Making Surrey a better place Surrey County Council ... · Making Surrey a better place Surrey...

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www.surreycc.gov.uk

Making Surrey a better place

Surrey County Council

Strategic Workforce Plan 2013-2018

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Introduction

In a recent survey 93% of our residents told us that they believe it is important that Surrey County Council creates the best workforce for Surrey and we agree with them. We do not know exactly what our workforce will look like in 2018. However, through the process we have taken to develop this strategic workforce plan we do know about the attributes and capabilities we want our future workforce to have to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead Pages three to seven tell the story of a series of workshops and discussions with over 150 members of staff. They explored how we need to develop our workforce over the next five years to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead within an environment where we have increased demand for our services and greater financial constraints. The themes that came out of these conversations are summarised on pages eight to thirteen and the final page outlines what happens next as part of a continual process of review and exploration to guide how we will develop our workforce.

What is workforce planning?

Workforce planning is a process to identify how you get the right people, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time to meet the future needs of our residents. It is important for us to do this to address the variety of factors influencing demand for council services. These influences include the strategic priorities for the council, changes in the demography of Surrey residents and amendments to legislation that require us to provide new or different

services, or, to provide our current services in a different way. By understanding the potential impact of these changes on our residents and our services, we can plan how to prepare and equip our workforce for the future.

How does the workforce strategy link to

our other strategies?

The Corporate strategy outlines the vision for the council and the priorities we will focus on to achieve our vision. These priorities are developed in Directorate and Service based strategies to set the focus for each area

within the council. These strategies help us understand what the opportunities and challenges ahead are going to be. Our ‘One Council One Team People Strategy’ outlines the areas we want to focus on to provide the best environment and support for our staff to thrive and develop. It outlines a set of promises we make to our staff to enable them to be the best employee they can be and deliver the best service they can to our customers and residents. The Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) identifies the projected budget and expenditure over the next five years which includes the staffing budget. The workforce plan provides an organisation wide framework to help each service make the best decisions about how they manage their resources. It presents the values, skills and behaviours we want to develop to meet the challenges ahead. These will vary for each service and will be used in collaboration with the MTFP to help them

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decide how best to structure, organise and develop their staff. Our workforce planning process

Workshop 1

Seven directorate based workshops were held with 52 colleagues. Each workshop began by building a timeline to capture the events that will impact the directorate over the next five years. Although the events differed at each workshop, there were many common challenges and opportunities identified.

The challenges

Some of the future challenges for the council are known however there will also be challenges that are unknown. Some factors can be anticipated based on an understanding of the environment in which we operate. However, our workforce plans must be flexible to respond to the impact of, as yet, unknown challenges.

Large scale budget reductions

Surrey receives a much lower level of funding from central government than other parts of the country. We

have achieved significant savings already through the Medium Term Financial Plan and a programme of Public Value reviews. However, in 2014/2015 we need to deliver an additional £76m savings. This is an ongoing organisation wide challenge to deliver cost effective services with reduced resources.

Social change and reform

There are changes in health and social care provision that give local authorities greater

responsibilities. There are also new initiatives which will impact our social care services such as the new Health and

Wellbeing Boards; Clinical Commissioning Groups and the Dilnot commission recommendations adopted by the government. We also have a growing need to develop social capital locally to help us meet the growing needs of vulnerable groups.

Labour market pressures

We continue to face the employment challenge of being close to London. This means we have more

competition when it comes to recruitment and retention of our staff. The high cost of living in Surrey has also been found to have a negative impact on our ability to recruit new staff. We experience challenges recruiting and retaining certain skill sets, especially in areas where the recruitment market is picking up such as children’s social workers and procurement professionals.

Demographic changes

The population of Surrey is ageing; this means there are a growing number of older people

within our community who are likely to need our services. There are also more babies being born which has led to a growing demand for school places.

The opportunities

Partnerships

We are working with colleagues and partners in Surrey Districts, Boroughs and South East

Councils to share our expertise and resources. The opportunities for this are growing as we look for ways of sustaining our own services and creating efficiencies by working with others. This includes

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identifying and capitalising on new sources of funding.

Different ways of delivering services

Traditionally the council has employed staff to deliver a service. There are opportunities

for us to partner with others to deliver services and for different ways of delivering services. This will help strengthen our resilience and enable us to share learning, efficiencies and productivity that we can reinvest in our services.

