Agenda item

The Committee received a workforce report, for the quarter ended 31 March 2020. 

The Committee noted that the report was another new format which had been designed to show the information and data in an easier and more interesting way.  Officers asked for Members to let them know of any feedback or comments or if the wished for any additional metrics or measures to be included in future reports.

Key areas to note were that the increase in head count had started to level off as anticipated and numbers were back as they were in 2016.  There had been an increase in demand for some of our services – particularly social care areas and following the targeted and focussed recruitment campaigns the staffing levels in these areas had risen.  In the areas that had shown a reduction in staffing numbers these were areas of recent restructure planned to consolidate teams and align with other services.

The new infographics in the report had been included to focus on areas of most value and now included visuals on disability and ethnicity as percentages.  The top 5 reasons for sickness were the usual causes and did not include Covid-19.  The impact of staff being off sick with coronavirus had been very low with an almost negligible impact. The long-term sickness when looked at by directorate level you will see that this comes mainly from the adult care/access and re-enablement teams.  We had previously been asked to look at plans that could be put in place to reduce sickness, particularly in these areas and recent events had overtaken this but these plans would be presented at a future meeting. 

Looking at staff turnover, one of the top three reasons was retirement and although not the highest the work on succession planning should smooth this level out a bit.  Whilst there had been 8 new advisory cases in the quarter relating to improving work performance – when we looked further into these we saw that they were spread across directorates and service areas, and so can reassure that there are not significant problems or cause for concern in the same areas.

Incidental costs had not been included e.g. business travel, but they could be added to future reports if of interest to the Committee.

The Committee thanked officers for the ongoing work on reducing staff absence and wanted to reiterate that the aim is not to punish staff for being sick but providing support to get them back to work.  A Member asked for details of the numbers of people in the long-term absence category as only the percentage was given in the report.  This figure would be passed onto the Member following the meeting.

A Member asked about the numbers of leavers who had been in post less than a year, they appeared to be higher– were there any particular reasons for this.  Officers reported that split was even across a number of reasons for leaving and it does depend on the time of year etc, and whilst it had gone it is was within the normal range and was a spread across the reasons.

Resolved:

To note the Quarterly Workforce report for the period ended 31 March 2020.