Item 12 Appendix 1
West Dunbartonshire Council · 22 May 2024
Back to Corporate Services Committee — 22 May 2024 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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1 Appendix 1 - Workforce Planning 23-24 Strategic Actions Overview actions. 31st March 2024 1. Our People (Workforce Profile) Strategy Develop and implement wellbeing, employee engagement, equality and training plans to enable capabilities, improved resilience and promotion of a diverse workforce. Service Progress Key Actions Exceptions Citizens, Culture and Facilities – Amanda Graham, Chief Officer • Employee survey specific to FM has developed and will be rolled out in 2024-25. • Implement enhanced team engagement Programme for Contact Centres involving full team and management meetings identifying a range of issues resulting in a paper to PMRG with recommendations enabling a ‘you said/we did’ approach that were impacting the team and residents. Feedback is meetings have been valuable. • A number of team members qualifying as mental health first aiders as part of corporate programme. • Facilities Management ‘Welcome Back to Work’ session with teams launched with front line employees having an opportunity to engage with senior management team. Working groups also established to provide employees with an opportunity to discuss challenges and improvements in the service to ensure the employee voice is heard. • Second phase of the service re-design completed with Team Leaders being trained to take over day to day management of employee wellbeing resulting in employees being able to access supportive discussions in a timelier manner.
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2 • Changes made to ensure Team Leaders have firsthand access to employee wellbeing data further supporting timely interventions. Education Learning and Attainment – Laura Mason, Chief Officer • Education Leaders development programme reviewed and incorporated employee wellbeing into in service day plans where appropriate. • Mental health first aider group which includes Education employees was launched in 2023/24. • A range of networks across the Education service meet throughout the year to help shape service improvements and capabilities of the workforce. • Work began on the review of roles within Collaborative Support Services and will address issues with the role that have been identified as stressors. Housing & Employability – Peter Barry, Chief Officer • Building Services Management Team has been encouraged to complete the i'learn equality and diversity courses and other learning and development opportunities in the area of equality. • Building Services actively encourages applications from females and others from protected characteristics groups for craft vacancies including apprenticeships. These actions will continue in future years as the service develops strategies to deal with an aging workforce and succession planning. • Across the service work continues to review the age profile and consider appropriate future actions suitable for maintaining service delivery. • Embedded results of employee survey as part of phase 2 of service review in Building Services (‘you said, we did’ at management level). Communications strategy now fully embedded across the services with regular 121s, and
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3 briefings delivered. Work continues in relation to installing the Trickle app on craft workers phones and for other teams within the service. • Digital and Trickle champions identified, and improvements are evident in these areas. Work continues to review contributions to these areas and positively promoting staff engagement. • In working 4U Be the Best conversations take place, used as an opportunity to review training and development requirements and general wellbeing and resources. The W4U Money Team accessed MacMillan funding to participate in wellbeing activities. • Used the ACHIEVE and Leadership framework to consider the management training update on our console as a baseline to review previous participation and raise awareness of opportunities. • Supported the implementation of equally safe at work accreditation (Development Stage) and related ilearn modules roll out in the workplace: 'Together for Gender Equality' and ‘Gender based Violence - all staff will be encouraged to complete the module. People & Technology – Victoria Rogers, Chief Officer • Stress Risk Assessment review group has established. • Occupational Health contract work ongoing in preparation for renewal. • Mental Health First Aiders group established. • Number of webinars been offered to support employee resilience. • Employee benefits extended with access to VIVUP and AVCWise. • Trickle has been relaunched and the number of users and engagement with the App has increased. Chief Officer pack
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4 issued, and work continues on promoting usage. • Employee awards planning and review has commenced with a proposal being presented to the senior leadership team on a refresh of the employee recognition awards aligned to the Achieve framework. • Equally Safe at Work development Tier achieved. • The council have committed to the Race at Work Charter. • Employees in service having regular 121’s and team meetings. Trickle is being used to communicate with team where feasible. Managers and employees are being encouraged to become digi champions. • Further development of the Workforce Management Console is being undertaken and where possible new functionality added to encourage self service. Additional developments have now come online with the span of control being updated to better view this aspect of SOM compliance across services. Additionally, VER/VS/Flexible Retirements are now available for the SHR team to view aiding the reporting of this information and easier identification of any trends/issues. • Work commenced on the development of an employee engagement scorecard that will aim to measure employee engagement levels at service level. • All ICT roles and vacancies are reviewed and equality monitoring carried out to ensure compliance with equality guidance and controls including selection criteria for all candidates. • ICT Promoted use of corporate engagement tools throughout the service. Wider team meetings mandatory to attend and this has significantly increased attendance and improved communication.
