Personnel Committee - Thursday 17 July 2025, 2:00pm - Folkestone & Hythe webcasting

Personnel Committee
Thursday, 17th July 2025 at 2:00pm 

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  1. Cllr Connor McConville
  2. Mr Jake Hamilton
  3. Cllr Connor McConville
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  1. Cllr Connor McConville
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  1. Mr Ritchie Bennett
  2. Cllr Connor McConville
  3. Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee
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  5. Cllr Rich Holgate
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  7. Cllr Connor McConville
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  1. Ms Andrina Smith
  2. Cllr Connor McConville
  3. Cllr Rich Holgate
  4. Ms Andrina Smith
  5. Cllr Connor McConville
  6. Cllr Rich Holgate
  7. Cllr Elaine Martin
  8. Cllr Connor McConville
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  10. Ms Andrina Smith
  11. Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee
  12. Ms Andrina Smith
  13. Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee
  14. Ms Andrina Smith
  15. Ms Andrina Smith
  16. Cllr Elaine Martin
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  18. Mr Ritchie Bennett
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  20. Ms Andrina Smith
  21. Cllr Rich Holgate
  22. Cllr Connor McConville
  23. Ms Andrina Smith
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  26. Cllr Connor McConville
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  1. Ms Andrina Smith
  2. Cllr Connor McConville
  3. Cllr Rich Holgate
  4. Ms Andrina Smith
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  6. Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee
  7. Ms Andrina Smith
  8. Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee
  9. Cllr Connor McConville
  10. Ms Andrina Smith
  11. Cllr Connor McConville
  12. Ms Andrina Smith
  13. Mr Ritchie Bennett
  14. Cllr Connor McConville
  15. Ms Andrina Smith
  16. Cllr Connor McConville
  17. Webcast Finished

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this meeting of the Personnel Committee.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:00:09
This meeting will be webcast live to the Internet.
For those of you who do not wish to be recorded or filmed, you will need to leave the Chamber.
For members, officers and others speaking at the meeting, it is important that the microphones
are used so viewers on the webcast and others in the room may hear you.
Would anyone with a mobile phone please switch it to silent as they can be distracting.
And I would like to remind members that although we have strong opinions on matters under consideration,
it is important to treat members, officers and public speakers with respect.
And afternoon, everyone.
Just like to also say to our Chief Executive, if she's watching, to turn off her computer.
Thank you.
Right.
On to the agenda.
Item number one.
Apologies for absence.
Mr Jake Hamilton - 0:00:58
Thank you, Chair. We've received no apologies, but no, Councillor Keene's.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:01:04
Hopefully she's just running late and joining us.
Item number two, declarations of interest.
Do any members have anything they wish to declare?
Take that as a no.
Item number three, the minutes.

1 Apologies for Absence

2 Declarations of Interest

3 Minutes

To approve the minutes, it seems like ages since we had a meeting.
To consider and approve, as a correct word,
the minutes of the meeting held on the 30th of January.
Members happy with those?
Some would like to propose.
I'm happy to second them and all in favour?
Lovely.
Okay.

4 Appointment of Joint Staff Consultative Panel

Item number four, the appointment of the joint staff consultative panel.
So to appoint the members of the panel for this year 25 -26, members must include the
leader of the council and one member from each political group.
So I assume Richard, Elaine, you'll have to decide who wishes to sit on that panel for
this year.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:02:27
Okay, that's fine.
So then the panel would be the leader of the council, Jim Martin, Elaine Martin, Jenny
Hollingsby, Nick Lacine and myself.
There we are.
We vote on that.
Is it just agreed?
Okay, happy to propose.
Seconded.
Councillor Holgate all in favour.
Okay, there we are.
Hopefully it won't be needed.

