North Yorkshire Council

 

Corporate and Partnerships Overview and Scrutiny Committee

 

5th June 2023

 

Workforce Report

 

Report of the Assistant Chief Executive (Business Support)

 

 

1.0       PURPOSE OF REPORT

 

1.1       To update the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on the Council’s workforce.

 

2.0       BACKGROUND        

 

2.1       This first workforce report for North Yorkshire Council (NYC) updates the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on the Council’s changing workforce, presents a range of workforce data, outlines the immediate issues and challenges, and sets out key priorities for the year ahead. Where it is too early to report for NYC we have provided NYCC data.

 

3.0       PEOPLE STRATEGY

 

3.1       With the launch of NYC, a People Strategy has been developed to provide strategic workforce priorities. The People Strategy has four priority areas for all directorates and strategic workforce matters for the next 18 months. The content was shaped through engagement with staff and wider stakeholders.

 

3.2       Retain staff

We retain staff because we have the right people with the right skills, and we will:

·         Provide the opportunities for you to support each other.

·         Recognise and reward the contribution and hard work you do.

·         Have an inclusive workplace culture in which everyone can thrive and reach their full potential.

 

3.3       Attraction for all

We attract and retain talent by investing in them, and we will:

·         Enable you to do your best work every day with the right resources, tools and technology

·         Celebrate what we do well and share that learning

·         Provide career pathways, progression and a great variety of jobs

·         Offer ways of working throughout our council

 

 

3.4       Engage and listen to staff

We attract and retain talent by investing in them, and we will:

·         Enable you to do your best work every day with the right resources, tools and technology

·         Celebrate what we do well and share that learning

·         Provide career pathways, progression and a great variety of jobs

·         Offer ways of working throughout our council

 

 

3.5       Establish one Council

In establishing a ‘one council culture’ we will:

·         Establish our values and behaviours in everything we do

·         Have visible, respectful and accountable leaders

·         Support strong performance and innovation

·         Provide a welcoming environment

 

3.6       Data Sets

This section includes baseline data on NYC since 1st April 2023, with some information for the full year 2022/23 for NYCC for comparison purposes. Changes against this baseline information during 2023/24 will be reported in the next annual update in June 2024.

 

Table 1. Headcount and FTE

Table 2. Directorate headcount

 

Table 3. Terms and Conditions               Table 4. NYC v. TUPE terms and conditions

Table 5. Contract type

Table 6. Full time / part time

 

 

Table 7. Men and women

        

 

Table 8. Gender by Directorate

Table 9. Average age (years)

Table 10. Age distribution (%)

Table 11. Declared disability

Table 12. Declared ethnicity

           

Table 13. Employees by NYC equivalent grade (%)

Table 14. Turnover (NYCC)

 

Table 15. Non-school reasons for leaving (NYCC)

 

 

Table 16. NYCC sick days / FTE      Table 17. Reasons for sick absence NYCC

 

Table 18. Apprenticeships 1.04.23   Table 19. Current NYC apprentice programme

 

Table 20. Graduates

 

Table 21. 2022 – 2023 labour market unemployment %

         

 

 

Table 22. Recruitment activity: NYC since 1st April and NYCC 2022-2023

 

April - 5 May

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

full year

Adverts

166

552

545

401

463

1,961

Applications

1,318

2,043

2,225

2,190

4,454

10,912

New starters

198

526

573

467

486

2052

Applications / advert

7:9

3:7

4:1

5:4

9:6

5:6

Attraction

361,703

985,736

864,581

979,532

1,230,125

4,059,974

Advertising spend

£180

£27,966

£13,184

£18,640

£16,913

£76,703

Cost per hire

£0.90

£53

£23

£39

£34

 

Days to hire

No data

30

30

28

30

29.5

Agency spend

£452,805

£1,446,083

£1,430,348

£1,406,027

£1,251,757

£5,534,215

Agency FTE

56.3

51.4

59.6

59.8

£42

61.1

District Agency cost

 

 

 

 

£1,045,861

£4,183,444

International starters

8

 

 

8

5

13

Care leavers starters

 

13

11

12

8

44

Volunteers

 

4,390

4,009

4,003

no data

 

Volunteer hours

 

40,116

36,997

37,021

no data

114,134

Work experience

 

 

 

 

 

19

Internship

 

 

 

 

 

3

Redeployees

9

1

6

7

no data

 

 

Table 23. Agency spend comparable councils

Council

Population

2022 Spend

Spend/population

Notes

Staffordshire

846k

£8,629,985

£10.20

Excludes consultants

Somerset

570k

£7,368,336

£12.92

 

