HR integration comments and questions

UNISON raised the following on behalf of our members following the second round of briefings/workshops on 30th Oct and 3rd Nov:

The lack of supporting information presented at the meeting makes it difficult to make informed comments. Would need to see old and new structures together.

If the authority has a priority to reduce sickness levels how does it propose to do this with reduced resources?

Has the income generated from Education (schools) been taken into account in this process?

Where is the re-deployment team?

Have options to generate income been considered and if so what were they?

How many vacant posts are there currently and at what levels?

Links with other authorities need to be established when looking for redeployment opportunities.

The SLA for schools has to be complete for December, has this been taken into account in this process?

How will the teaching unions be consulted with?

Admin posts across the board need to be identified.

Drawing up structures before you know what service you are going to provide could lead to yet more changes, how will change of service be communicated to managers?

Unrealistic timescales for formal consultation given the level of proposed changes.
Structures appear to be top heavy Service Head roles look isolated from Departments.

Where is the rationale document?

Concerns that specialist knowledge will be lost.

There has been no discussion regarding best practice across the authority how will you be able to ensure that this is not lost?

Who will Section 188 notice include?

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Claire Gollin, HR Service Head, responded on behalf of management as follows:

Further to your email to Jack Markiewicz dated 6th November providing comments and raising a number of questions following the 2 consultation events with HR staff last week. You will be aware that Jack is currently undertaking Jury Service and he has therefore asked me to respond to you direct in his absence. I can assure you that all comments provided by staff either at these and previous events, through separate correspondence direct with Jack and/or through their trade unions will be taken into consideration by HRLG in its ongoing work on the new structure which we aim to publish on 1st December (with other new structures in line with corporate requirements). In relation to questions raised in your email, on our proposals:

Income generated from sold services to schools has been factored into the budget available for the new structure.

A redeployment service for the whole authority is located in the Attendance Management specialist team through the equivalent time of 2 of the Sc 5/6 FTE posts in that structure to undertake work on vacancy identification, liaison with managers and skill audits. This may be a shared role with AMO's within the overall team resource. Formal casework around redeployment situations, whether it stems from the sickness absence policy, other policies or from organisational change programmes will be undertaken by the operational/strategic teams working closely with the Attendance team.

Reducing sickness absence is a key priority for the County Council. Health, Safety and Welfare services are an essential proactive and responsive resource to enable us to do this and the Health Safety and OH team structure is resourced to ensure we can provide this capacity.The cross cutting Attendance Management team providing AMO support for managers across departments is also responsive to this.

All opportunities to generate income within the capacity available will be given proper consideration.

Currently we have a number of HR posts not filled on a permanent basis across the HR community, these are: 0.5 SO2 temporary vacancy in old environment team whilst postholder is on maternity leave, 1 FTE vacancy against a SC2/5 Personnel Assistant post in Environment, 2 Band C Principal Personnel Officers in Environment, currently being acted up , 1 FTE Personnel Officer (sc 3/6 Business support) in Education (may be filled on temp basis only), 1 FTE Team Leader SO1 (Business Support) currently filled on temp basis to 31.3.07, 2 FTE Clerical Assts Education Sc2 currently filled by temps, 1 FTE Sc1-4 Personnel Asst Education currently filled by a temp. This equates to 0.5 temp vacancy and 7 actual vacancies , 6 of which are filled by temp staff. These should also help us to reduce the impact of restructuring by deploying any displaced staff into these posts.

Although we hope to be able to achieve reductions by voluntary means, we will ask our neighbouring local authorities to give regard to any displaced HR staff(and staff from other functions) for any suitable vacancies they may have as part of our commitment to mitigate the impact of reduced capacity as far as possible. This has to rest on goodwill and we cannot regulate their responsiveness to such a request.
The HRLG sub team working on the SLA are aware of the interface with the "Management Choices" process for schools. Managers will be involved in and informed about the scope of services covered by the HR SLA when further work has been undertaken and of course good communication is key to this as it is to all other aspects.

Where we have members of staff in HR or elsewhere who are members of a teaching union we will make arrangements to consult with them, this could be through the CYP department JCNP.

As stated at the consultation events, HRLG are giving further consideration to admin resources including the disaggregation of existing admin support which is not directly part of the HR establishment.

The HR Service Head establishment has already been agreed and appointed to. The new Service Heads will have both strategic and operational responsibility and will, especially initially, spend a significant proportion of their time with their HR teams and with management teams in departments.

Part of the principle behind integration is consistency and standardisation with resultant efficiencies and quality control, HRLG have already considered practice across departments and will continue to do so when working on the detail of the HR structure, including job descriptions.

Rationale documents for the next stage below Service Head appointments in the integrated Resources department and other service departments are currently being produced by the Designing The Future Project team and will cross reference budgetary and business drivers for the change agenda which have already been communicated to staff and highlighted in consultation events to date.

We are aiming to issue a Section 188 notice covering those staff in the integrated Resources department (who have not already been subject to a 188 notice), on or before 1st December, I mentioned this at the last ICJF. We will also be going out to these staff for expressions of interest in VR at about same time. I am the contact point for this if you need to discuss further.

In conclusion Jack has stated that he will make time to personally talk to HR teams at their request when he is back from his Jury Service and we will continue to communicate and consult with our staff in as many ways as possible throughout the ongoing consultation period.