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5 Resources, Laurence Slavin, Chief Officer • Employees having regular 121 and team meetings. • Trickle is being used to communicate with teams where feasible and across other service areas which has improved communication as a whole. • All roles across business support team have been reviewed as part of a restructure. • In Finance, weekly manager meetings have helped improve employee engagement, well-being and staff have been trained in essential business processes to reduce the risk of single points of failure. • Finance Business Partners invited to regular Resources Management Team meetings and rotation of services and committees for shared knowledge and experience. Also replicated for treasury management for resilience in the service and removal of single points of failure. • Workforce demographics been monitored as risks identified in relation to aging workforce in certain roles and single point of failure within the finance system team. Consideration of actions of actions to mitigate including new system implementation, recruitment and re- structuring to be taken forward. • Employees are being encouraged to become digi champions where possible. • All corporate wellbeing measure promoted across business support teams. • Communications and supports engaged as part of the budget outcomes from previous year. Supported team through current vacancies and interim support measures actioned. Further work will concentrate on recruitment of vacancies and retention. Concentrate on providing support for new starts within roles.
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6 Roads & Neighbourhood, Gail McFarlane, Chief Officer • Team informed of plans to upskill and support development opportunities. • Team meetings implemented; all managers included in meeting. • 3 monthly full service management meetings commenced. Regulatory & Regeneration Services, Alan Douglas, Chief Officer • Continued Be the Best Conversations used to identify and address any issues arising from restructures and the implementation of savings options. • Engaged in the recent data verification exercise to improve the equalities data reporting in the service. • Engaged with the circulation and promotion of Equally Safe in Practice E-learning modules with further promotion to follow to embed cultural change in relation to Gender equality. Case Study: Housing & Employability & People & Technology - Equally Safe at Work It is recognised that both men and women experience gender-based violence and there are both similarities and differences in the effects on the workplace. However, the vast majority of victim-survivors are women. Violence against women and/or abusive behaviour can involve physical, emotional, psychological, financial, economic and sexual abuse. It affects women from all backgrounds and in different ways depending on their multiple identities, for example as a BME or a disabled woman. Violence against women is usually not a one-off experience and the trauma can result in anxiety, depression, isolation, stress and fear. The Council recognises it is a violation of a women’s human rights and is an enduring social problem that undermines workplaces and communities. The numbers of women affected are illustrated in a series of statistics provided by ‘Close the Gap’, an expert policy advocacy organisation who are looking at support for employers to develop gender-sensitive employment practice, are startling: · Over 70% of women report having witnessed sexual harassment in the workplace in Scotland. · 1 in 5 women experience domestic abuse in their lifetime in Scotland. · There is 14% gender pay gap in Scotland. · 1 in 3 women worldwide will experience violence against them. Equally Safe at Work is an employer accreditation programme that supports Scottish Local Authorities to progress gender equality in the workplace and prevent violence against women. The programme has six standards which align with women’s workplace equality. These include: • Leadership- demonstrating a strong commitment to preventing violence against women. • Data – gathering and analysing data to progress equality for different groups.