Essex

1300k

£12,804,151

£9.80

 

Central Beds

294k

£10,818,438

£36.80

Excluding schools

Shropshire

323k

£12,021,568

£37.21

 

Cumbria

492k

£7,928,681

£16.11

Includes consultants

North Yorkshire

618k

£5,238,605

£8.47

 

Kent

1500k

£26,760,000

£17.84

 

Salford City

270k

£3,702,305

£13.71

Excluding schools

Gloucestershire

290k

£14,135,957

£48.74

 

 

Table 24. Agency spend former District and Boroughs Q4

Table 25. Hard to fill posts

Job Type

Key Points

Movement

Care Workers

Demand continues to outstrip supply.  Need for 1200 care workers across the sector and 65 for NYC. Significant attraction by the Make Care Matter recruitment hub reaching 20,000+ people weekly and working with partners eg Health. Early signs that the slight increase in unemployment and cost of living has led to small improvements in applications.

Same

Social Workers

International recruitment and pipeline of newly qualified SWs will improve staff availability into Q3 of 23/24. An ongoing need to assess future pipeline and to secure resilient staffing levels. National consultation for children social worker will impact the ability to use agency workers for children services.

Improved

Educational Psychologists

National shortage of Education Psychologists with 83% of Councils reporting significant recruitment challenges, and migration to highly paid agency work. Draft recruitment and retention plan to redesign job profiles, improve attraction of direct NYC employment, international recruitment, and future talent through investment in trainees whilst improving professional interest through trading services.

Same

 

 

 

Planning:

Newly combined service is redesigning jobs to improve attraction through career diversity and advancement. A focussed recruitment campaign will secure new staff and trainees. The wider reach of the whole county to attract beyond our borders and hybrid working will aid recruitment.

Same

 

 

 


Table 26. International recruitment

 

Table 27. Delivered learning events

 

 

Table 28. Monthly contribution to apprenticeship levy (£k)

 

 

Table 29. Gender pay gap

 

Mean gender pay gap

1.9%

Median gender pay gap

Nil

 

Table 30. Composition of the top 5% of earners

 

3.7       Retain Staff

A healthy rate of turnover is between 10%–13%, allowing for new ideas and innovation. Turnover at NYCC (table 14) has been 15-16% for the last 2 years reflecting a competitive labour market (table 15). Council employees worked with Unison to review the current councils’ pay terms and conditions, to ensure the new council offer is attractive to existing employees and new recruits, affordable, and relevant for the needs of the future. Changes have been made to encourage uptake of the new offer and minimise inconsistent pay and working arrangements.

 

3.8       Changes have included removing compulsory unpaid leave and simplifying and standardising the leave entitlement to ensure no-one is worse off. Features particularly valued at district and boroughs have been incorporated, including long service payments and reimbursement of professional fees where they are a statutory or essential role requirement. Pay progression is still dependent upon satisfactory performance and contribution but is no longer halted automatically due to the number of days of sickness absence. Other changes include measures to minimise climate impact (encouraging green transport options), and to promote health and wellbeing, (improved compassionate leave).

Attractive terms and conditions, hybrid working, and market benchmarked pay rates is expected to see the proportion of NYC employees choosing these new terms and conditions (table 4) to increase from the current 75%.

 

3.9       NYC operates a variety of different contractual arrangements (table 5) and has equal numbers of full time and part time employees (table 6). Most organisations have a core (established) and flexible (temporary and casual) workforce. Ensuring the proper balance between different contract types and offering both full time and part time contractual arrangements can help to retain talent at different stages of the working life e.g. to work around family caring responsibilities, school times, or flexible retirement.

 

3.10     A range of training and support to help managers and staff with the transition to NYC has been developed including:

·         Manager induction and training - management accountabilities, expectations and responsibilities at NYC. In addition to policy related training, it includes softer skills training such as having difficult conversations, managing performance, resilience and managing change;

·         Mentoring/buddying - Webinars to support leaders in developing mentoring relationships to support change;

·         Navigating Change - Toolkit to support managers to explore change with their teams;

·         Hybrid working - training for managers on the policy and how to implement this, exploring scenarios and case studies, highlighting how the hybrid working framework is to be used and applied in the management of staff working in a hybrid way;

·         Social and media training - training for managers that enables them to be media and social media savvy and manage that interface safely and appropriately;

·         Equality, Diversity and Inclusion - rolling programme of training and support, including an eLearning package, and in-person training for managers and frontline staff exploring lived experiences, challenges and sharing ideas and concepts.

