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 meeting of the Committee held on 2 March 2022 an the minutes of the Annual meeting of the Committee held on 18 May 2022.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on the 2 March 2022 and the minutes of the Annual meeting of the Committee held on 18 May 2022 were approved as a correct record.

There were no urgent items of business.

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 2 March 2022.

The minutes of the Local Joint Committee held on the 2 March 2022 were

noted as a correct record.

Paul Young, Assistant Director HR and Organisational Development provided the Annual Update of The Council's Pay Statement.

The report covered the current financial year of 2022/23. As the previous Pay Statement had only been agreed at the March Committee, there were minimal changes to the data.

It was noted that there were some errors which related to the job titles of Directors which would be amended accordingly.

RESOLVED that Employment Committee review and agree the Pay Policy Statement for 2022/23.

Paul Young, Assistant Director HR and Organisational Development provided an update on the HR Policy Review, which focused on the Disciplinary, Grievance and Performance Improvement Procedures. This was part of the ongoing HR Policy Review programme, and there had been minor changes too all three policies, which had been consulted on with the Unions, and been subject to engagement with Officers across the council, via working groups which had been introduced as part of the review programme and had been in place for the last six months.

A presentation was given to the Committee to highlight the changes within the policies, this included:

·       Within all three policies, the roles and responsibilities had been clarified and made clearer.

·       The equality statement had been included within the documents.

·       Timeliness issues were addressed, to make the process smoother, so tighter timescales were included.

·       A new HR Case Management system had been introduced which included reminders to managers to ensure completion of actions.

·       Remote meeting guidance had been incorporated for managing meetings.

·       Flow charts of the procedure had also been included, which had been well received by managers.

·       Within the disciplinary procedure clarity had been included when the police were to be involved.

·       The HR role had been re-instated within the process.

·       Redeployment arrangements were re-enforced in the performance improvement procedure, this was across all areas of the Council including schools.

·       The awareness of Menopause had been included within the procedure following input from the Unions.

·       Within the grievance procedure, the managers responsibilities were clearly stated and enhanced.

·       Support for staff, both for those who have raised a grievance and those who had a grievance raised against them, was detailed within the procedure.

·       The work of the equality allies was also included within the procedure.

Following the Committees comments and questions, the following points were made:

·       The underlining of links were not significant.

·       There was no statutory timeframe for advance written notice of a hearing, but it was stated that 5 working days noticed of a hearing be given which was in the procedures.

·       The awareness of Menopause within the performance improvement procedure was welcomed, and would part of the wider wellbeing approach across the Council.

RESOLVED that the updated procedures for Disciplinary, Performance Improvement and Grievance are reviewed and agreed.