Developments in technology

We are using technology as a key resource to modernise and improve the way we work and

deliver our services. Mobile access is enabling staff to work more flexibly and we are looking at new ways to use technology to improve how we work. This includes allowing staff to become more mobile and work remotely or from home. Where are we now?

Each group was asked to think about their customers, the services they provide and how these are provided.

Our customers include a wide range of people and organisations including

residents, service users, families, children, young people, parents, colleagues, members, schools, the voluntary sector, health, the police and other districts and boroughs.

We deliver a wide range of statutory, regulatory and optional services for our customers.

These include business services, advice, analysis, policy development, social care, and waste management.

These services are provided in many different ways; online, through social media, by phone, face to face and through public meetings.

Our current workforce

Each group also explored the strengths and development areas for the current workforce.

Adult Social care

This group identified their directorate as committed and passionate about their roles with a large proportion of staff employed in vocational roles. Staff are strong in emotional intelligence and are operating in an environment with complex systems and procedures. There are some exceptional managers and areas of excellent practice.

Business Services

Business Services delegates described their workforce as having ‘a good attitude, being adaptable and keen to learn’. Some services identified themselves as highly motivated and one was described as innovative and continually improving. Areas to improve include internal and external relationship building.

Chief Executive’s Office

This group described the directorate workforce as flexible and reactive. They felt strong at customer service, but in a reactive rather than proactive sense. There are lots of varied skills and flexibility within teams and they are quick to respond to crises. There is a fair amount of time-limited projects and campaign work and staff are good at engaging, stakeholder management and delivering on time. Working in a political context was also cited as something the directorate does well.

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Children, Schools & Families

This group consider their workforce to be committed and motivated. They have strong people skills, are able to build strong relationships and resolve disputes. They believe the workforce to be strong in taking appropriate risks and good at working flexibly. They noted concerns around consistency of some skills sets and the need for clearer career pathways and personal development plans. There is evidence of creativity and innovation and the group feel that the directorate copes well with change. They feel there is a high standard of leadership and management development and that performance is well managed.

Customers & Communities

Customers & Communities delegates described their workforce as committed and passionate with strong customer care skills. They believe they are close to residents and able to find ways of meeting service needs with less. The group consider themselves to provide a high quality, professional and consistent service. The workforce is also increasingly flexible and open to innovation.

Environment & Infrastructure

Environment & Infrastructure delegates described their workforce as flexible in attitude and ways of working with the ability to bring about behavioural change. There are a lot of professional roles with specialist, technical and local area knowledge. They adopt a project management approach and work well with stakeholders. They consider themselves customer focused and their work often involves members, so political management is a key skill within the workforce. Financial management, bidding for funding and business case development are all things they do well. There are also some hard to recruit professionals, such as

engineers and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) staff.

Our workforce profile

Different elements of the workforce profile were identified throughout the workshops, some being of more relevance and concern in particular directorates than others. These are summarised below in respect of our total workforce.

The composition of our workforce

The overall size of our workforce has remained around seven thousand in the last 3-4 years, reaching the current level of 7,408 (as at Feb 2013) compared to 7,048 in October 2011. This number represents the full time equivalent (f.t.e.) size of our workforce, excluding schools staff. This increase in f.t.e. is a reflection of an increase in the number of staff who work part time which increased by over 400 people between April 2010 and April 2013.

Full and part time working

Almost 50% of our employees work part time. The majority of part time workers are women (61.7% women compared to 27.5% men), who currently make up over 72% of the workforce. Some of our services operate 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year such as our social care services. In some services, we employ staff on contracts as small as a few hours per week, for example in Adult Education. We also have a number of staff who have more than one contract of employment with us, each for a small number of hours. This all contributes to the complexity of our workforce profile.

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Complementary Workforce

We have been working hard to build our own banks of flexible staff and recruit to hard to fill vacancies to reduce our use of agency workers. These actions have been supported by procurement activities to reduce our agency spend from a high of £20m per year in mid 2009, to the current low of approximately £12.5m per year at the end of 2012/13.