5 Gender Pay Gap Reporting

Item number five, the gender pay gap reporting and that's over to you Richie, thank you.
Thank you.
Mr Ritchie Bennett - 0:03:13
This report outlines the council's statutory obligations to publish gender pay gap data
on an annual basis and provides the data that we've published for the 24 -25 reporting year.
Now the gender pay gap is different to equal pay.
I just want to explain a few of the terms before we start to make sure that some of
the terminology in there is confusing.
Equal pay relates to men and women receiving equal pay for equal work,
and that's been a legal requirement for nearly 50 years.
Whereas the gender pay gap is about the difference between
the average earnings of men and the average earnings of women
across an organisation.
Having a gender pay gap doesn't necessarily mean
that women are missing out on equal pay.
But it can show inequalities and disadvantages
both generally in society and within workplaces.
We're actually required to undertake and publish
six different calculations as part of this,
all of which take different context into account
and can help explain any gender pay gap.
These calculations are all outlined in section two of the report.
Of these six calculations, I would particularly like to draw
the committee's attention to paragraph 2 .3 .1,
which is on page 10 of the document pack,
and which shows the median average pay of men and women across the council.
I'm highlighting this one in particular
because this is the gender pay gap figure that is most widely referred to
and the one which we ordinarily see printed in the press.
A positive percentage figure here would show us
that the average man has a better paid job than the average woman.
This is the typical case across the country, and the higher the percentage, the more it
shows that the average man earns in comparison to the average woman.
Conversely, a negative percentage would indicate that the average woman earns more.
But like last year, this calculation shows a gender pay gap of 0%, so no gender pay gap.
Alongside the data itself, the Council does publish a supporting narrative on our website
that helps people understand the data and highlights the actions we're taking to reduce
the gender pay gap.
I would therefore also like to draw the Committee's attention to section 3 .2 of the report that
starts on page 13 of the document pack, because that outlines in more detail the actions the
Council has taken and continues to take to support gender diversity and reduce any gender
pay gap.
Thank you very much and I'm obviously happy to take any questions.
Thank you for that Richie.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:06:06
Members have any questions, comments or concerns they wish to raise?
Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee - 0:06:15
I was just going to say I think Richie has set that out very well and it's nice to see
that it's zero percent.
I think picking out that one is quite good.
but I think overall the other categories, there's not a great deal of difference, is there, throughout?
Is there?
There's not a great deal of difference in terms of men and women.
They show us all different things.
The other one that people might look to is the mean average,
which shows a slight percentage point for the men.
Mr Ritchie Bennett - 0:06:46
That depends on the salary grade as well doesn't it?
It does, there's lots of different factors that are taken apart of these statutory,
there's a statutory way of doing the calculation.
I suppose my question really is, is there anything we should be looking at
or agreeing to change?
I think that the results are positive.
And I think that it's, in my opinion, it shows a lot of the good work
that we've done to support diversity in a number of areas.
And I think that the things that we publish on the website that we do
to support gender diversity, particularly for people with,
for example, caring responsibilities,
to support people with career progression.
All those things are worth highlighting.
That's why we put them on the website.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
I just want to echo the thanks.
It was very clearly explained. Thank you so much.
Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:07:58
The results were extraordinary and very positive.
Again, great to see.
You mentioned some of the activities that have been done to contribute to the success.
I was just curious, what was the most successful thing we've done in your opinion
that has helped drive this result?
In my opinion, I haven't done specific data on it,
Mr Ritchie Bennett - 0:08:21
but in my opinion, I think our approach to things like flexible working
and agile working really does support people with care and responsibilities
and therefore I think does have a positive impact on gender diversity.
I would also like to highlight things we do around career development
and how we put on organisational development sessions,
doing recordings so people who are part -time can have a look at them later,
I think is really helpful.
We also put on a lot of our courses during term time
because we appreciate that a lot of people can take holidays
during school holidays if they have young children.
So we try and put on a lot of our sessions.
due at term time as well.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:09:14
Anyone else?
Just looking at 2 .6, the quartile graph there, I assume that's just data for the last municipal
year, the last financial year.
I'm just trying to think, because obviously now we have three male directors.
Does that data incorporate that or is that data...
So when we look at this next year, then there could be a bit of a swing, because obviously
that's another significant pay package.
So all three directors now are male.
So it's likely that we will see possibly a little bit of a swing next year.
Yes.
Mr Ritchie Bennett - 0:10:02
Yes, this data is based on a snapshot data in March 2024,
so it's always retrospective.
So, yes, you're right, we will see some changes.
Since that time next year, we will have an additional mail director
within that calculation.
But there will also be a number of organisational changes as well.
Yes, I appreciate that point.
We might see something different next year.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:10:31
Okay, if there's nothing else are we happy to receive and note the report?
Proposed?
Second?
Councillor Martin?
That's lovely.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you for that, Richie.
Right, item number six is the HR annual review.