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7 • Flexible working – ensuring employees can work flexibly to meet the needs of their lives. • Addressing occupational segregation by improving opportunities and outcomes for women. • Workplace culture- creating an inclusive workplace culture to advance gender equality. • Addressing violence against women by ensuring staff understand the link between the women’s labour market inequality, violence against women, and wider gender inequality. A cross service Equally Safe development group consisting of employees and managers across services, Trade Union and Elected Member representation was established to guide the council through the Equally Safe Framework. The Equally Safe at Work Framework has four tiered levels: ‘Development’, ‘Bronze’, ‘Silver’ and ‘Gold’ commencing with the Development tier ensuring that changes and initiatives were built on a firm foundation and fully embedded in the Council. The Development Tier required us to demonstrate, with clear evidence, that we were taking the appropriate steps to ensure women working in West Dunbartonshire Council are ‘Equally Safe at Work’. This was a rigorous process that required the team to ensure the Council has a public written statement outlining our commitment to Equally Safe, gather, analyse and ensure that gender pay gap information was published and included information about flexible working in job advertisements. The Team also launched a gender based violence policy and following gender sensitivity training reviewed the organisational change policy and a set of learning material was published and promoted on learn. In addition, employee surveys and focus groups were carried out on the commencement and completion of the award identifying positive cultural changes. The ESAW Development Tier was achieved and awarded in October 2023. There are several factors beyond the Council’s willingness to commit staff resources to this important issue that contributed to the success. Most notably the commitment of the staff in the Equally Safe Team taking the approach forward and desire to achieve this standard. This commitment was reinforced in their willingness to participate in training and develop resources that they were prepared to deliver. The Team members recognise that this is the first step in our journey towards higher accreditation and the continued cultural change which is required. The maintenance of this and on-going development work will not only demonstrate our commitment to ending Violence against women but will also lead to a greater level awareness of the subject, hopefully reducing this social problem and women feeling secure in the workplace.
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8 2. Recruitment & Retention Strategy Develop and implement employee life cycle plans in line with the People First Strategy to attract and retain the workforce. Service Progress Key Actions Exceptions Citizens, Culture and Facilities – Amanda Graham, Chief Officer • Facilities Management - Phase 2 implementation of service review provides clearer role and responsibilities for Team Leaders, training and clear career path for progression. • Work commenced with Strategic HR to address challenges with retention and attraction of staff. • As the work on changes within Libraries continues engagement plans are in place with staff to keep them informed of progress. • Review of Team Leader Profile in FM to support with ongoing challenges with retention and attracting the volume of applicants needed to replace leavers. Key challenges contributing to the retention levels have now been identified and work commenced with HR Connect and Strategic HR to address (differentials between rates of pay, number of contractual hours as it impacts on benefits etc). Education Learning and Attainment – Laura Mason, Chief Officer • Review of Leadership pathways completed to ensure strong talent pipelines are in place. • Review of recruitment assessment centres completed with changes implemented and to be embedded next year. • Collaborative Support Services review started which will address issues contributing to retention challenges. Housing & Employability – Peter Barry, Chief Officer • Continue to utilise external funding to upskill staff to deliver current and future funding requirements. This year we have identified the need for SQA accredited training staff and, as a result, we have embarked on a programme of
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9 training to support staff development in this area. Also identified the need to deliver Maths qualifications and a number of staff have received sufficient training to incorporate this activity into current learning programmes. • SQA assessors and verifiers award for 8 staff will be completed shortly. • Number of training team completed training that allows them to deliver a range of courses including steps for excellence, volunteer wards, first aid, REHIS (Health and Safety and Food Hygiene), IOSH (managing safety), Customer Care, Persona Licence Holder and Train the Trainer (First Aid and Scottish Mental Health First Aid. To be complemented with additional qualifications allowing us to deliver level 4 training in Customer Care and emergency First Aid improving our offer to service users and assist them to apply for secure employment. • Community of Practice for Employability – taken the lead on the front line workers forum for employability services in line with Scottish Government’s Shared Measurement framework – The Employability Partnership consists of a community of practice where frontline staff meet to identify examples of good practice; areas where service delivery could improve and opportunities for joint working. • Established process to ensure Money staff will access 35 hrs of CPD in line with National Standards accreditation, are aware of emerging opportunities and can participate where relevant to their work. • Reviewed of requirements around talent pools for key roles • Review of job attraction to generate more interest in vacancies to ensure job vacancies attract candidates with the correct credentials. • Work continues to review current structures and role