Starters and leavers

For the last 3 years, around 1,300 people have left the council each year. Of our new starters, nearly 60% have been external candidates. This includes transfers into and out of the council from government bodies such as the Learning Skills Council and private sector service providers such as Mouchel. 40% of our appointments are internal candidates who are developing their career within the council. We recognise the value of investing in our staff and want to increase this number to realise the value of developing our workforce.

What does this mean for our workforce?

While the size of our workforce in terms of f.t.e. remains relatively stable, the composition of our workforce is changing at a steady pace and we are using a more diverse range of employment practices to create an increasingly agile workforce.

Impacts

As the impact of each event was discussed, delegates considered and captured the skills, experience and behaviours needed within their workforce to respond to each event effectively. This produced a series of timelines for each directorate.

Each timeline was analysed to identify the development themes across the organisation.

Flexibility Transferable skills Commercial acumen Planning Internal partnerships Innovation Doing things differently

These themes were shared with the workshop delegates, members of staff who have supported business planning activities and senior officers. The consistent response was that these themes identify the areas of development for our workforce that will enable us to respond to the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Workshop 2

Workshop delegates told us that they wanted opportunities to work more closely with their colleagues across directorates. They felt this would improve their understanding of different areas within the council and build internal partnerships. So, the second workshops were arranged for a mix of delegates from different directorates. Five workshops were run for 35 members of staff. Delegates were invited to reflect on the

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organisation wide themes and what we can do to achieve them. Groups shared ideas and identified;

Where is this already happening? What small steps can we take to get

us closer to this? What longer term actions can we take

to achieve this? The outputs from this exercise were analysed and examples of existing good practice as well as tangible actions were drawn out to form part of the workforce plan.

How do we compare to our community?

The groups explored three key areas where the profile of our workforce does not closely reflect the profile of the community we support. Staff from black and minority ethnic

(BME) backgrounds

BME representation is relatively strong overall and closely reflects the residents profile in many services (8% compared to 9.6%). However, at senior grades there is a decrease of 5.35 %. Therefore there is more we can do to close the gap. Some of our towns have a much higher representation of BME groups in the local population. For example Woking has a 25% BME population including Gypsy, Roma and Traveller and East European. This means we need to ensure our local workforce more closely reflects the diversity of specific areas.

Disabled staff

The proportion of staff who have disclosed a disability is less than that reflected by the profile of Surrey residents (3.2% compared to 8.6%). This is a priority are for us to

address as a ‘two tick’ scheme employer which includes a guaranteed interview to a disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria for a role.

Age

Our age profile does not reflect the profile of Surrey. People aged 16 – 24 years of age are 10.2% of our population. However they make up only 5.2% of our workforce. This is in line with other local authorities. We have done lots of work to increase this number through Apprenticeship and trainee programmes. We are looking to build on this to retain these staff when their apprenticeship is completed. We also employ a greater proportion of people between the ages of 35 and 54 than there are in the population of Surrey (54.7% compared to 29.6%). We have a ‘flexible retirement’ policy which allows staff to retire gradually. Our ageing workforce gives us a challenge in that we may need to recruit to many roles over a short timescale, as large proportions of our workforce might choose to retire at the same time. The themes

We have used all this information to review and refine the strategic workforce development themes which are explored in more detail in the following pages. Many actions are now underway to help us achieve the themes outlined in the following pages. Some of the key pieces of work are summarised on page 13 and for more information on the targets or measures for a specific activity, you can contact the team who are leading that area of work.

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Why is this important?

We need to get the most from our limited resources and find alternative ways to provide the best level and breadth of service to our residents we can with the resources we have.

What are we already doing?

We are developing our staff and managers to use coaching skills to encourage creative and more independent ways of working.

We are modernising our pay and reward systems to ensure they underpin our values based culture and support the performance of our staff.

We are developing our use of the intranet and other technologies to engage staff to share ideas, problem solve and make decisions to improve what we do and how we work.

What else can we do?

We can:

1. Encourage teams to provide more opportunities for informal networking to share learning, knowledge, ideas and best practice.

2. Develop the engagement skills of our staff so they can better involve members, partners and residents in their work.

3. Use technology to enable shared learning opportunities and informal problem solving and to share our success stories.

4. Encourage cross service project teams and working groups to foster new links within and beyond the council. We will aim to avoid duplication and pool resources where possible.

