Agenda and minutes

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meetings of the Committee held on 4 and 10 February 2021 and the Annual meeting of the Committee held on 28 April 2021.

The minutes of the meetings held on the 4 and 10 February 2021 and the Annual meeting of the Committee held on 28 April 2021 were approved as a correct record.

There were no urgent items of business.

A verbal update from the Chairman of the Local Joint Committee.

The Chairman update the Committee that Local Joint Committee had been held

earlier in the afternoon and had covered the items that were on the Employment

Committee agenda. There were no particular issues raised.

The Committee is asked to note the minutes of the Local Joint Committee held on 10 February 2021.

The minutes of the Local Joint Committee held on 10 February 2021 were noted.

To receive an overview on the Workforce and Organisational Development Strategy 2021 - 2024

Paul Young, Head of HR and Contracted Services presented an overview of the revised Workforce and Organisational Development Strategy 2021 – 2024.

The previous HR/OD workforce plan had run from 2018 to 2021 and had supported the priority workforce areas of the Council during this period.

The revised Workforce and Organisational Development Strategy had been developed to identify the key themes required to support the Council over the next three-year period. From this, a set of 11 objectives had been identified and were detailed in the presentation.

A Workforce Board would monitor the work activities and two Learning and Development Groups had also been established one to cover social care and the second to cover all other development needs across the Council.

Arising from the presentation, the following points were made:

·       The progress and implementation of the model would be measured. There were aspects that would be complicated to measure and some areas that would be easier, the key performance data would be identified and monitored by the Workforce Board, however it was still at the very early stage of implementation.

·       There would be data recorded from staff turnover, sickness absence data and also feedback from staff surveys.

·       It was requested that an update be provided later in the year on the progress.

·       Officers and Members undertook a survey as part of the Equalities Working Group earlier in the year, a meeting was taking place next week to ensure that the Workforce and Organisational Development Strategy work was aligned. There were members of the team that also sat on the Equalities working group.

·       There was much equalities work taking place which was interlinked, and there would be equalities champions put in place across the workforce.

·       The activities that were being planned through the Equalities Working Group would be interlinked with the work of the OD Strategy.

·       The career pathway would be developed and enhanced. This was an area that needed to be developed and looked at across the Council.

·       The pathway would be discussed with Managers to how it should look like and was still under development.

·       Recognition and support given across the Council was built into the programme and had been in place for some time, but it wasn’t always well advertised.

·       A new Occupational Health contract had been procured which had additional benefits to staff.

·       It was important that staff had a whole reward package, which was attractive for recruitment.