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10 profiles in connection with service delivery and update as appropriate. • Re-launched Housing Graduate scheme People & Technology – Victoria Rogers, Chief Officer • Work on the People First recruitment phase commenced with actions around job profile review, business case for change, recruitment practices and processes all being progressed. • As part of the Transactional services restructure, all transactional posts were reviewed and updated. • The Strategic Operating Model (SOM) has been reviewed and work continues. • Job Evaluation processes been reviewed, with additional training undertaken and increasing visibility. • All ICT vacancies and role profiles reviewed and amended as required prior to advertisement. Profile assessed to meet demands of service objectives. • Switch Policy has been used successful implemented during 23/24 to ensure, where possible the council avoids compulsory redundancies and utilises redeployment. • Equal Pay audit and Recruitment audits completed with actions identified for improvement, the equalities plan has been updated to reflect this. A recruitment group has commenced to look at diversification of the workforce. • ICT formed a partnership with West College Scotland to target college leavers for specific roles and enable employment opportunities. Recent recruitment has resulted in more diverse ICT workforce. • Strategic HR incorporated a HR Graduate role for succession planning. Resources, Laurence Slavin, Chief Officer • Business Support are working with Strategic HR to review recruitment practices (including profiles) to attract and Review of recruitment practices in Audit
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11 facilitate application processes for candidates. • Finance have reviewed essential processes to mitigate the risk of single points of failure and work on succession planning is ongoing. • Within Asset Management, following organisational change, role profiles and remits have and are continuing to be reviewed. Opportunities to promote posts internally are being explored. • Within Audit & Fraud it is recognised the size of the team restricts development opportunities so discussions with other councils around longer term options to provide greater resilience and potentially a multi council approach to internal audit is being investigated. • Review of staffing requirements and roles to understand ‘gaps’ for Business Partner roles to add resilience, allocate workloads more appropriately across the wider team, options to automate and proposed changes to working methods on-going. This will continue to be reviewed to ensure optimum use of capacity. • Review of role profiles following re-structure/organisational changes as a result of posts changes deletion in progress in Asset Management • Progressed Trainee Surveyor posts to grow internal talent – grow internal team (including profiles) to attract and facilitate application processes for candidates has been limited due to size of the team and low turnover. Development are currently being investigated with other Councils for roles within this team. Restructure of Audit & Fraud Team still ongoing as part of delivering saving options – savings has been met but wider review work requires to be completed. Further work required in the insurance section which has been delayed due to workload review after budget savings.
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12 Roads & Neighbourhood, Gail McFarlane, Chief Officer • Roads Service Review now complete, progressing to developing implementation plan. • Fleet Service Review undertaken and approval to move to recruitment. • Alternative method for skills shortage has been found. for skills shortages with Engineers and CDM • Joint team meetings to ensure joint delivery and awareness of project priorities ensuring cross skilling and resilience planning. • Opportunities identified to retain apprentices to address aging workforce challenges. • Opportunities to upskill officers within the wider service to retain skills, knowledge and learning opportunities. Regulatory & Regeneration Services, Alan Douglas, Chief Officer • The Service has sought to address current and future gaps at local level, targeted recruitment is underway to address single points of failure, whilst at regional level the Service has engaged with other local authorities and higher education establishments in a West of Scotland forum to address the absence of graduate and/or skilled candidates. • The Corporate Procurement Unit (CPU) reviewed the roles and profiles within the team as part of the council budget savings which resulted in changes with service delivery. • The CPU’s flexible approach means that cross skilling continues to be developed and will continue. • Redesign of previous energy and compliance team to Climate Change and Energy team resulted in more clarity in job roles for team members. • Reviewed succession planning requirements of current roles for Critical roles, Single Points of failure requires further consideration in the Energy and compliance team. • All staff have 'be the best' conversations and training plans Job profiles have been reviewed in Planning & Building control and promoting benefits of working within WDC. Further action to continue in line with re-structure. Action against future turnover requires further consideration in Planning & Building Control to review mechanisms to make us more attractive as an employer. A Mini
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13 in place and Leaderships Support have introduced regular wellbeing discussions with staff to identify issues early. • Single points of failure have been identified in key roles in the election team and gaps in core election team now filled and training has commenced. Cover for postal vote supervision has been identified and individuals will be trained on the job in forthcoming elections. desk top study has been completed for key roles and results showed that middle graded (professional role) seem to be difficult to recruit and further actions will be considered. Succession planning was part of the service redesign. There is a national shortage of skilled professionals in this area and is being addressed nationally for planning. Further work to be undertaken. Case Study: People & Technology – ICT Career Pathway Development and Recruitment Strategy Due to an ageing workforce the ICT service has been analysing our workforce and succession planning the steps required to ensure we meet current and future employee needs. The process involved several key steps to ensure critical roles within the ICT service were identified and there is a plan in place to fill these roles with suitable successors in the future and whilst using existing employee budget. In addition, IT recruit sector challenges has also resulted in us reviewing our approach to recruitment and determining the most efficient and effective methods to recruit and retain new IT talent. Our initial succession planning analysis found that there was a gap in terms of grades, skillset, and progression opportunity for both modern apprentices and senior analysts.
