Agenda item

The Commission has invited Councillor Leake, Chair of the Employment Committee to address the Commission and provide a briefing on:

·        The Council's Workforce Management including recruitment and retention strategies

·        The use of consultants and agency workers

The commission invited Councillor Leake, Chair of the Employment Committee, to

do a presentation to the Commission on the council’s workforce management strategy, including recruitment and retention strategies, agency spend and use of consultants.  The following points were made:

·        Recruitment and retention, specifically in social care and children’s services, had always been challenging

·        A short summary report highlighted some problems that have arisen through using agency workers which included ensuring correct and accurate data for agency spend.  This had arisen due to individuals and agencies not willing to take part in the single matrix arrangement.  This was addressed through various safeguards resulting in more accurate information about agency worker spend. 

·        A top-level indication for the financial year highlighted the biggest department spend was with the people directorate at 72%.  A recent project had looked at addressing this spend via a review of the terms and pay conditions for social care.  Further scrutiny through CMT had indicated the desire to stabilise the workforce with permanency however this will continue to be a challenge due to local market capacity. It was noted that there would always be a need for a level of engagement with agency staff to fill a skills gap that the organisation can’t provide.  To ensure successful delivery within social care a stable workforce was essential.

·        The Council recognised that the single agency arrangements through Matrix provided benefits through contracts having agreed rates of pay for each role across the council with one point of contact.  This speeded up a process of engaging agency workers.

·        There were no agency fees to pay if an agency worker transferred to permanent employment after being in post for 12 weeks or more.

·       Temporary to permanent employment changes were seen as a benefit and there were 3 individuals who made this transition in a six-month period. 

·       A recruitment and retention blueprint was produced which highlighted problems and challenges around significant spend with agencies or issues with recruitment and retention arrangements.  This was used to address the problems in children’s and social care and was used to look at other problem areas.  In addition, this exercise looked at neighbouring authorities’ arrangements in this area.

·       The recruitment and retention scheme introduced includes new career pathways for social care. 

·        Apprenticeship routes were a key driver to ensure the best value from the apprenticeship levy was achieved.  Additionally, apprenticeship routes could be utilised in areas where there was a shortage of people.  The council engaged with an apprenticeship scheme linked with the University of Brighton which was used to fill posts in challenging areas and identified savings with agency spend. 

·        The successful step up to social work program was operated on behalf of all Berkshire authorities. Retention was an issue as individuals who had been trained often moved to other areas where there were greater financial incentives.  It was hoped that the learning and development and career pathways would address this.

·        Within adult social care the council looked to engage with health partners to provide secondment opportunities, specifically for adult care and occupational therapy roles.

·        Over the previous year career events had been used at universities, the Lexicon and schools.  These discovered a demand for apprenticeship roles within the borough and were used to research ways to encourage people to work in the public sector.

·        A robust leavers process was used to find out why people were leaving and to provide useful data around retention.  Learning and development opportunities were cited as a positive aspect of working in the Council, but leavers reported they did not have time within their roles to utilise this.

As short presentation was made by Executive Director: Resources about consultants.  The following points were made:

·        There was a lot of overlap between agency workers and consultants.  The main difference was that consultants were used to deliver one-off pieces of specialist work.

·        Engaging with consultants is common within all local authorities, and this was warranted by the fact that there was not always the justification to employ enough or even a single very specialist worker due to the scale of activities within the Council.  An example was identified in planning where a range of viability assessments are often seen, and the resources were not available to look at these in-house.

·        High level figures were provided for current costs for consultants within each directorate.  A high spend, around £4m, was recently used for consultants.  The biggest area of spend was on capital schemes due to specialist engineers being required.  There is an issue, because of the terms and conditions offered, with employing technical officers on a permanent basis for local authorities. 

·        Actual sums coded to consultant fees, over £100 000 for last 12 months showed the biggest spend was Atkins.  Next, and highlighting the coding issues, was Jeffrey Osborne, the construction contract building the Binfield Community Hub, had been coded as consultants even though this was a construction contract. Third was PTS, which provided technology to monitor the condition of pavements.  Lastly, Everyone Active for installing a new splash pad at Coral Reef. 

