked forward to the presentation at the next meeting and the future provision of better information on the profile of the workforce.

A Member asked if there were sufficient resources in place to deliver the improvements.  It was explained that there had been investment in the HR and Payroll team to develop capacity adding that a HR adviser review is being conducted  with a view to ensuring there are sufficient advisers to develop a partner approach with business managers.  It was emphasised that the priority is to change management practice and manage staff appropriately. 

It was added that, in terms of return on investment, the digital programme office is being used to improve understanding and to enable better use of systems. Where opportunities are identified, avenues for further investment will be sought as necessary.