6 HR Annual Review (2024/25)

And, Andrea, take us through this.
Thank you, Chair.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:10:53
This is the usual reflective look back at the last financial year and the work across
the council that has been supported by the HR team.
As always, the report itself is fairly detailed.
I'm not going to take you through every single section.
I just want to draw your attention to a few key points.
Obviously at the end I'm happy to pick up any issues across any of it.
The section on absence management, which starts from page 19 of the pack, is showing a decrease
in the average day sickness per employee
from seven down to 6 .3 days
compared to a sector average of 8 .8.
So again, we're showing a really positive trend
of bringing that absence down.
For short -term absences, whilst reduced,
we are seeing that the most prominent reason
for people being off with opiates,
minding illnesses, colds, coughs, sicknesses,
and again, we're seeing that in the national stats.
And I think what you see as well is there's a consciousness
around people not coming to the office.
I think that's one thing that happened from COVID is that people now, where they might have worked
through with colds and coughs and flu and coming to the office, there's a bit more acknowledgement
that that's probably not what should be happening. So we are seeing a bit of change there.
Long -term absences have also decreased in comparison to last year.
Mental health illness and stress is the main reason for long -term absence.
And whilst there's fewer cases, the complexity of each of these is increasing.
as is the duration of the absences.
And that position, again, is reflected nationally
and particularly in the public sector.
I think we are really seeing each case is very individual.
And there can be some really extreme kind
of personal situations that sit behind something that happened
through work, whatever.
And we see that difference coming through.
And then we have to try and support that in the best way.
So it does take quite a good concerted effort on it in terms of that.
The team work really hard on every individual long -term absence and the aim is always to try and bring about a successful and supportive return to work.
Clearly that doesn't always happen in every case but that's always the aim at the outset.
And this type of case work along with support to managers on dealing with early or informal performance concerns which could be behavioural or work -based
takes up quite a large proportion of the HR business partners times.
FMH rewards and staff benefit that continues to be really well received.
There's some information in section 10, which is from page 36 of the pack,
about the different elements of the scheme.
General day -to -day discounts remain well used and we see little change
in the top few retailers year on year.
The supermarkets and some holiday companies, DIY, they're the standards.
Smart Tech, where staff can purchase items through Currys PC World and pay via payroll
over 12 to 24 months is also popular with the staff.
Tusca is our car lease scheme.
It now has 16 cars out with staff, which we've seen quite an increase in interest over the
last 12 months.
But we are still waiting for the use of the new pre -loved scheme, which is going to provide
more options for staff as that will be used cars at a lower monthly rate.
so that makes it should be more accessible to staff on lower grades, which will be a bit positive.
We're hoping, I think, August, but we're not putting money on that by now. We've spoken
quite a bit, I think, with members over the last 12 to 18 months as well about our approach to
hybrid working and the move towards staff being expected into the office at least once a week,
and that came into effect from January early this year.
The information on this is section 12 from page 40.
We have had to control it quite carefully
as there just isn't the space for every team
to decide when they want to come into the building
as their team day.
Tuesdays to Thursday will always be the most popular,
and we just can't accommodate every team
across those three days.
So as that one's in the report,
there was quite a bit of logistical work around that.
That carries on if a team turns around and says,
oh, can we change our day?
Not always that simple because of knock -ons
and kind of the space that we have.
We try and work with whatever everyone needs.
Feedback generally has been really positive
and you do see staff in way more than once a week.
Not necessarily with their teams,
but you see quite a few staff that come in ad hoc anyway.
But you're always gonna have the odd outlier
that it would really rather not be in the office.
Choice, but we do ask them to come in once a week as a member.
Legislation changes have also been front and centre over the last year
and continue to be because of the employment in my experience
currently making its way through Parliament.
Changes over the last year have been very much focused on family type leave,
so carers leave, flexible working arrangements,
changes to the regs for maternity paternity and adoption.
And as a result, not just for that, but on other areas as well,
we've updated a number of policies to ensure we continue to
follow best practice and you can see that in Section 13 .2,
that's page 42. That works going to carry on through this year.
I'm in anticipation of changes that already been mentioned in
the employment Rights Bill. As we know, things like changes to
statutory sick pay, parental leave, unfair dismissal rights
and so on are going to start coming through once it's made its way through the House of
Lords and Commons. Daniel Starr's survey had some really strong results, again outlined
in section 15 on page 44, and we'll come back to that a bit later in the header paid service
report. In terms of the current year and looking forward, right the way through to 26, 27 really,
A key focus is clearly going to be work related to LGR.
The work is clearly going to ramp up when you know who you're going to be in an unitary with.
However, there's much that we can start doing now to make sure that our own house is in order.
Things like making sure we've got upstate job descriptions for every role,
data cleansing on things like payroll, reviewing the terms and conditions for all staff
so we know exactly what terms and conditions each person is on.
they're tasked to make our lives easier further down the line.
At some point we may well need to produce all the job descriptions for the housing team, for example.
So we're going to get them in a central place.
To ensure a best place as well, I am involved in quite a few networks at the minute
run by the LGA and South East employers.
Through them we're learning from some of the councils that have already been through
and out the other side of LGR, like people like Cumbria,
