Agenda item
Staff Survey
Minutes:
The Acting Human Resources and Organisational Development Manager delivered a presentation on the subject of the staff survey. During the delivery of the presentation she raised the following points for Members’ consideration:
· The survey, which was circulated in August 2013, had been completed by 40 per cent of staff.
· There had been delays in analysing the data due to the complexity and volume of the feedback.
· Responses had been treated as confidential and every effort had been made to ensure that individual respondents could not be identified.
· There had been a low response rate from Bromsgrove depot, which would be addressed in any future surveys.
· A Working Group, comprising senior Officers, had been established to consider the feedback provided in the surveys.
· Sub-Groups had also been established to consider four key themes, chaired by members of the Working Group.
· The four key themes identified from analysis of the feedback were; management and the need for managers to manage staff in a different way in a changing environment, the need for more effective internal communications, the importance of an appropriate working environment that enabled staff to be a healthy workforce, and failures in ICT support and the impact of IT improvements on wider service delivery.
· Action had been taken in a variety of areas to address the concerns raised by staff.
· The first event relating to the Council’s Time to Change pledge would take place at Bromsgrove Council House on 5th March 2015.
· The Council was participating in the Worcestershire Works Well accreditation process.
· A new performance management framework was being piloted in the business transformation team.
· A new induction process, which would include face-to-face support, mentoring and podcasting, was due to be introduced.
· A generic skills matrix was being launched focusing on 25 skills all staff required in addition to any technical and specialist abilities.
· Additional support for staff was being made available in Bromsgrove and the Phone a Friend service was due to be re-launched with new volunteers.
· Monthly updates were being delivered through Oracle newsletters.
· A staff choir had been launched due to identified links between singing and wellbeing.
· In total 11% of respondents had reported that they had experienced some form of bullying from either the public or other officers in the workplace. The Council’s Bullying Policy had been promoted in an attempt to address this problem.
· The information available to staff in respect of corporate priorities, performance measures and strategic purposes had been updated and various ICT policies would be rewritten to ensure they were user friendly for staff.
· The new survey would be launched outside the school holiday period in order to maximise the number of responses.
· Officers were intending to use the same questions in the survey to ensure that the feedback could be compared to the data from the 2013 survey.
Following the delivery of the presentation Members discussed a number of points in further detail:
· The need for first aider and fire warden training to be delivered as part of the corporate training programme.
· The current content of the Bullying Policy and the extent to which changes needed to be made to the policy in order to secure a reduction in bullying.
· The type of issues that were considered bullying by staff.
· The training delivered in wellbeing sessions, covering healthy eating, physical exercise, breaks from work and health checks.
· The potential for exit interviews to take place in order for the Council to have an understanding why staff left. (Members were informed that these would be introduced across the organisation and the fact that these could only be undertaken on a voluntary basis.)
· The arrangements for the new Performance Development Review (PDR) framework which would look forward towards achieving objectives rather than backwards at past behaviour.
· Some concerns were expressed about the limited number of PDRs that staff had undertaken in recent years and the impact that this could have on both staff morale and performance.
· The provision of regular one-to-one meetings for staff and the fact that these varied in content and timescales.
· The payment of staff by increments rather than in accordance with an assessment of service performance.
· The number of times members of the Corporate Management Team had attended team meetings and the breakdown of attendances at these meetings.
· The number of new members of staff who would be employed by the Council in the following year.
· The potential value of a podcast in the corporate induction process and the benefits of face-to-face contact when welcoming new staff to the organisation.
· The content of the Oracle newsletters and the potential for these newsletters to be sent to Members alongside the monthly newsletter for Councillors.
· The operation of staff from Redditch Town Hall and the extent to which the working environment in the building was appropriate for shared services.
· The work that had been delivered in accordance with the Council’s Equalities Plan.
· The reasons why the review of key behaviours in a customer driven organisation had been superseded. Officers explained that this had occurred as part of the on-going work to transform the organisation.
Members also suggested the following amendments to the survey:
· An additional question on the subject of health and wellbeing concerning the option to work from alternative locations to the standard Office workspace.
· The potential for “paternity” to be added as an additional option as a reason why a member of staff may have been subject to bullying or harassment.
· The potential for the option “lack of belief” to be rephrased as “no religious belief”.
Following further discussion the Board
RESOLVED that the report be noted.
Supporting documents:
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