Agenda item

Purpose of the report:  The purpose of this report is to share feedback from the Better Place to Work Project which primarily focused on resolving immediate IMT and facilities issues in the workplace. This links to the issues highlighted in the previous report to the Committee of the 11 September on Improving Staff Morale and Wellbeing.

Declarations of interest:

None.

Witnesses:

Paul Brocklehurst, Head of IMT

Julie Fisher, Strategic Director for Business Services

Janet Ludley, IMT & Customer Communications Manager

Carmel Millar, Director of People & Development

Chris Whitty, Senior Business Support Manager

Key points raised during the discussion:

1.    The Chairman of the Committee thanked officers for the report and noted that the key themes brought out in the Better Place to Work discussions broadly matched those identified by the Committee when they met with small groups of staff across the Council

2.    The Director of People & Development introduced the report and informed the Committee that the next stage of the Better Place to Work Project was to implement the action plan and follow up on issues raised by staff. 

3.    Members praised the refreshing honesty in the report.  There was a discussion on the draft communications page in Annex A, where some Members thought that “you said, we did, you can” should be amended to “you said, we did, you should”.

4.    The Committee were informed that when talking to staff any small issues raised were dealt with straight away or as soon as possible afterwards. This had  increased confidence among the workforce and encouraged staff to log issues with the assurance that these would be addressed.  A frequent issue that was raised during the first phase of the project was that there were too many people trying to locate desk space now that some County offices had been closed.  It had been identified that a solution to this issue was managers encouraging staff to work more flexibly; for example staff with a laptop who were not required to be in the office every day.  The Committee were informed that a step to support this solution was the roll out of more laptops to staff; this had already been implemented with around 100 laptops per month being provided to staff.  Over 7,000 in all.

5.    The Committee recognised an aspect of the project was to strengthen the role of line managers so that more issues could be resolved locally.  Information on Snet was available for staff on how to escalate issues but work was underway with IMT to engage remote staff and staff with no access to the intranet.  New processes in place meant IMT could educate and encourage staff to use the helpdesk to resolve IT issues faster.  It was added that staff across the workforce expressed they were grateful for IMT and HR visiting all Surrey buildings for staff opinions and issues.

6.    Repeating the Better Place to Work Project and the possible frequency of this was discussed, particularly to support staff in remote buildings.  Comments from the review included that staff in remote buildings sometimes felt cut off and repeating the project annually or every 2 years would be considered, giving thought to the level of resource this work required.  The Committee commended IMT for the achievement of IT upgrades in a short space of time and commended the project for reaching every office within the Council and meeting with approximately10,000 members of staff.  The Senior Business Support Manager and Benefits and Charging Consultancy Team Manager were mentioned as to have carried out the majority of this work.

Actions/Further Information to be Provided:

None

Mark Brett-Warburton and Bob Gardner left the meeting at 12.05pm

Recommendations:

·         That officers give consideration to continuing the Better Place to Work Project and report the future programme back to Committee

·         That the outcomes of the Project be communicated to all Surrey County Council staff, including those in remote buildings and without access to the Snet.

Select Committee Next Steps

The Committee to receive a further update in January