Question arising from this:

·        A query was raised about whether retention was a problem for West Berks which the Chief Executive addressed by explaining that this issue wasn’t unusual even outside of local authorities.  Agencies could offer more money which made this a problem when accessing resources.  A further question was asked about whether boroughs could pool resources across Berkshire.  Conversations had taken place around this to ensure the right level of expertise could be attracted.  It was explained that private sector could provide exposure to a variety of projects where individuals could develop their skill sets.  A point was made that it could be beneficial if local authorities were able to come to a shared arrangement where this could be replicated.  Paul Young, Assistant Director of HR, added that joint arrangement plans were previously put in place across the southeast to stop people leaving permanent positions to join agencies.  Although the challenges of this meant it wasn’t tenable.

·        Relating to the information presented on the development of apprenticeships a question was asked about if there was a strategy for recruiting occupational therapist apprenticeships and a target number.  The Assistant Director of HR explained that they were looking at using the apprenticeship levy spend to develop opportunities for trainee children’s occupational therapy.  A comment was added that they would also look to address the challenges of recruitment for support staff within schools to ensure they have an adequate workforce. 

·        A query was raised about a point referring to apprenticeships in social care and occupational therapy offered to existing staff members and if this was referring to temporary or current staff.  In response it was confirmed that this was to both and that the Council were looking to widen the recruitment of apprenticeship roles, this was seen recently in finance where five apprenticeship roles were filled due to difficulties with recruitment.

·        A query was raised as to whether during feedback from new starters at three and six months the council were finding out why they chose to work at Bracknell Forest and if this information was used to enhance the recruitment process.  The response was that whilst this was being done the challenge for recruitment was the lack of people applying for roles.  An example was given where someone was very keen to work with Bracknell Forest and liked the culture but turned the offer down due to wanting a higher pay offer.  The staff survey response and wellbeing survey would also be used to collate feedback. One aim was to capture electronically the reasons for people leaving so that issues and trends could be picked up.

·        A supplementary question was asked regarding the three and six month interviews and if employees were specifically asked if and how the council had delivered what they promised during the interview.  It was explained that this was something that would be developed and enhanced as previously this was the responsibility of managers within each area.

·        A query about the setup to social work programme and issues around retention was put to the Assistant Director of HR, specifically asking if they had considered incentives such as golden handcuffs.  The answer to this was yes there were retention payments in place within children’s social care and new arrangements had enhanced the base salary in addition to the golden handcuff arrangement across hard to recruit posts within children’s social care.

·        With regards to consultants and agency costs a comment was made about how Wokingham council left the PPP partnership and went on to buy into a lot of the services. The question from this was if one council could hire experts and then others buy into them would this give a return on the services.  The Executive Director: Resources responded by agreeing that there were many joint arrangements across Berkshire local authorities, and these could maximise the value of collective leverage.

·        A query was raised as about if the Council had considered looking at schemes where staff could take part in short secondments within the council to develop career divergence.  The response was that whilst there hadn’t been anything formal put in place during the covid period people were redeployed temporarily across different departments which uncovered a variety of skills and previous experience and was possibly something that could be looked at again.

·        In response to a question about a lack of communication between hiring staff and informing ICT about supply of laptops, the Assistant Director of HR explained that the process was very good but accepted that there may be occasions where a quick turnaround to supply laptops might be requested.

·        Following a comment about Bracknell’s recently awarded outstanding status within children’s social services a question was asked about the balance and number of staff leaving and joining.  It was acknowledged that some individuals were being targeted by other organisations to join them because of the status Bracknell Forest now had but that this was also a positive aspect as it could be used to attract staff and was being kept under review.

Councillor Leake, Chair of the Employment Committee concluded by thanking the Executive Director: Resources and the Assistant Director of HR and added a final that whether an individual was a trainee or mid-career the council should be utilising the skills of people within the organisation to work across different departments and gain a holistic view of how the council worked.  He acknowledged that whilst there was a need for specialisms within the workforce a silo approach could be inhibitive.