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14 This gap resulted in losing our young apprentices that we have trained and developed to other organisations at the end of their apprenticeship. Therefore, to retain our young talent we reviewed our structure and introduced Grade 3 posts Service Desk Assistants and Support Administrators. These posts provided our apprentices with an opportunity (following recruitment exercise) to expand their knowledge and skills for the next phase of their journey. We have made excellent progress in this area with several modern apprentices being developed and progressing into higher-grade roles. This pathway encourages young people to apply for ICT apprenticeship roles and have the reassurance at the end of their apprenticeship there is further potential to progress within the service. We also reviewed our structure in the senior analyst areas and identified two issues, one being there was a lack of opportunity between senior technical roles and management layers, and senior management spent lot of time dealing with basic HR line management tasks that impacted their time to focus on strategic management tasks. To resolve these issues, we implemented a layer of supervisors across the technical teams to provide line management opportunity to existing senior analysts, and to reduce line management responsibility and operational tasks for the senior ICT management team. The supervisor opportunities were restricted to senior analysts and implemented using existing employee budget. We now have in place a structure that with a layer of supervisors gaining valuable management experience and in future enable them to apply for section head roles. The second step in the process was to review our approach to recruitment as we knew there was potential candidates in the market with lack of real opportunity following completion of their IT college courses. Our aim was to provide candidates who had an IT qualification but no experience, or some experience but no IT qualification an opportunity to work for us. We discussed our issue with West College Scotland and formed a partnership to offer college graduates a route into the IT sector and gain employment with the council. By reviewing vacant posts that we had been struggling to fill, we decided to reduce the volume of available Grade 5 roles to allow us to recruit additional resources at Grade 3 roles with a focus for graduates with no experience. This has been a successful approach with the recruitment of a graduate from West College Scotland who completed a Cyber Security college course and appointed to a role within the councils ICT Cyber security team. We also attended Career Fayres across West Dunbartonshire to promote opportunities in our ICT service and to encourage our young citizens to consider a career with the council technology service. We are continuously monitoring, evaluating, and revising our approach around succession planning and recruitment as our priorities shift and we ensure we remain aligned with council strategic plans. We will ensure we continue to provide opportunity to our citizens, attract and retain ICT talent in West Dunbartonshire Council and develop a fit for future and skilled workforce.
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15 Priority 3: Roles & Structures Strategy: Implement service review process including role design, use of new technology and new ways of working to add resilience, address gaps, and establish opportunities for efficiencies. Service Progress Key Actions Exceptions Citizens, Culture and Facilities – Amanda Graham, Chief Officer • Review of library services provision including opening hours and school library provision in line with savings options. • Facilities management, Phase 2 of service review is being implemented with new ways of working being embedded, additional Team Leaders recruited thereby reducing the span of control, ensuring responsibilities are clearer and enabling ways of working to be reviewed and working practices now becoming more consistent. This will assist in addressing knowledge gaps within team and identifying process improvements. • Additional capacity at Team Leader level has added additional resilience in the FM team further complemented by resilience in Town Hall team when necessary. Education Learning and Attainment – Laura Mason, Chief Officer • Review of admin roles and processes within primary schools commenced and is scheduled to be implemented next year with a view to incorporating new ways of working and realising efficiencies where duplication is identified. • Review of collaborative Support Services has commenced. • Savings options implemented in Early Years with a review of the Senior Practitioner posts completed. • Digital process improvements made to the transport application process which streamlined ways of working. Housing & Employability – Peter Barry, Chief Officer • Discussion and work agreed where AI processes would be beneficial within service systems and processes. Work to Implementation of Service review in
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16 implement these will continue in Building services. • New managers undertaken new manager training. • Introduce Housing Academy to develop skilled and professional housing service and appointed a lead to implement the project in the coming year. It is anticipated that this will become an industry standard and we will work alongside the Charted Institute of Housing (CIH) best practice to deliver a skilled and professional housing service. • Collation of information about the need for specialist support when Fair Start Scotland resources are transferred to local authorities has commenced. Workshops will be delivered in the forthcoming quarter. This will include workshops on closing the fair work gap and NHS Talking therapies. Staff skills sets will be developed accordingly. • Reviewed changes in benefits system and ensure all staff have access to up to date information and guides on Advice Pro are shared with all staff. Building Services progressed but not completed due to delays by postponement of job evaluation. A number of roles require review and vacancies completed. People & Technology – Victoria Rogers, Chief Officer • Fit for Future continues and the process has been reviewed. • A data and online form subgroup continues to add value and support to services. • Rollout of 0365 continues and digital champion network has been set up to support workforce upskilling to ensure best usage of technology. • The council continues to offer flexible working and has recently added pregnancy loss and a gender-based violence policy to the supportive suite of policies offered. • Delivery plan actions are being monitored and reported on where necessary in Business Support. There are resourcing challenges down to reduction in posts due to savings and/or vacancy management and turnover which is being
