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There is no summary of this meeting yet. Summaries are written once the council publishes the minutes, which are its official record of what a meeting decided. They usually appear a few weeks after the meeting.
1.1 Chair welcomed Members and Officers to the meeting. 1.2 Apologies were received from Councillors Ron Burnett, Liam Cowles & Karl Gauden.
2.1 There were no Declarations.
3.1 The minutes of the meeting held on 31 January 2024 were confirmed as an accurate record.
4.1 The action sheet was noted. The TLS declared that all actions have been completed and Members agreed that they can be removed.
5 Workforce Related Data and Trends 5.1 The EM-R introduced the report and the DCS gave a detailed overview of the report to Members, in particular Appendix 1 included in the report. 5.2 Members questioned and officers responded as follows: · DCS – We recorded data setting out the diversity of our workforce but as this information was often not voluntarily shared, the data had not been considered to be accurate and therefore had not been included in the report. · DCS – Whilst staff had taken on more responsibilities within their roles, there were no concerns that this would have an impact on delivering the work streams and objectives set out in the County Plan. He later added that digital solutions had been introduced within departments to ensure they had kept up with delivering the County Plan, despite having fewer staff. · DCS – The consultation on the development of the Workforce Strategy detailed in the report at 5.1 had been a targeted consultation, but there had also been a variety of streams used to gather this information. · DCS – The consultation had not been completed with external sources, such as residents or businesses, as the purpose of the policy was focused on our own internal workforce. · DCS – When new digital solutions were introduced training and support had been provided for staff to increase competency, which had also formed part of Project Apollo. · DCS – Regarding turnover and redundancies, it was stated that a big part of the report was on succession planning. In the past this had happened organically and had ensured there was continuity, but steps had been taken to reinforce this including offering career pathways. · DCS – Offering bursaries to students to bring them into the Authority workforce was one of a number of options that had been considered. · DCS – When it came to roles that required specialist knowledge, apprenticeships had been put in place as well as on-the-job training to ensure that this knowledge had been retained within the authority. · DCS – When staff have left we looked to extract their knowledge via an exit interview, although this was a voluntary process, but to minimise any issues we tried to ensure overlaps between new starters and leavers to ensure we were prepared in advance to mitigate any issues. · HHR – When it came to sickness we had looked at the reasons why staff were absent and other factors including age and physical ability to complete the role. The example of the Refuse team was given, where there was an ageing workforce and therefore due to the physical nature of the job there had been a high rate of sickness. To mitigate this, we had a physiotherapist meet the team once a month to show exercises for the staff to do which had provided support to them. · DCS – We had worked on helping develop our CLA children’s skillsets by providing work experience opportunities. This was found to be beneficial to them but also when ready allowed us to support them to apply for apprenticeships within the Council. · DCS – We had a commitment to armed forces families, reinforced by our signing of the Armed Forces Covenant, to provide opportunities for them to receive and interview to join the TCBC workforce, provided they met the minimum criteria for roles. · HHR – To assist ALN applicants we had looked at our recruitment process and what could be changed. We looked at the skillset of the individual and changed the role they were in to enhance their skillsets. · HHR – There were a number of options that were looked at to bring more young people into the authority, including work experience programs and internships, to train them to fill roles where shortages were identified. · DCS – Surveys were taken from staff regarding their feelings on splitting time between the office and home-working, with the responses received being positive. · DCS – Sickness and particularly mental health sickness absence numbers had reduced over time. · DCS – It was typical that sickness levels had been higher amongst operational staff than other departments. · DCS – It was inevitable that an older workforce would be reflected in our numbers of sickness absence, with particular ailments affecting older people included in this but that this was typical. · DCS – The reason for the increase in mental health numbers in Q4 was due to seasonal factors and again this was said to be typical. Targets had been set after discussions with managers and had been considered to be an achievable challenge. · DCS – Long term sickness had been recorded and this data had been provided to service areasl. A calculation had been used for many years, known as the Bradford Factor, and this was used as a way of analysing absences and monitoring patterns and the impact these absences had on the workplace. · HHR – We have looked at how we assist our managers and discussions have been had about adapting guidance supplied by the NHS to be able to bring into our own authority resources. · DCS – Performance management had been considered at Leadership and had been looked at across all directorates. A Members Seminar had also been arranged on this topic and this would be held on 3rd June 2024. · DCS – The turnover numbers of staff were considered to be typical of any large organisation. · DCS – All other Authorities had also looked at how they provide employment opportunities for young people although these strategies had differed from our own. We are unique in our own strategy in that we converted our junior posts into apprenticeships. 5.3 The Chair thanked the Officers and the EM for their participation, and they then left the meeting. The TLS, SO, AD&MSTL and TD&MSO remained for the recommendations. 5.4 Recommendations On completion of their scrutiny activity, the Committee concluded by offering the following recommendations and comments for consideration:- Recommendation 1:- The Cross Cutting Resources & Business committee recommended that future reporting should contain timescales against activities being carried out and planned. All activities should also reference intended outcomes so that future monitoring can consider effectiveness and impact. Recommendation 2:- When reporting sickness data, future reporting should break down data by short-term sickness figures and long-term sickness absence data. Recommendation 3:- Members recommended that the workforce be regularly consulted with on current and planned work strands to seek their views on potential issues and/ or barriers to achieving positive outcomes and to evaluate feedback and findings of effectiveness of initiatives. Recommendation 4:- When developing actions to improve recruitment practices, analysis should be made of positions/ roles that prove difficult to recruit to and actions refined to focus recruitment activity. Additional Comments & Observations from the Committee: The Cross Cutting Resources & Business committee commended officers for the work that had been done, was being done, and was planned. Whilst assurances were provided that staff workloads were manageable despite the significantly reduced workforce numbers over the last 15 years, members still expressed concerns in this respect, and commented that this should be regularly and thoroughly monitored. 5.5 The meeting ended at 4.20pm.
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