Agenda item

The report updates the Committee on the Council’s People’s Strategy.

The Director for Corporate Services, P Maginnis, introduced the report update on Peoples Services. To begin with she picked up some questions that were asked at the last meeting of this Committee about vacancies and consultants.  As of 21 September 2020, an exercise had been carried out looking at vacancies, at roles that had been vacant for at least six months. They found that there were 26 vacancies, some of which were being covered by agency staff. As for Consultants/Agency Staff we had 23 of them at present, scattered throughout the organisation, mostly in qualified, professional rolls.

As for the people strategy update. The People Strategy and Plan set out clear actions and timescales over a two-year period to support the Council deliver its strategic objectives and was divided into 6 workstreams:

• Attracting, on boarding and retaining the best talent
• Developing our leadership
• Embracing change to support EFDC evolution
• Creating a culture of engagement and wellbeing
• Developing our skills and behaviours to make EFDC a great place to work
• Achieving organisational goals through a high performing and flexible workforce

At the core was transforming the People Team to become an enabler for the organisation.

The Strategy sets out the ambition for our workforce – the right people with the right skills, highly motivated high performing and business efficient.

The Covid Pandemic meant that they had brought projects forward in order to support staff and they were providing more resources for staff during the winter months. Some of this was researched by looking at how the Norwegians got themselves ready for their long winter and what their mindset was.

They have also launched an employee assisted programme to enable employees to access discounts online along with medical access. There was also a lot of training available for staff, including first aid and mental health training and e learning packages.

As for developing skills and behaviours there was a programme for management apprenticeships. We have appointed four housing apprentices and they will start their Chartered Institute of Housing qualifications. We were exceeding our public sector duty in terms of apprenticeships – we were expected to have 15 apprentices in our organisation but have actually got 23.

We have recently undertaken a realignment of services to ensure that the projects to assist our residents and businesses in terms of Covid recovery had been aligned correctly. They were also looking to automate and improve the current recruitment processes using the current IT systems and working with our partner organisations.

Councillor Rackham asked why, when we had 23 Consultants/agency staff in place, were we not filling the vacancies with permanent staff.  She was told that they were currently looking at the vacancies, looking to see if they were actually required, they would then know if there were any chance of making savings. Looking at the list they were not additional rolls, but they were filling vacant rolls across the organisation.

Councillor Brookes commented that Covid had taken a lot of officers’ time up during this pandemic. What about the time they would have spent doing their regular work? P Maginnis said that they had refocussed and reprioritised their work during this time. Extra Environmental Health officers had been taken on, for which we had received further funding, to work on Covid. A Small agreed that officers had been very busy and some projects had slipped because of this but we had contained this as best as we could. Councillor Brookes noted that Directors had been working under a lot of pressure and had taken on a lot of extra work. A Small agreed that it had been a big challenge for staff. The organisations response had been exceptional and had kept their work to a high standard. However, the extra workload has had to be prioritised and fitted in with the day to day stuff.

Councillor Sam Kane added that the extra workload that all staff had, especially senior management, emphasised the importance of the wellbeing work that the People Team did.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee noted the People’s Strategy report.