 

3.11     The NYC workforce is diverse (tables 2 to 13) with a huge range of different roles. Work is underway to finalise a comprehensive training matrix for each service, detailing the training requirements for each role within the council. This will then form the annual training calendar for NYC and the core requirements for business-as-usual training delivery. An enhanced programme of development will both attract and grow our own talent. This is a collective mix of apprenticeships, graduate opportunities, coaching and mentoring, targeted development programmes and the launch of a leadership academy. Alternative solutions are being implemented to deliver training to staffing groups identified as ‘non-digital’ i.e. without easy access to a device or online service, including sessions at team meetings and digitisation of training records. The Multiply scheme has been promoted within the workforce to enhance the growth in maths and digital skills. ‘On Demand’ video content has had 203 views to date, ‘Learn at Lunch’ sessions have seen 63 learners attend a total of 232 sessions.

 

3.12     The formation of NYC enables further apprenticeship opportunities to be explored in hard to recruit to areas such as trades, leisure, and planning (table 18). Work is underway to map out new areas of opportunity to both attract new apprentices or train and upskill existing members of the workforce. Apprentices from districts and boroughs have been brought into the NYC Apprenticeship Programme (table 19) and levy fund management integrated (table 28).

 

3.13     Attraction for All

The labour market remains challenging across all sectors and job types with low unemployment (table 21) and high pressure on agency use (tables 23 – 24). The most challenging professions are explained in table 25. Whilst challenging most vacancies are filled (table 22) and some campaigns have been particularly successful, for example 538 applications for a recent driver/loader waste campaign and 98 applications for a customer service role.

 

3.14     Agency use is high for Care Workers, Educational Psychologists, Social Workers, and Mental Health Assessor* and Best Interest Assessors. *MHAs cannot be directly employed as they are required to be independent, therefore there is no ability to reduce agency spend. Former district and borough hotspots include Planning (predicted £2m per annum), Environmental Health, Legal Services, Revenues & Benefits and Housing (table 24). Whilst agency spend for the former County Council has increased by 240% in the last year, the Council is still below local and comparable councils (table 23) and the lowest spend per population. Locally, York spent £9.5m on agency 21/22, Bradford £17m 21/22 and Leeds was £8.5m 20/21 and were forecasting significant increases for 22/23.

 

3.15     Graduates and apprentices will form part of the solution for growing our own talent and addressing workforce pressures. Services are being supported to identify where graduates can play a key role for both individual and service gain.

 

3.16     Due to the national scarcity of social workers, tables 22 and 26 set out the successful international recruitment. 19 are still to join with the remaining arrivals subject to significant delay with Social Work England registrations (who have received an increase of 160% applications) but subject to this will arrive June/July.

 

3.17     The Yorkshire Humber region has successfully bid for £1.38m of the £15m national fund for international recruitment to the Care Sector. The region seeks to support care providers with navigating the complexity of international recruitment and ethically recruit, providing £3k match funded bursaries for up to 360 internationally recruited care workers (a proportion of which will be available to NYC).

 

3.18     Hybrid working has become an essential attraction tool. The hybrid working policy is now launched for NYC, supported by additional resources: team checklist, hybrid working toolkit, and FAQS for managers and employees. The launch involves manager-led summer conversations across all teams and in 1-2-1s, to determine the approach for the team and service, that will then be moderated at directorate leadership teams and reviewed at management board at the end of Summer 2023.

 

3.19     Engage and Listen

Through focus groups with staff from all eight councils during 2022 2022 and discussions with relevant LGR workstreams, the values and behaviours, leadership principles and the Employee Value Proposition (titled ‘Our Shared Commitment’) for the new council were co-created and launched. Over 400 middle managers took part in 12 online and in-person sessions in January 2023 to share, engage and support managers to embed the new values, behaviours and leadership principles as part of the new council transformation. Sessions were hosted by senior managers from all councils and facilitated by HR and OD colleagues.

 

3.20     Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) and Health & Wellbeing (H&W) reports have been approved and the approaches for embedding in the new council are in development. Health & Wellbeing resources are available on the new intranet.

 

3.21     Following research of ways of working across all councils, propositional principles to help shape the way we work for the new council were developed and have been shared with staff. Supporting tools and resources and in development. A Change Toolkit has been developed following engagement with staff. The toolkit has been designed as a resource for all staff across all councils to help in the change journey and support resilience in the organisation as part of the transformation programme. The toolkit provides information, templates, signposting to shared resources as well as models and video links that could be used to help managers start conversations in team meetings.