5. Provide policies and practices for our staff that reflect the requirement for new ways of working and service delivery.

6. Identify new and innovative ways to engage and work with residents to gain their understanding and input into how resources and services are allocated.

We believe these actions will meet...

These challenges

Budget reductions

Demographic changes

These opportunities

Partnerships


Technology

Case Study: Children, Schools & Families - Families Services

To transform the quality and volume of multi-agency working with vulnerable families and children the Families service is introducing a single family assessment and plan.

This will develop effective family support practices and a sustainable model of partnership working for all families.

These services are being launched in six boroughs and districts from March 2013 and will be extended countywide by October 2013.

Outcomes

We will focus on delivering high quality and valued public services to our residents.

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Case Study: Asset Planning

Environment & Infrastructure (E&I) have put in place a five year programme of capital road repairs rather than having an annual programme. This will address a backlog of works with limited funds and support the improvement of Surrey’s highways.

This longer term programming will enable E&I to make efficiencies such as buying materials in bulk and combining schemes on different highway assets.

It will also help make it clear to members of the public when schemes will take place in their area.


Public service is the key responsibility of all county councils and the way we plan and manage our resources is focused on understanding and meeting the needs of our community and residents. The better we become at predicting the future demand for our services the better we can understand how to use our workforce which is our largest resource. This will ensure we have the correct systems in place to meet our statutory duties and the expectations our residents have of us.


We are implementing a managers’ dashboard to provide real time information which can be used to manage staffing resources locally.

We have upgraded a significant amount of our IT resources to optimise our use of technology in how we deliver our services.


We can:

1. Create a straightforward framework for services to undertake workforce planning and forecast demand at a local level.

2. Improve awareness of workforce and population profile data to help local planning and support staff and managers to better understand data.

3. Encourage managers to keep up to date with initiatives in other organisations to foster new ideas and learning.

4. Improve managers’ skill and practice in forecasting demand and how this will impact their resources.

5. Improve our knowledge management by creating a library of resources of previous projects and initiatives.

6. Consider alternative ways of arranging ourselves to meet changing service needs more effectively.


These challenges

Budget reductions


Demographic changes

These opportunities

Partnerships


Technology

We will improve our ability to understand future demand for our services so we can allocate workforce

resources in an intelligent and responsible way.

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Resources

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Case study: Human Resources

We are reviewing the entry level routes into council employment. We hope to complement the success of our apprenticeship scheme and increase further the number of young people within the council . This will support a reduction in the number of young people not in education, employment or training.

Why is this important to us? We are passionate and committed to delivering high quality services and want to set high standards in what we do and how we do it. This includes setting high standards in our work with partners as we believe this will help us to be the best council we can be. A more reflective workforce profile will help us build a deeper understanding of residents’ needs and provide fairer and more accessible services. This understanding will ensure we can respond quickly and effectively to the changing demands for our services.


We practise the two ticks scheme where all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for a role are guaranteed an interview.

As part of our Fairness and Respect Strategy 2012-17 we are committed to developing a workforce that reflects the profile of the population we support and we are building actions plans to help us achieve this.


We can:

1. Identify barriers to joining our workforce and look for ways of removing them to help attract underrepresented groups of people to work for us.

2. Help our staff to identify their career potential and understand their strengths and areas of expertise in order to help resource projects.

3. Simplify the process for internal staff to apply for other roles within the council.

4. Create a succession planning framework for services to understand how best to develop their staff to meet future service need and aspire to senior roles.

5. Support services to ‘grow our own’ skills and expertise in areas where there is a known shortfall in the labour market.

6. Link all posts to relevant practice standards and support staff in developing learning and development plans to ensure they meet and where possible exceed minimum practice standards.


These challenges

Budget reductions

Social change and

reform

Labour market

pressures

Demographic changes

These opportunities

Partnerships


Technology

We will support our staff and partners to be high performing and agile and want to create a workforce

which reflects the population of Surrey.

Agility

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Case study: E&I - Finance, Change & Performance

E&I has created a library of resources for Waste data and information to provide a single point for Environment Data and Information,.

They are planning to expand this to all areas within their directorate to provide a comprehensive library of resources for staff to access to support their work.