We've also got people from Surrey who are currently knee deep in this process right
now so there's a lot of learning that we can take from that that again will help us be
repositioned to help staff.
One of the networks in particular isn't just HR focused, it's LGR in general so there's
lots of different things that can come through that we can then pass on to other teams across
the council.
I'll just stop there.
Happy to take any questions now.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:18:13
Thanks for having me. Members?
Hello, it's a wonderful report that has so much good news. Thank you so much for putting it together.
Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:18:25
I may even forgive my sinister, I'm always wondering is it too good to be true? What's not been shared perhaps?
Just a couple of quick questions. In terms of turnover, I'm amazed the turnover is so low, especially through the lens of LGR, which is fantastic.
You mentioned in the report about how the reasons why people do leave,
are there any particular trends in resignations and reasons for resignations
that we have seen in the times that we have had, is one question.
Another question I had was around the learning and development courses.
It's great to see the amount of course that have been rolled out,
but I was just curious, is it 100 % completion?
Do we have a measure on actually all the courses that have been rolled out,
how many have successfully gone through to completion.
I had another question, sorry for your questions, but on FNH rewards
I was curious what the uptake was against the percentage of total
employees, we were 515 registered users
but I've only got 448 employees
so I was curious
why there's a difference in those numbers.
I think that'll do it for the moment.
Are you telling me you don't use your rewards, Councillor Holgate?
Personally, no. Apparently I need to.
That's answered that question then.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:19:50
OK, I was trying to get an order, if I forget something just tell me and we'll come back to it.
I think turnover has been low actually in terms of coming right the way through, you could go back to the Taking Stock programme as well.
Turnover through that was low, even though the whole council was going through an amount
of change, and it continues to be low.
I think you might have expected to see it go up because of things like LGR.
I think the majority of staff are hanging on in there because there's not enough information
to make a decision right now.
And I think the cons that certainly Suze in particular has done, from staff briefings
to management teams and so on,
explaining as much as we can to staff
in terms of what we know
and where there are the kind of voids, if you like,
at the minute in terms of what that future is going to be.
Staff really appreciate that,
and we put a lot of time into saying to them
that there's certain amounts of progression and development
in a sort of council like this,
but if you're going to go up to a unitary,
that provides a massive amount of opportunity in terms of different career
progressions whether it's within your team or even moving into other areas and
different job roles. I think a lot of staff can can see that and they're
starting to understand that actually the day job will still have to carry on.
I don't think we've got any teams here that you would say are over capacity and that's
reflected in other councils. If you look at the HR team for example, we're small, I know
over the years than it's are, the day job isn't going to go away.
So your message to staff has been about, you shouldn't really see much difference to staff,
longer term, yes there may be.
But I think that's encouraging staff to stay and see what those opportunities are.
In terms of trends, I don't think there's anything in particular.
Areas where we have seen turnover in the past, like planning, where people were going to
authorities onto public to private and that's much more stable now and people
leaving for higher salaries and can find those in other jobs. I wouldn't say there's
any particular trends that we're seeing that come through. So tick that one off.
Let's do F &H awards. So there's always a bit of a difference, there's all the
members that are also included on the membership of that and again it's at a
certain points in time where they're going to be taking some levers off or not, putting new starters on.
So there's always a little bit of a discrepancy between the two.
But don't forget to add the 30 if you want to, to the title as well.
Okay. And there's some great discounts on there if you have your own company.
In terms of course completions, most stuff that we run is half -day attendance or whatever,
and managers come along, which is what he said,
they resume recordings of them so staff can tap into them later.
The downside of that is we can't be 100 % sure who does that after the time.
But we do do things like attendance lists and so on as we go through.
In terms of external courses, I'm not aware of anyone that's dropped out of any externally funded courses that we've provided.
and certainly time is given for them to have study leave and exams and that sort of thing, there's support there
and I know certainly they've been going through apprentices and so on, the end point assessments and so on,
we've had some really good results from, so in terms of formal qualifications I don't think we've got an issue there in terms of any people dropping out.
Does that cover it?
Yeah it does thanks, I did have two more but I'll come back now.
Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:23:43
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:23:43
Cllr Elaine Martin - 0:23:46
I'll go to Jenny first. Sorry, Elaine.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:23:48
I just want to say thank you for the report.
It was a very comprehensive report and very comprehensive explanation.
Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee - 0:23:56
So thank you very much indeed for that.
A couple of questions.
Well, statements I suppose in a way.
Really pleased to see that there will be opportunities
for people lower down the scale to go for a car.
Because I think that's really quite a good encouragement
and the benefit obviously.
I forgot what I was going to say next, sorry.
In terms of attendance within the civic centre,
do the team leaders or the chief officer monitor the attendance?
Because that's obviously, people are supposed to come in once a week
at least once a week, then that does need to be monitored, I would suggest.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:24:50
I'm smiling because myself and Steve Week, the ICT manager, who's between us reporting
the death of the booking system and so on, we do go round and check on the ad hoc basis
and we've been called all sorts of names from desk police to anything you can think of,
