Who will enable the delivery of this plan?
Human Resources has four service areas, and several different teams sit within each of those areas as follows:
People and Business
We provide a key function to the organisation, which is to accurately pay employees on a timely basis, and administer the pension scheme.
The service also develops and introduces a wider reward offer which includes an employee assistance programme, a salary sacrifice scheme which gives access to goods and services like cars, computers, saving schemes, charity donations, travel cards etc. These are regularly reviewed for relevance as well as employee preference.
People and Business also manage all the HR systems, data and insight services, including managing the establishment and management of posts. HR operate a range of systems which support managers and employees to work effectively. Our aim is to maximise the benefits, increase use and knowledge, as well to seek to continually improve. Data is a key area of development with all our operational and business reports being recently revised with the next step being to widen local usage and the development of scorecards/KPIs.
People and Culture
Our aim is to ensure there is an organisational culture which is open, fair, inclusive, and engaging, and where employees are motivated, suitability skilled and focused on providing excellent services to our citizens.
A central theme of our work is to ensure that employee engagement is high on our list of people priorities providing employees with a voice so that they can make a difference. Recognising our employees’ achievements through new and innovative recognition programmes such as Cheers from Peers and our Spire Awards creates an organisational culture and ethos which values its employees and recognises Talent, whether that be one our apprentices or one of our aspiring leaders.
As a team our key priorities for the next few years will focus on ensuring that we are able to embed the actions within our Workforce Diversity & Inclusion Strategy, improve the customer experience by ensuring that our recruitment & selection processes align themselves with the principles of inclusive recruitment and create opportunities for our Apprenticeships through effective workforce and succession planning.
Employee Relations
Using a HR Business Partnering Model, the Employee Relations Team focuses on both individual and collective relationships in the workplace.
We work across the Council to develop and embed a positive employee relations culture, through developing modernised policies, procedures, and toolkits.
We provide proactive advice, guidance, and support in all aspects of Employee Relations procedures such as disciplinary, grievance, organisational change, and conflict resolutions. We also support consultation processes working closely with trade union colleagues.
We are aiming for a positive climate of employee relations including enabling employees to speak up, creating high levels of employee involvement. The team's work over the next People Plan reflects this.
Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Creating and sustaining a safe and secure workplace is essential for a healthy and happy workforce.
To deliver this, the Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Team provide a wide range of services as well as ensuring we meet our legal obligations.
The services include pre-employment clearance, health assessments, counselling support, debriefing, mediation, healthy lifestyle screening and advice, mental wellbeing clinics, training, accident and incident reporting and investigation, audit, inspection and monitoring as well as health and safety advice.
Quarterly formal consultations take place on matters of health, safety, and wellbeing
A monthly Health and Wellbeing Group has been established that develops and supports the wellbeing agenda.