We want to foster a culture of creativity, trust, and independence investing in new ideas to improve what we do and how we do it at all levels. We believe that building our ability to innovate will enable us to continue improving outcomes and value for money for Surrey’s residents.


We are using social media and new technologies to communicate with our residents and customers as well as sharing ideas.

We held our first innovation ‘Year to remember’ market place for services to share their innovation success stories and generate new ideas.

We have created a framework called ‘Surrey Shift’ to bring together the best talent and ideas from across the county. This will support Surrey’s public services to meet the challenges of the future.


We can:

1. Create a simple system for new ideas to be captured and tested so we can encourage our workforce to be creative and innovative.

2. Celebrate our successes and recognise great ideas, supporting innovative ideas from staff at all levels.

3. Provide regular opportunities for innovative work to be shared across the council at all stages of development, with successes shared and celebrated and lessons learnt.

4. Support Managers to promote a culture of trust and creative thinking with their teams where staff are empowered through delegated decision making.

5. Create a readily accessible funding scheme for innovative work with quick decision making.

6. Examine the council’s approach to risk with a view to becoming more risk aware. We will commit to learning from our mistakes.


These challenges

Budget reductions


These opportunities

Partnerships

Different ways of delivering

services

Technology

We will take responsibility for finding better ways of working and delivering services in a way that is right for

our residents.

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Innovation

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Why is this important? We use public money to fund our services and we are accountable for every penny we spend. This is very important to us and we want to improve our ability to respond to the changing needs of our residents and communities. We also want to find simple, cost effective ways of doing things to make us more efficient in how we work and use our resources. This will ensure we are in the strongest position we can be to meet the challenges ahead.


We have held a series of Rapid Improvement Events (RIE) to look for better ways of delivering our work and processes.

We have built relationships through the South East 7 partnership and are working with a number of Boroughs & Districts to find more effective ways of delivering our services.


We can:

1. Develop the ability of our managers to apply commercial principles to the management of their teams and services.

2. Provide more support and training in contract management to ensure we achieve best value for our residents.

3. Invite our workforce to review their business processes and identify simple ways of making them more efficient.

4. Use partnership working to pool resources and generate income to reinvest in council services and capitalise on economies of scale.

5. Work with managers to explore different delivery models, attitudes to

6. risk and employment options when reviewing their services and structures.

7. Use competition and bidding processes to drive efficiencies and innovation in council practices and services.


These challenges

Budget reductions


Demographic changes

These opportunities

Partnerships


We will develop our business awareness and knowledge so we make the best use of our resources

and funding.

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Commercial

Case study: Shared Services

We have entered into an innovative partnership with East Sussex County Council to carry out transactional support activities & share some IT services.

This partnership will build upon the strength of our Shared Services enabling both organisations to make further efficiencies through economies of scale and build resilience in their service delivery.

The joint project team completed all the necessary actions and this new partnership started in April 2013.

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Surrey County Council, Workforce Plan 2013-18

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Links to our values

Our values; listen, responsibility, trust and respect, underpin each of these themes and provide the essential building blocks for us to develop our workforce.

What happens next?

Aligning the People Strategy and the

Workforce Strategy

Over the next 12 months we will monitor the delivery of the action plan to review the strategic themes that came from our workforce and align them with our existing People Strategy. This will enable us to review each theme and associated activities to ensure every member of our workforce is supported and developed in the optimum way to deliver the objectives of the organisation.

Introducing service level workforce planning There are different challenges and opportunities for each service which in turn will guide the structure and development needs of that service. The framework used for this plan will be turned into a toolkit for services to design their own workforce plan. The service workforce plans will support the ongoing review of the organisation wide strategy and will inform our business planning activities. More information

To find out more about our approach to workforce planning, or this strategy, please contact a member of the workforce planning team. [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Resources

We will improve our ability to understand future demand for our services so we can allocate resources in an intelligent and responsible way.

Agility

We will support our staff and partners to be high performing and agile and want to

create a workforce which reflects the population of Surrey.

Innovation

We will take responsibility for finding better ways of working and delivering services in a way that is right for our residents.

Commercial

We will develop our business awareness and knowledge so we make the best use

of our resources and funding.

Outcomes

We will focus on delivering high quality and valued public services to our

residents.

mailto:[email protected]



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