So that hence the smile when you said there's only monitoring going on.
Because yes we do.
We don't do it every day, every week.
We did it certainly at the beginning just to kind of check that people were using the system
so that we could see that they were actually checking in.
And we now do it every now and then in the check.
We have a couple of issues and sort of ironed out a few little issues at the beginning.
But in the main yes staff are coming in.
There's some obvious exceptions where we know staff live a long way away from the building.
So one of our slisters, for example, lives in Wales.
So there is an expectation clearly.
There's some pockets where we've had to work slightly differently.
And we did a bit of an extra non -needling time for some people where there was either
some needs in terms of an adapted chair, for example, and we had to get through all health
and get the right equipment for them.
or if they had some kind of childcare issue on for a bit longer
until they could change their house at lunch, whatever the way.
So we were flexible to start with, absolutely.
And yes, people are coming through.
What about that?
Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee - 0:26:18
It gives staff quite a lot of flexibility.
If you're talking just about one day a week,
there's a lot of flexibility there, isn't there?
Absolutely.
I think from the couple of bigger issues that we had,
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:26:31
a couple of caring issues where that's been different
than it was to care for an elderly parent
when we left the building, for example,
or left home, for example,
to come into the building for a few hours.
So we've worked through them all.
I'm pretty confident that staff are coming in.
It's good to see them.
We've had some really positive comments.
Can I just ask one more?
Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee - 0:26:49
Has that resulted in less complaints
in terms of customer service at all?
One of the things I get from time to time is,
you can never get hold of anybody at the Civic Centre.
I know that it's probably the same at home,
because they're working from home,
but I just wonder whether there is any evidence to show that there's...
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:27:18
I can have a look into that.
I know, certainly in terms of the stats that we keep at the Port Fane
and hold the meetings to get us to Fuller,
and customer services and so on,
The core answer rates within anyone and customer support,
they're really high.
They're in the 90 per cent and upwards.
So I don't know whether you've got anything that can say
there hasn't been the same amount of complaints,
but I think the actual service is just as good, if not better.
Yeah, I'll look into it and I'll let you know.
OK, thank you.
I never want to give you a whole lot of information.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:28:04
I suppose the obvious place to look to start with would be any kind of annual complaints,
reports and so on that Gavin does for his part of the performance review that he would
do so I'd rather call a look in there for you.
Cllr Elaine Martin - 0:28:22
Thanks, it's a very good report. I've followed on from the staff coming in to the meeting
I just wondered if anyone had done any age comparison,
because anecdotally younger people
don't want to come into the office anymore,
because the pandemic and what have you,
they've been used to not coming into the office,
and I just wondered if there was any comparison done on that.
Also, with the long -term absence,
do you just sort of outline what sort of support
you're giving to people for returning to work?
And finally, my point,
We put our figure for 2021 as being number four
for the best companies.
I wonder if you had any idea what number we were now.
Thanks.
Okay, go check in around the border again.
So let's do best companies.
That was a one -off exercise that we did
in that particular year.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:29:12
We haven't done it again since,
but what we do do is the annual staff survey
takes a lot of the questions,
or very similar questions from that survey
in the first place, so we can kind of benchmark
where we are against that.
So things like the employer net promoter score and so on
that we make reference to in the reports,
that sort of thing is very keen through best companies
we've maintained that.
So that's the only reason we haven't redone it.
It's just a one -off exercise.
It's kind of a bit like investing in people.
I'll do age comparison.
I'm going to hand over to Richie for long -term absence.
So in terms of age comparison with people
coming in the office, I think what's been really interesting
is that some of the feedback we've had from people coming through is some of the younger
members of staff are actually appreciating it because they're starting to feel part of
the team, part of the council, which kind of echoes the reasons why we're doing it in
the first place. And I think they suddenly realise they're in a much more supportive
environment. And again, as we know, you get your teething issue at the beginning and then
people come in, they realize it's not as bad as they thought it was going to be, and they
realize it's that ongoing support.
We probably made reference to it previously in the sense that moving forward towards LGR,
if you've got that network of support in your team, if you're not feeling great about what's
happened, you know you've got those people that you can talk to that are going through
it at the same time as you.
So yeah, there hasn't been really any kickback to this at all.
If anything, it was more about distance,
people coming further away or parents,
but from a age point of view, we didn't see any issues.
I'm going to delegate now.
Mr Ritchie Bennett - 0:31:05
Thank you. The question was about people returning to work.
From long -term sick.
Yes, OK.
There's a lot of support we're providing.
Thank you. There's a lot of work that we do with staff in work.
to support people as well, to make sure that we can reduce absenteeism
in the first place and support health and wellbeing,
which I think is really important.
But if we do have somebody on long -term care,
I think communication is fundamental,
and treating people as individuals.
As Andrea explained in the report, we have a business partner approach,
so that means we'll have one dedicated person for an individual,
and for a department and for a team.
so we're a known person,
and also we understand that service area and that individual.
Then we can utilise things like support mechanisms like occupational health
that will give us the best advice in order to support somebody,
whether or not they need to tap into our employee assistance programme,
which is things like counselling support and welfare support and things like that.
That could be very useful for people.