 

3.22     To understand needs and provide relevant support to staff ahead of the new council, engagement has taken place with staff across all councils with three pulse surveys undertaken in the past 12 months. The answers to the surveys have helped shape the delivery of information and support from the TUPE process to manager support to help teams through change. In the first LGR pulse survey more than 2,000 staff completed the survey, with over 1,700 responses to the second survey. As part of further engagement the NY1000 pilot was developed with a purpose to give opportunity for staff to get involved and share ideas on projects. The terms of refence were shared with trade unions and over 250 staff volunteered to be part of the NY1000.

 

3.23     Following a successful pilot scheme, the knowledge transfer toolkit for people leaving has now been rolled out to all, with the purpose of ensuring that information is seen as an organisational asset and is retained within the council to safeguard smooth and efficient business continuity. Feedback from the pilot and those that have engaged since the launch in April is largely positive. It will feature within the Starter / Movers / Leavers process hosted in MyView, prompting all managers to prioritise knowledge transfer at the appropriate times within the employee lifecycle.

 

3.24     Improvements are being considered to the exit interview process to ensure we listen to and learn from leavers. These include exit interviews happening at the earliest opportunity when the employee submits their resignation to explore the reason for leaving and whether there is anything to be done to retain them, for example a change in working pattern or workplace issues. Exit interviews in a SNAP survey format will make this much more accessible for employees and data more easily collated and manipulated for reporting. And employees need reassurance about who will see their feedback and how the information will be handled and shared.

 

3.25     Establish One Council

As far as practicable all employees are working to a single set of policies and systems, with some exceptions for TUPE protected terms and conditions. The Individual Performance Management (IPM) policy has been updated and guidance and support for managers will be rolled out as part of the new council transformation.

 

3.26     All roles across all former councils have been reviewed as part of the requirement to ensure equal pay for work of equal value. Jobs in former districts and boroughs are being evaluated to enable employees to choose to move to the NYC pay grades should they wish. Newly appointed Assistant Directors are clarifying the coordinated roles that will be required as we merge as one council.

 

3.27     Values and behaviours have been developed through engagement with staff across all 8 councils and now launched for NYC: inclusive, ambitious, creative, together (IACT). The new lanyards for NYC staff show the IACT values and provide a route to weave these into every-day focus. Leadership principles were formed following on from the values and behaviours engagement, to provide steer to managers across the organisation and contribute to the development of one council culture.

 

3.28     Through engagement, staff also helped to define what was important for them as employees as well as what they would expect from the organisation. The ‘shared commitment’ was developed illustrating the People Strategy ambitions and to communicate this across the workforce. ‘Meet the team’ videos developed by the Communications team, showcased different roles and teams across the 8 councils to raise the profile of service delivery coming together as NYC.

 

3.29     A new NYC corporate induction has been available to all staff since vesting day and regular communications have been issued to staff to complete this by the end of June. The package showcases the councils’ values and behaviours and the shared commitment to its employees as well as the range of services and challenges ahead. As at mid-May, nearly 50% of the workforce have completed this.

 

3.30     The future is positive for the new Council’s diversity and inclusion. The new Council’s gender pay gap is predicted to be at or around 0 (table 29) and the proportion of women in the top 5% of earners is close to representing the overall difference in the % of men and women in the council (tables 7 and 30). Further work is needed to extend the quantity and quality of workforce data on protected characteristics (tables 6 to 12). Through engaging with staff, and senior leadership support, employees can be confident the Council is a place that values them. Future work includes:

·         Building on employee networks and enabling groups to shape the change needed;

·         Improved Equality and Diversity training and development for staff and managers;

·         Ongoing education and cultural awareness communication programme;

·         Development of our external and internal inclusive employer profile;

·         Improve D&I analytics and inclusive engagement indicators to measure success.

 

4.0       FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

 

4.1       There are no implications.

 

5.0       LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

 

5.1       There are no implications.

 

6.0       EQUALITIES IMPLICATIONS

           

6.1       There are no implications.

 

7.0       CLIMATE CHANGE IMPLICATIONS

           

7.1       There are no implications.

 

8.0       REASONS FOR RECOMMENDATIONS

 

8.1       This is an exciting time as we build the new council through its workforce to be able to deliver the services set in the council plan. We will return with updated data sets from 2023/2024 in June 2024 and narrative around the priorities across the workforce.

 

 

9.0

 

RECOMMENDATION  

 

9.1

Members are asked to note and comment on the report.

 

 

      Trudy Forster

Assistant Chief Executive (Business Support)

County Hall

Northallerton

25 May 2023

 

Report Author – Emily Wren, Senior HR Advisor

Presenter of Report – Trudy Foster, Assistant Chief Executive       

 

 

      Background Documents: None

 

Appendices:  None

 

 

Note: Members are invited to contact the author in advance of the meeting with any detailed queries or questions.