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17 managed best way possible to try and reduce impact on service users. • Work underway around automation with the Digital Team and ICT to identify and develop opportunities for digital improvements. • The Standard Operating Model (SOM) has been reviewed and an exercise around compliance begun. • ICT continue to enable transformation across services areas by implementing and enabling new transformational technologies. ICT work closely with the Digital Team and support funding of digital resources and projects. Resources, Laurence Slavin, Chief Officer • Business Support teams constantly reviewing processes in light of both Automation and digital agenda. • Processes reviewed and re-allocation across the wider Finance team to mitigate where savings options were taken and will continue to ensure optimum use of capacity as a result of different ways of working. • Asset Management savings for 23/24 achieved and further review for future savings options being explored. Review of IHMS system and possible bots will be explored. • Audit and Fraud team has been subject to review as part of delivering saving option and resilience added through new structure. • Review of roles and capacity following savings options as ongoing Business Support process review • Future savings options consider for 2024/25. Whilst work in accounting Team has been undertaken further work is required in the insurance team re structure and roles Roads & Neighbourhood, Gail McFarlane, Chief Officer • All required savings made for 23/24 and posts removed from system as required. • Roads and Transport service review is underway, including role profiles to ensure resources in place to address future needs.
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18 • Review underway to incorporate Fleet Services within the Capital Assets manager structure. • Review underway to incorporate Fleet Services within the Capital Assets manager structure as part of SOM exercise. Regulatory & Regeneration Services, Alan Douglas, Chief Officer • Across Regulatory and Regeneration Services there have been service and structural redesigns to ensure services are fit for purpose and scaled to available resources. • The CPU has been updated the Contracts Database to run reports to provide the statistics for the Annual Procurement. • Completion of savings exercise and removal of posts as required for 2023/24. • Climate Change and Energy team redesigns successfully implemented. District Heating Lead Post remains unfilled despite being advertised. May need to re-visit post and requirements. • Target savings met by Business Support team restructure. While some service reviews are complete and now operational, others are still in the process of completing job evaluation and recruitment to conclude. Employees have been fully engaged through the service redesign of planning and building standards. Service redesign near completion in Planning & Building Standards with one post awaiting job evaluation.
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19 Case Study: Citizens, Culture and Facilities – Facilities Management (FM) A new organisational structure for the Facilities Management was implemented in 2023/24 and was developed to respond to Scottish Government policy changes and resultant service expansion, provide additional support for frontline employees and ultimately deliver a more efficient and sustainable service. Since the FM structure was last reviewed in 2011 significant global, national, and local events have impacted on the service and created a need for additional capacity and a rethink of the delivery model to ensure it is fit for purpose. Examples of these changes are: • Launch of the expanded 1140 hours early years requiring new centres to be launched and an increase in facilities staff and catering employees. • Introduction of free meals for all primary school pupils by 2024. • Development of new nutritional requirements for education premises. • New cleaning regime as a consequence of COVID. Staffing was increased in response to these factors, however, the management tiers remained unchanged. In an area which already had large employee numbers, this had added further pressure particularly on the Team Leaders who directly line manage the frontline employees. To support the Team Leaders and ease this pressure, many of the key tasks within their remit, including supporting employee wellbeing, were being undertaken by the Facilities Officers, and this had a knock-on effect on their capacity to undertake key elements of their role. Prior to the new structure being implemented the previous structure did not meet the service needs, to address this and ensure all employees were fully supported, therefore a number of changes to the existing staffing structure within the service were implemented, these included: • increase in first tier team leader management roles to respond to service expansion • revised service manager role created to take account of the responsibility changes • return of oversight of the Town Hall to Facilities Management Phase 2 of the service review was completed with additional Team Leaders recruited thereby reducing the span of control, ensuring responsibilities are clearer and enabling ways of working to be reviewed and working practices are now more consistent. Additional resilience has been added through the addition of Clydebank Town Hall to Facilities Management. Working groups have contributed to process improvements. During 24/25 the service will continue to progress training further, review design and develop new operating models for catering, cleaning and janitorial services.