But things like Occupational Health can help us with phase return to work programmes
that will get somebody back working probably earlier than maybe they could do.
So we can put in supportive things for them when they come back.
Around maybe the hours they might work initially,
about where they might work initially.
And also have almost pre -return to work meetings with them
to talk about what's going to happen,
whether we're going to do any kind of well -being, risk assessment,
and target those areas that need targeting.
We find that works fairly well, yeah.
Mr Pidgeon, do you want to come back with yours?
Thank you, Chair.
I am... The flexible working law changed.
Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:32:54
I was just curious whether it did trigger an uptake in requests.
Just curious.
And then on the survey outcomes,
obviously we've chosen five, six,
and are wholly positive. You mentioned in 15 .6 that there are other questions that were maybe less positive
and it would be great to see maybe the full set of results, just to kind of get the full picture, but in absence of that
could you share what were the areas that are perhaps less positively fed back on and therefore may suggest a change program
moving forward that we need to do something about. Thank you.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:33:39
So in terms of flexible working, we haven't really seen an increase.
It's moved from one request now to two requests in the 12 month period.
So I think we, because we've had such a high good working arrangement anyway, and people
only coming in one day a week, we haven't really had a huge amount.
What we do see occasionally is more of a move towards compressed working and doing sort
of four days, nine day fortnight, so nine day fortnight or reducing say, crossing to
three days rather than four.
But we're always very careful with them around health and safety, wellbeing, that sort of
thing.
There's a lot of discussions where we never agree something like that.
So not a huge increase in the amount of press that came through.
I think it's probably helped because we are quite flexible in the first place.
In terms of the survey, I don't see any issue with sharing the results.
We haven't given the full set out to staff yet, so I think once we've covered that in
the staff briefing at the end of the summer, I don't see any reason why we couldn't share
some wider stats on that, so quite happy to do that.
In the main, whilst it might sound a bit cliché, the results are positive.
There's a couple of pockets where the results were slightly lower for some teams and we've
highlighted them and we're working with CLT and with the chief officers for those areas
to kind of find out, let's find out a bit more because it's easy for people to put a
quick comment in a staff survey but until you actually get under the skin of that and
understand what does it actually mean, what context was it made in, so there's always
some work going on with that and we make sure that chief officers and managers can work
with the OD team particularly to go through all those kind of results.
But literally the only one that stood out was the question about LGR,
which was pretty, you know,
understandable, we really expected that.
So, as you said, one final question was what was the actual
uptake on the survey? How many people completed it as a percentage?
Oh, it's not clear in the report.
Sorry.
It's a test.
If it's not in yours I think it's in head of pay service.
I think it's in head of pay service.
I want to say about...
Is it in there?
I want to say about 55 % but...
Yes.
It's 55 %?
It is 55%.
So it's pretty good.
Are we getting a good spread across?
Yeah, thank you.
Anyone else?
Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:36:22
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:36:25
Most of the points that I had have been covered so thank you members.
One thing that does, obviously it's great, short term sickness down, long term sickness
down, turnover down.
I mean if I was looking at the table in 4 .4, if I was Medway or Fannock I'd want to know
like what we're doing.
So I mean are we a bastion of knowledge for the other councils in Kent?
Do other councils sort of reach out to us and say, you know, how are you doing this
and why and are we sharing best practice or what sort of goes on behind the scenes with
regards to that, if anything?
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:37:09
We do share bits of knowledge here and there, absolutely.
I don't think anything we do is outrageously out of the norm, if you like.
I think it feels like it's stuff that we should be doing.
I think with some of them, particularly Medway and Fannet, I think some of the staffing make -up,
as it is with the Fannet, they employ their own refugee services and so on.
Medway have the higher kind of leisure bits within the pool, and that can lead to different
types of sickness and the regularity of sickness.
We do talk with this, there's an HR,
Ken HR network, and it's quarterly,
and we do sometimes put things on the agenda
where we share what we're doing.
If someone wants to talk about a particular thing,
whether it's abstinence, it could be something
to do with recruitment or anything,
but we all pitch in and kind of share knowledge,
share what we're doing.
So that does happen.
Thanks for that.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:38:04
And the other point, obviously you talked
a little bit there about the reasonable adjustments
and the things there.
Would you say that the budget you've had for that is sufficient?
It's not been strained upon or do you think that needs to be expanded on?
So the budget is new for this financial year.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:38:27
So everything that happened before was found out of central or associated parliament budgets
and so on.
So we're monitoring it this year to see where we go.
It is, in my opinion, a relatively low budget.
Because if you go for a specialist chair, for example,
that could be hundreds of pounds to get to.
So we are watching it, and equally if we need to,
then potentially we'll have a look at whether we need to put a growth bid or something in for next year's budget.
We'll work with Bex in Health and Safety.
She's done a lot of the work with us to make sure we've got all the right
sort of information to handle the right reviews, personal evacuation plans, all of that, so
we're aware of what people need.
So I think it's got to be work in progress that we are watching very carefully and making
sure man's still doing the right things.
Thanks for that.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:39:20
Okay, if there's nothing else are we happy to receive a note of the HR annual report?
Hope to propose.
Seconded by Councillor Holgate.
All in favour?
Lovely. Okay.
And on to our last item.
The report from the Head of Page Service.

