Agenda item

To approve the Council’s Workforce Development Strategy. 

That the Workforce Development Strategy 2019-24 be APPROVED.

96.1           The report of the Head of Corporate Services, circulated at Pages No. 112-128, attached a Workforce Development Strategy for the Council which covered the period 2019-24. Members were asked to consider and approve the Strategy.

96.2           The Interim Head of HR explained that the Council’s peer review in 2014 had noted that it did not have an up to date Workforce Strategy in place and had recommended that one should be developed. In addition, it was felt that the combination of the challenges arising out of the Council’s financial position, the need for continuing service transformation and the rapidly changing nature of employment and the jobs market, both locally and nationally, made such a strategy a necessity. The Local Government Association had recently published a national Workforce Strategy for the local government sector therefore it was felt to be timely for the Council to consider its own local Workforce Strategy drawing on the national strategy as appropriate.

96.3           Members were advised that it was important for the Council to have a strategy in place to support the overall delivery of the Council Plan, to achieve value for money in the expenditure on its employees, to respond to challenges and opportunities in the job market and to successfully recruit, retain, develop and engage staff to deliver the range of services for which the Council was responsible. The strategy before the Committee had been developed through discussion with the Council’s management team, operational managers, Trade Union representatives and employees. In addition, a workshop had been held with the Overview and Scrutiny Committee in February at which the Workforce Development Strategy had been discussed and further additions had been made to the document in relation to attracting and retaining new entrants to the workforce and the threat of the Council’s pay rates becoming uncompetitive in the job market – the Strategy was recommended by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to the Executive Committee for adoption.

96.4           The Workforce Development Strategy was set out in five parts including an overall statement of vision and priorities for the Council as an employer; a description of the national context for the local government sector which the Council needed to take account of; the strategic workforce themes and direction statements for the Council; the plan to address the Council’s gender pay gap; and a suite of workforce metrics to enable senior management and Members to track more effectively how successful the Council was in relation to its ability to recruit, retain, develop and engage its employees in line with the ambitions of the Workforce Strategy. The key themes of the strategy were releasing productivity; digital transformation; commercialisation; workforce resilience; and being a great place to work. Each of those themes had an aim and detailed the future steps required – there were no actions within the strategy as those would be contained within the relevant service plans and would be reviewed on an annual basis.

96.5           A Member questioned why there was a gender pay gap and why it would take time to address. In response, the Chief Executive explained that every job within the Council was evaluated to ensure it was paid at the appropriate rate regardless of who occupied it so the issue was not that people doing the same jobs were being paid differently rather it was the number of jobs occupied by men and women and this obviously took time to address. 

96.6           Having considered the report and advice given, it was