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20 4. Skills & Capabilities Strategy Develop and implement training plans and development opportunities to improve capabilities and resilience within the workforce. Service Progress Key Actions Exceptions Citizens, Culture and Facilities – Amanda Graham, Chief Officer • Encourage opportunities for promotions internally to increase resilience in team and strengthen talent pipeline with continued support of modern apprentices enabling them to secure posts within the Council. • Facilities Management training development plan for Team Leaders prepared and partially delivered. This has focussed on a range of topics from people practice to policy procedure and best practice. Additionally, members of the team have undertaken an enhanced level of training on food and hygiene to upskill them to better support Catering Managers and strengthen resilience in team as well as relevant employees being trained in relation to food allergens to improve health and safety practices. • To support the embedding of consistent behavioural standards, employees have had sessions on the code of conduct and Supporting Employee Wellbeing policy. • Citizen's Services has provided a number of promotions for existing staff and enables team members to secure promoted posts elsewhere in the Council. • Significant progress has been made on the transformation of service area to ensure it meets strategic objectives. Education Learning and Attainment – Laura Mason, Chief Officer • Reviewed all improvement frameworks and delivered learning sessions for leaders on changes to the frameworks. • The service also commenced participation in national programme with ADES focused on upskilling of workforce in
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21 terms of digital capability, this work will be ongoing. • Leadership networks for each sector have delivered a range of learning outcomes across a broad range of topics. • Comprehensive continued professional development plan continues to evolve to meet service needs and has been complemented by additional corporate training on people practices delivered to a targeted audience to ensure that there is resilience across the service. Housing & Employability – Peter Barry, Chief Officer • Created stability in the Housing Operations structure by maximising opportunities for permanent roles. • Significant progress has been made on the review of transformation of service area to ensure it meets strategic objectives with implementation of the structural changes to be implemented in 24/25. • Continuing Professional Development (CPD) opportunities folder ensures all staff are knowledgeable about training and development opportunities and agree CPD with their line manager. • Volunteer and Staff Personal learning and Development plan for CLD staff, tutors and volunteers reinstated post Covid and includes opportunity for upskilling in a range of topics which support learners. As well as mandatory training, members of staff ( and tutors and volunteers) have undertaken training as follows: Adult Learning National Occupation Standards Workshop; National Trauma Training Programme webinar; West Alliance Adult Literacies and ESOL Sharing Practice; Engagement with Asylum Seekers; Post School Education, Research and Skills CLD session; SAMH Mental Health Supporting Others; SQA Assessing and Verifying units and SQA standardisation meetings • Advice Pro developed to align reporting requirements for
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22 UKSPF and NOLB. Key staff fully trained to use the system staff guides developed, updated and shared on AP library. • Staff have been trained and we have conducted a survey among staff to determine their views on the use of the software. Feedback is being reviewed and the system will be modified as required. • Review with ICT to ensure W4U staff have suitable equipment and WIFI to enable them to effectively access systems in remote locations when meeting service users. With stable and reliable Internet access in a range of community settings. • Ensured all W4U staff have access to Teams and training to utilise Teams fully for sharing information, uploading documents so staff working remotely have access to feedback from colleagues – training requirements still on- going. People & Technology – Victoria Rogers, Chief Officer • The team continue to offer a blended learning support with i-learn, face to face, webinars and bespoke support to some services. • The TU Learning Committee continues with a collaborative approach to ensuring many opportunities for employees. • The senior leadership programme Quantum continues to be embedded. • The Achieve Value and supporting Frameworks have been reviewed. • The apprenticeship levy fund continues to be used to improve digital skills. • H&S have responded to the recent Fire Service changes and delivered a support pack and training to RPO’s. • The HR Team has implemented a HR graduate post to aid succession planning and resilience and a review of areas of