7 Report of the Head of Paid Service

Who's hopefully, you know,
scuba diving in Great Barrier Reef or something similar.
So, but, Andrea are you going to take us through it?
I am.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:39:47
It's the art of delegation isn't it?
From Susan to Ewan.
while she's off in Australia having her lovely break.
And then from Ewan down to me,
because he doesn't want to infect anyone else
with his flu.
So it's -
How long does HR policy?
Absolutely.
Although I'm not sure he was yesterday
when he was in the building.
But we'll excuse that one.
So as you know, the Head of Pay Service report,
it's an only reflection and forward look from the Chief,
giving consideration to the staff resources
that are being carried across the council.
Senior management changes are embedding well, so in section 2 .2 on page 52 provides some
more detail and however it's clear that the full -time appointment of the finance director
who has the section 151 delegation in March and also the delegation of monitoring officer
to Ewan as director of strategy and resources is having a really positive effect. You'll
also recall that the director who was previously section 151 was on an interim contract with
us and that is now ending on the 31st of July with a comprehensive handover currently on
the way to Allen already as the new appointment director in place. I know Susan is very grateful
and passing on her thanks for the support from members for agreeing and contributing
to the appointments and the apprentices that we've gone through over the last year or so.
We are as you'd expect conscious of the effect that LGR may have on recruitment and we've
We have seen small glimpses of this, and we're certainly not alone in that.
So the session planning work and also some focus work to encourage the new entrants and
young people into council roles is ongoing.
Not only locally, in our council, but the LGA also running national recruitment campaigns
and to highlight all the different roles and career paths that exist in councils.
So we're really hopeful that from that side we can still encourage people into local government.
Focusing on staff survey for the moment, which is referenced in section 3, again as we've
already mentioned there's a really strong set of results and you have the snapshot in
the HR annual report.
The net promoter score has increased to plus 38 and that's on a scale of minus 100 up to
plus 100.
So that puts us in great category and that aligns us with companies such as Google, Microsoft
and so on in terms of the responses they get to their surveys and how likely staff are
to recommend actually working for the organisation. There's a few pockets, as I've said before,
that we do need to do a bit of a deeper diver on and we will do that. That's where the HR
and OZ teams will come into play with the chief officers and the CLT to make sure we
can address any small pockets. And I think it's probably worth saying that with a few
years ago, Grause maintenance felt very isolated from the council and we took
some clear steps with them and bringing them in to have discussions about
what do they want, what would they like to see, how they want us to communicate
with them so that we could take some steps that they were suggesting, not just
what we were assuming was what they would want. So the same thing will work.
At the minute, the high pool is one of the pockets we want to have a look at.
Because again, satellite site away from here, you need to make sure they feel
part of the council. It's also really encouraging to see the strongest scoring question being
the one relating to how staff understand their work and how it impacts the residents and
the community. I think Susan was really pleased to see that come through. There has to be
the lowest scoring question, as we've said already, and that was the question about how
staff are feeling about Algea and their future. Some will clearly see it as opportunity, as
Some naturally are going to be worried about the impact it has on them and there's still
a large number that's still quite neutral in the middle because it's too early really
to have a clear view on this.
The LGR is always high on any meeting agendas, whether that be for managers or wider staff
briefings and staff have definitely appreciated the way that that has been always on par for
them in terms of a topic for engagement, a topic for conversation.
We work with all managers to ensure staff are aware of the additional funds for training
and development as well, because we want to ensure that staff are in the best place possible,
no matter what the LGR future holds for them, that we're making available funds to do the
additional training and courses.
In terms of forward look, again, there's more detail in section four, but the intention
is clearly to maintain that proactive comms and engagement with staff with the view that
will help maintain some stability over the coming months and couple of years.
Succession planning is key across a number of teams. ICT is one that we've picked out
in particular, but there are a couple of others as we work to building more resilience, more
corporate wider knowledge to avoid there being single points of contact as we move forward.
So in conclusion really, I think the key points of focus as Susan picked out in the report
is clearly on delivering the corporate plan. There's a group of four council, the development
of DLGR proposals, including the Otterfield Park collaboration agreement with Homes England.
And I know in her view, the resources that we have are adequate and being appropriately
deployed across the services. I'm going to say I'm happy to take questions, but we may well need
to refer back to either Ewan or Susan, depending on the kind of comments or answer comments,
questions that you may have if you don't have that to hand.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:45:21
Thank you, Anjurina.
Councillor Holgate?
I just had two points.
One is, and we mentioned it a couple of times,
Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:45:29
but actually I did just want to go back to the LGR and the effort
that the Executive had gone to in talking and communicating to.
I just don't think it can be praised enough.
I think it had an enormous impact on offices and you can see that data but just yeah, I
can't speak highly enough of the effort that they had gone through and continue to do so
through the lens of LGR so I applaud that.
The EMPS score again is really positive, nice bit of colour that we compared to Google and
so forth.
How do we stack up against other councils?
This is more of a realistic comparison if we know, if we don't in case there are.
and I'm just curious about the actual figure of 38, for the last number,
but the high NPS score, 38, again based on how many inputs we'll be curious to know.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:46:30
As far as I'm aware, no other councils around here do the Net resilience score as part of their surveys,
so we don't have that information.
As far as to how the 38 % of the 38 score is reached,
So if you can imagine a scale of one to ten. So everyone in the survey was asked how likely
they would be to recommend us as an employer. Scale of one to ten. The percentage of people
that scored us a nine or a ten is taken. The percentage of people that scored us six or
below is brought together. You ignore the sevens and eights, which actually quite a
lot of people would normally score people as because that's generally quite a reasonable
score but you take the percentages away from the 9s and 10s to the 0 -6s and that percentage
leaves you 38%. Thank you, I get that, I'm just curious how many people responded to
the NPS score, what was that 38 based on? 5 people saying, talking? So that would be
that was part of the survey, it wasn't a different survey. No, no it was in the survey. I beg
your pardon, sorry, I misunderstood, sorry, thank you.
Cllr Rich Holgate - 0:47:32
Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee - 0:47:35
I would just like to agree with Rich on the information given to staff by Susan and obviously
