Decision details

The Head of Organisational Development introduced a report, providing information on the Council’s workforce and approach to developing an Organisational Development Strategy.

As set out in the report, in order to provide excellent services to the community and to support the Council’s vision, aims and values, it was recognised that the Council needed to understand, plan and develop its workforce requirements for the future. Further information, set out in Annex 1a and Annex 1b of the report, was provided to help the Committee better understand the makeup of the Council’s workforce.

During the discussion a number of matters were considered, including issues in relation to: employee demographics; employee sickness absence; employee turnover (attrition); employee relations; and the gender pay gap. It was noted that this information would be discussed in more detail at future meetings and the Head of Organisational Development agreed to provide additional data on employee sickness in future reports. 

The Committee agreed additional sickness information was required in order to ensure Members could understand long term and short term trends and to allow comparisons to be made across difference service areas and employee demographics. In response to questions about benchmarking the Committee was informed that this information could be provided but would need to be done with care, especially given the number of different absence measures available and variety of definitions applied by different local authorities.

In terms of the Organisational Strategy, the diagram set out in Annex 2 to the report of the Head of Organisational Development was considered and it was noted that Organisational Development was a new, explicit area for the Council. In response to questions, it was explained that Organisational Development was defined as a systemic approach to improving organisational effectiveness – one that aligned strategy, people and processes. The suggested approach to Organisational Development would be discussed in more detail at a future meeting.

During the discussion the importance of employee engagement was highlighted and the Chief Executive explained that the Head of Organisational Development position had been created as part of an organisational structure review, carried out in 2018.

RESOLVED that the Workforce Data Summary and draft approach for the Organisational Development Strategy be noted.