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23 development for the team being considered including planned leadership development and learning opportunities within certain roles for team resilience. • Continued development in digital and data analysis skills in continues across Business Support Teams. • Work in scoping and implementation of learning and development requirements will continue with a focus on improving the councils digital and data skills. • The leadership offer across all levels continues to be developed, well used and updated where and when appropriate. • I-learn continues to see high level of usage across the workforce and Quantum is now looking to recruit the 4th cohort. • Introduction of new technologies requires up skilling and training. This is being carried out in a phased approach with initial project resources being trained before implementation and roll out of the new technologies. Employees have attended industry standard training and development. • ICT provide data resources and project support as required. Continuous development in digital skills is carried across the service for all employees. • Recent ICT Management restructure has increased development opportunities for internal team. Employees recently promoted are attending leadership courses and retaining experienced managers is enabling on the job mentoring. Provided new management opportunities for internal resources. Resources, Laurence Slavin, Chief Officer • Within Finance, staff have been trained in essential business processes to reduce the risk of single point of failure. We
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24 are in the process of reviewing existing Finance Business Partner provision with a view to succession planning. • Within Asset Management, all managers are being supported through existing communication channels and all managers are completing internal “Inspiring Leaders” course. Other training opportunities are being explored for the wider workforce. • Consideration of mentors/champions for key tasks/systems development reviewed as part of key system roles within business support. • Review of requirements and implemented Leadership & People Management Policy development for Managers to develop skill for Asset Management. • Development of progression to BP level – scoping of qualification and experience to establish gaps for succession planning commenced. • Scoped requirements for current roles through be the best conversations and individuals have been directed to relevant leadership training and rotation of experience. • Gaps have been filled through work rotation, knowledge sharing and experience within BP team and accounts. Roads & Neighbourhood, Gail McFarlane, Chief Officer • All training needs identified. • Statutory Compliance training covering asbestos & legionella has been completed for the first 6 months of the year for Capital Assets Team. Regulatory & Regeneration Services, Alan Douglas, Chief Officer • Services within Regulatory and Regeneration have investigated and deployed a range of solutions to address broad learning and development needs including mentoring, coaching and accessing internally supplied training needs identified through Be The Best and 1-2-1 sessions.
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25 • The need to address specific training needs for technical / professional training remains an issue and currently being addressed through professional forums and freely provided sessions. • New team leader has completed induction for new managers and is receiving ongoing training on election functions. All training will be conducted in-house with exception of new election systems - EROS, which has been provided externally by the supplier. Case Study: Citizen, Culture & Facilities – Contact Centre Employee engagement within the Contact Centre was challenging due to the repetitive nature of the role. The restrictive nature of the job being PC based, with a headset and a constant stream of calls requires dedicated and highly motivated individuals. Only customer focused and motivated team members ensure each and every Citizen calling is warmly welcomed to the Council and given excellent Customer Service with each call being giving a unique response. There was a request from the team for development opportunities to be established to ensure they were effective at their role and fully aware of all activities across the Council. Our initial approach was to develop a “Champion Model” where individual team members could elect to be a department representative and be trained to the highest standard in a specific task. For example, a Council Tax Champion. They learn this role to the highest level on systems, processes, policy implementation and then return to the Contact Centre to support the wider Contact Centre team when they have a challenging Council Tax call. This prevents a request for a call back or manager escalation providing a quality customer experience and improved employee satisfaction. This Champion model spreads across all Services the Contact Centre represents and in turn, as made for valuable team to the wider Council as our team members are already exceptional individuals with a high quality of training, immediately ready to start work in the recruiting department when applying for other roles within the Council. Over the years we have successfully taken Modern Apprentices and entry level employees through a development channel to become competent individuals in Housing, Revenues and Benefits, Organisational Development and ICT. In addition, due to their Corporate knowledge, our teams’ skillsets have also been directly applicable to promoted posts within complaint handling giving a clear career pathway from Grade 3 to Grade 4 and Grade 5 posts. One individual has been developed through this structure on to a Grade 6 and then Grade 9 post through a number of development opportunities. The service will continue our Champion Model to ensure our team are as effective as they can be whilst creating a talent pipeline to encourage our teams to apply for promoted posts across the Council.