other members of the council. I think it's been key, you know, I talk to quite a lot
of staff and I have done and I continue to do and that's certainly something that they
really, really appreciate and they can also see some of the opportunities that might be
so that's great and we obviously need to keep that up.
I was just interested in the last paragraph.
It was just that on balance this report confirms just and adequate
and I thought level of resource and is it just?
You're talking it is, the resources are okay, but it does say that word there just.
Good observation.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:48:34
I think, and I'm almost presuming what Susan was meaning when that came through,
I think all you lose is the fact that we don't have a lot of spare capacity across the council.
It's reduced it.
I think the just probably will come from an element of knowing the amount of work that could be coming with LGR.
So in my head that kind of thought process would have been,
it's there, there's a lot of work to do.
Cllr Jennifer Hollingsbee - 0:49:12
But of course resources are always limited,
you're always struggling really for more resources,
whatever action you take.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:49:27
I mean, I've just come on in, if I may.
Would you... Is it foreseeable then that the staff could take on extra resource
in terms of LGR once we know more,
as we get closer to November or after,
once I assume we know who we're going to be paired up with.
I mean, there is an LGR reserve now,
a million in it,
hopefully, probably going to be more,
which was obviously probably designed for end of...
end of life, but obviously I don't see why it couldn't be utilised beforehand to cover
resource to ease that burden and take it away from other officers who need to do other work.
I think so.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:50:26
I think from what we can see there's going to be a number of different work streams that
will have to be set up and that's going to be working in coordination with whoever we're
partnering with.
But certainly from listening to where experience comes from, people like Buckingham, where
they were very similar to us actually with four districts and a county coming into one,
the number of staff that were actually involved in all those work streams was enormous, to
greater or lesser degrees.
And I think that's probably where we will potentially need to tap into some of that
reserve because the likelihood is it could take some officers away for the vast majority
for others it could just be dipping in and out, providing some sort of information.
There could well be an element of needing some backfilling
just to make sure we can maintain the day -to -day.
I'm sure that's going to be a key focus as we go forward
in terms of what we have to still be delivering
and make sure we deliver that well
alongside being able to get that concrete information in place for LGR.
Thanks, Veron.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:51:27
Not many other points to make,
But I'd just like to thank the committee for all the work in appointing Alan as the
Director of Finance.
It was a bit of a rough sort of two years.
We thought we didn't need it and then obviously came back to the decision that we did and
I think looking at it now with him in place and doing a really great job from everything
I hear, I think it was the right choice.
And he's already been able to find and utilise savings and obviously increase our money and
as you say be able to create the reserves to give us the resilience of LGR when it comes
in.
So I think that was definitely the right choice.
But again, I do worry about the strength of our workforce going forward.
In terms of current vacancies, are there many open at the moment?
You didn't really say we were struggling to recruit, but you did say there is concerns,
isn't there?
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:52:52
There are concerns and I can see Richard just quickly looking up the vacancy page to see how many there are.
So I think we have seen a couple of instances, one was very early on where we were out for a relatively low graded job
and a couple of them pulled out because that was just when LGR had been announced.
I think that there was a bit of a kind of wobble for a lot of people at that point.
What we're really seeing, and it's been evident as we've appointed Alan into the director job for finance,
we've also just appointed him to the chief officer finance role that replaces Ola, who left last year.
And some of the feedback from the consultants that we used is very much that people aren't moving.
So there's a lot of jobs out there and people essentially getting a bit fed up of consultants
keep calling them about different jobs all the time because they might just be hanging on for
the right job which is you know he's like what Alan was doing you know he knew what he was looking for
but was getting approached for other jobs.
And the message that's coming through is people are either getting a bit fed up with that
or they're sitting tight because whilst LGR is being developed
and you're working out who your council is partnering with,
sometimes it's better the devil you know, isn't it, because you've got the Ken HR network,
got the different finance networks, legal networks across the country,
and you know who you work with in your patch.
So that's probably safer for a lot of people than jumping to a completely new organisation.
So we've heard reference to that a few times now, although it hasn't stopped us appointing,
but we are hearing that nationally as well, that the people are seeing that kind of level
of input in terms of reality around moving.
I don't know, maybe Richie can...
Mr Ritchie Bennett - 0:54:39
We're currently advertising six.
But I'd like to, you know, I think if we go back to our turnover stats,
I mean we say that they're not significantly high.
I'd like to agree with Andrena that when we came...
And it's also in Susan's report as well about some positions we do struggle with.
but also other councils struggle with them as well.
Susan alluded to a paragraph in her report
about something we did around planning recruitment
and trying to do something in a different way.
Making sure that we are successful in that recruitment
and appointing good qualified people
and trying to do that first time
and sometimes recognising that we have to do that in a different way
rather than just a like for like replacement
or a standard advert or something like that.
Susan also talked about in that page service report
about engagement with young people,
with going to career days and things like that,
and trying to get young people interested in a career in local government as well.
So we can tap into different people who might be interested in working with us.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:55:55
I mean, throughout the year, obviously, there were raised concerns about shortages in planning,
building control, legal, I know there was some succession issues potentially there,
and finance.
I mean, are those departments in a better place now than they were six, 12 months ago,
or is there still work to do to get them to a more ideal position?
Work in progress.
Ms Andrina Smith - 0:56:29
I think with finance specifically with Alan coming in,
Jonathan has been moved to the chief officer role,
there's naturally going to be some changes in the way that they work
and the way that the structure lines up.
So I think that's definitely work in progress,
but there's some clear roots that have been determined by Alan on that.
I think we've still got the same number of resources, there's still some light going
on around what do we need in terms of is it planning lawyer or where do we go in terms
of what we need.
So that works on going with Nicky as Head of Legal.
Thanks for that.
Cllr Connor McConville - 0:57:06
Anyone have anything else?
Okay then.
Are we happy to receive a note at a paid service report?
Thank you everyone and enjoy the rest of your afternoon.
I say if you're not doing anything this afternoon, the Turner Schools Art Show is on at the Harbour
Arm.