Issue - meetings

The item was introduced by Kate Sullivan (Strategy and Commissioning Lead, Organisational Development). She said the report outlined the achievements made through the previous year’s plan, and it detailed the strategy’s priorities for the next five years. These broadly tied in with the key priority themes that had been highlighted earlier during the section on the Warwickshire Futures Strategy, and fitted with the key priority themes that had been identified by Corporate Board. Kate Sullivan said the results of the staff Your Say survey had become available after publication of the report. This showed an increase in agreement of the statements made in the survey, from 76 per cent to 79 per cent. The overall response rate had increased from 40 per cent to 56 per cent.  However there had been a small reduction in the number of people who had responded positively to the statement they felt safe to be their authentic selves at work. There had been an increase in absences associated with stress and mental health, which reflected a national trend. Kate Sullivan said an action plan to proactively tackle this was being produced.

Responding to a question from Councillor Sinclair regarding increased headcount, Kate Sullivan said this was due to successful recruitment and there had been a consequential reduction in the number of staff vacancies.

Councillor Feeney noted there had been no reference to the Council working with trade unions as part of the network groups. Kate Sullivan said there were good relationships with the unions with regular meetings, but these were business as usual items so did not need to be highlighted in the report.

Responding to questions from Councillors Feeney and Sinclair about absences, Kate Sullivan said a deep dive analysis of stress and mental health was taking place. As well as increasing instances of absence, there was an increase in the severity of issues faced which required more complex levels of support. A detailed report on this analysis would go to the Staff and Pensions Committee. It was agreed this could be made available to members of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

Responding to a question from Councillor Feeney, Kate Sullivan said an agency contract was in the process of being agreed and signed. However it was acknowledged there was a desire to try and minimise the use of agency staff. Strategic workforce planning was looking to develop ways of dealing with this, such as looking at improving the grow our own scheme or the graduate scheme.

Members noted the contents of the report.