Agenda item

L Roberts introduced the report and advised it covered Human Resources and ICT and Digital Services. She was pleased to report that sickness levels had been good although at this time of year we would expect an increase due to colds and flu. Overall sickness rates were lower this year than this time last year which was good considering the pandemic. Long term sickness was still being monitored closely to make sure we’re taking all the right steps.

She wanted to update members on what they were doing for the health and wellbeing of all staff during this challenging period. She said they had developed an action plan to support staff and this included running webinars, expert advice on home schooling, time to talk to make sure people are communicating, specialist financial and loneliness workshops, exercise classes three times per week, bulletins to advertise where people can get help and the introduction of protect your lunch break to ensure staff get a break away from their screen. A monthly group has been set up to evolve that programme of work and to suggest what other things could be done to support staff.

In relation to ICT and digital services, Microsoft Teams has been an essential part of how we all work now as well as the reliance on our systems to enable people to work from home. This does cause the ICT department a degree of complications as it’s often not the kit that is the problem but the individuals connectivity to the internet which is harder for them to diagnose. Overall the KPI’s show that we are performing well in those areas and staff have been very grateful for the support of the ICT team over the past few months. Finally, we have had an increase again on the number of website users and we’re finding that more and more people are choosing to use it.

Councillor Adeleke commended the various activities and measures put in place for the welfare of staff. He said he had seen a video that had been sent by the Chief Executive to update staff which he felt was excellent. He asked if this would be something she intended to repeat given the current situation.

L Roberts said she would pass that question on to C Hamilton but believed it was something she would continue to do. She advised that on a regular basis the Chief Executive sent out messages to all staff to talk about things that are happening or coming up.

Councillor Adeleke felt staff would appreciate video messages more as they are more personal.

Councillor Symington firstly commended all the measures in place to support the staff. She also praised the ICT team and said they had been incredibly helpful during her recent contact with them about Internet Explorer issues. She then queried what the overall risk to the organisation was of using legacy platforms.

B Trueman advised that Internet Explorer was a supported product and wasn’t a legacy product in the sense that it wasn’t supported. There are security patches still being provided by Microsoft. He said we do intend to move away from it in the Autumn but we’re just going through all of the line of business applications that we have to make sure they work with Edge which is Microsoft’s replacement product.

Councillor Tindall questioned the timeline on when the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) would start to discuss how we resume operations and what options will be available to staff when the Forum opens again.

L Roberts explained SLT were actively discussing it now to try and understand what the staff want and what the managers and services needs are so we can plan the return to the Forum. She felt it would be unlikely that we would all return to how we worked before and that more workplaces would adopt a hybrid way of working. She said it would be a challenge and we needed to make sure our infrastructure was set up in the right way to support that way of working full time. She commended B Trueman and his ICT team for all the work they had done so far.

Councillor Tindall shared his concerns for the health and wellbeing of the staff and said he wouldn’t want them to be forced into options that would be damaging. He queried the route of the decision and asked if this committee could have an input into future decisions.

M Brookes advised that within the Covid update report they included some operational matters in which they would bring to scrutiny for an overview. He suggested they might be able to include a section to cover those concerns once the plan was developed more.

Councillor Tindall felt that instead of it going straight from the SLT to Cabinet it would be useful to have at least one member of each party should be able to have an input into it so they can share their views and review ongoing process.

M Brookes said they had noted the importance of member involvement in the review of working practices and gave assurance that they would ensure they receive input from members.

The Chairman asked if staff were involved in that process as well.

L Roberts replied that they were and said there would be a series of consultations and workshops for staff. She explained she had carried out a series of interviews with Group Managers after the first lockdown about what they had learnt from it, what worked well and what didn’t, so they were building on that.

The Chairman queried if we had trained mental health advisors within the Council.

L Roberts advised we did have mental health first aiders but if individuals didn’t feel comfortable talking to somebody within the work place for whatever reason there are other places that we’re pointing them to as well for additional support.

Outcome:

The report was noted.