Report of the Interim Director of HR and OD attached

This report provides an update on the development of Our People Plan 2020/23 to deliver Our People strategy and gives an opportunity for the Committee to comment on initial proposals.

The Committee considered a report of the Interim Director HR and OD, which provided an update on the development of Our People Plan 2020/23, to deliver Our People strategy.

The main points and themes within the report included:-

·                The Our People strategy set out a compelling vision for a future workforce and workplace where systems, processes and cultures were fully aligned with Our Manchester behaviours and where people had the skills, opportunity and support to perform at their best;

·                An overview of the draft Our People delivery plan for 2019/20; and

·                A summary of key Our People achievements to date

In considering this item, the Committee also considered the report entitled Workforce Intelligence Update and Overview of Vacancies (agenda item 8).  The main points and themes of this report included:-

·                Absence levels had increased across the organisation and remained amongst the highest in Greater Manchester and now stood at an average of 12.72 days lost per employee in 12 months up to September 2019;

·                Stress/Depression continued to account for the greatest number of days lost and was the most common reason for absence in each Directorate;

·                Significant work had been undertaken over the last six months to try to address rising absence figures at both a Corporate and Directorate/Service level;

·                In addition, HROD were supporting a range of “deep dive” projects in each Directorate to address specific issues;

·                An overview of live capability/conduct cases across each Directorate;

·                There continued to be reduction in agency spend across the Council;

·                Details of the number of apprenticeships starts by the end of quarter 2 of 2019/20; and

·                Details on the number of posts showing as vacant, including the numbers of those currently out to recruitment; those held as the service was currently going through a service redesign and those which were budgeted on the organisational structure but were not currently being recruited to.

Some of the key points that arose from the Committees discussions were:-

·                How would the Plan look to address underperformance of employees and ensure that the number of staff that had been subjected to a prolonged period suspension during disciplinary procedures was reduced;

·                It was commented that improving the organisations’ approach to performance management was a central issue to any People Strategy and should not be a peripheral issue;

·                It was also suggested within the Plan there needed to be a distinction between work that would be undertaken in improving the Council’s disciplinary processes and performance management of staff;

·                When were the outcomes of the 2019 BHeard survey and outcomes of the Independent Race Equality Review likely to be available for scrutiny;

·                There was concern around the overrepresentation of BAME staff subject to disciplinary procedures;

·                How often in Return to Work conversations did staff cite that their absence was connected to the stress brought on by having to cover vacant posts and what was being done about this;

·                It was asked whether Officers had done any detailed analysis to investigate whether there was a correlation between the number of vacancies held in departments and the absence rates within those teams – RECOMMENDATION;

·                Was there any correlation between levels of stress, anxiety and depression and individuals workloads;

·                How was the Council intending on reducing the average number of days off sick from Council staff (12.5 days), compared to sector average (8.5 days);

·                It was commented that conversations with their staff around work related needed to be incorporated into general working practices and not just take place when a member of staff had been off sick;

·                It was suggested that within future workforce dashboards, a measurement of caseloads for those services with the highest levels of sickness absence caused by stress was taken and compared to historic average levels;

·                Members commented on the importance of maintaining ongoing conversations with Trade Union representatives as they were often an invaluable source of anonymised information;

·                It was queried what were the intended SMART measures to determine the success of the Our People Plan, and also how would priorities be determined;

·                Concern was expressed that Directorates were holding vacant posts for significant periods of time pending restructures and clarification was sought as to how much influence HR had in the timing of restructures and how this input strategically aligned to the needs of the organisation as opposed to the desire of Directorates to achieve financial savings;

·                What was the intention for the 110fte budgeted posts which were on the organisational structure but currently not being recruited to; and

·                What progress was being made with the recruitment to the vacant posts within Capital Programmes as it was acknowledged that there had been difficulty filling these posts.

The Interim Director HR and OD advised that addressing underperformance and suspension of employees would be picked up the under the strand of ‘Enabling and Supporting High Quality People Management’ within the proposed Our People Plan, which included the priorities of improving and modernising the Council’s HR policy framework and guidance and improving the organisation’s approach to performance management by up-skilling managers, reviewing systems and processes and driving a more performance focused culture. 

The Interim Director HR and OD acknowledged the points made around the need to make the Plan more explicit in terms ofimproving the Council’s disciplinary processes, and performance management of staff.

The Committee was advised that it was intended to report to the Executive in the next few weeks with an overall summary of the outcomes of the BHeard survey results and then a programme of rolling out these results across the whole Council would follow.

The Executive Member for Neighbourhoods (who was the Executive lead for Equality) advised that the independent race equality review was completed in December 2019 and the outcomes of the review were initially being shared with the stakeholders, individuals and groups who participated in the review.  In parallel, the Council’s SMT and Executive and wider Trade Union membership would be considering the outcomes by the end of February 2020 to permit wider circulation of the outcomes.

The Head of HR Operations advised that in the past, it had not been common practice to collate the themes as to why staff had been off sick from the RTW interviews.  Work undertaken in the last 18 months had been in the main to strengthen the compliance of Return to Works taking place and it had only been recently that the themes of staff absences had started to be collated.

In terms of absence levels, it was acknowledged that these had increased and the report highlighted some of the deep dive activity that was taking place to understand why absence levels had increased in various departments and what could be done to tackle this.  It was acknowledged that the Council’s current managing attendance policy did not fit across all the issues within service areas.  From the information obtained from the deep dives, HR was intending on tailoring various approaches to managing attendance in different service areas to reduce current levels of absence.

The Interim Director HROD advised that work was already underway in reviewing the caseloads of those staff working in those services areas where there was high levels of sickness absence brought on by stress, and there was national benchmarks that these levels could be compared against.  It was also reported that although it would not resolve the issue completely, there had been significant recruitment in these service areas to try and address this issue.

The Committee was advised that it was fundamental that HR was integrated fully within corporate services and a number of processes had been strengthened to incorporate HR from the outset to provide a greater joined up approach to the development of various Council priorities and plans.  The Interim Director HROD acknowledged the point of the need to have SMART measures in place to determine that the Our People Plan was being successfully implemented.  It was also reported that restructures were predominantly led by the Service area and the point made around the timing of these was valid and was something that could be looked at more broadly.

The Head of HR Operations clarified that it had not yet been determined what was to happen to the 110fte budgeted posts which were on the organisational structure but not yet currently recruited to.

The Deputy Chief Executive and City Treasurer advised that the vacancies in Capital Programmes contained a number of technical skilled disciplines that had been very difficult to recruit to, in Manchester, not just to the Council.  The number of vacancies in previous years had been much higher with a requirement on external consultancy staff to carry out these roles and there had been a significant amount of work, including the appointment of apprentices, graduate trainees and developing the relationships with the local universities to address the development of skills required and the vacancy rate and recruitment to these posts was monitored on a regular basis.

Decisions

The Committee:-

(1)       Notes the development of Our People Plan 2020/23.

(2)       Notes the levels of sickness absence across Directorate within the Council and the level of current vacancies across the organisation.

(3)       Recommends that HROD ask the performance team to do statistical analysis of the relationship between vacancy levels and sickness absence levels within individual teams to explore whether there is a relationship between the two.