Invitees:

Councillor Hywel Williams - Deputy Leader

Mark Shephard - Chief Executive

Kelly Watson - Chief Officer Legal and Regulatory Services, HR & Corporate Policy

Debra Beeke - Group Manager - Human Resources and Organisational Development

Angela Farrow – HR Business Development Manager

Ann Stewart – Health and Wellbeing Officer

The Chief Officer Legal and Regulatory Services, HR and Corporate Policy introduced the report and asked the new Health and Wellbeing Officer to introduce herself and some of the initiatives she had introduced.

The Health and Wellbeing Officer introduced herself to the Committee advising she had joined the Authority following recommendations that health and wellbeing needed to be more cohesive across the Authority, as there had been lots of good practice, but having somebody to head it up and promote the resources that they had within the Council to support the staff. She gave an overview of her background in occupational health and experience to date. She had started to familiarise herself with how the Authority worked and had made a few changes to some of the procedures to support managers with sickness absence. She had been involved with Human Resources surgeries on managing absence and had looked at introducing more guidance for the stress risk assessment. She advised she was currently engaged with Halo Leisure in looking at the Halo at Home app as a pilot study for the newly formed Health and Wellbeing Group. She explained they were also trying to look at how they could develop the intranet so that they could collate all the health and wellbeing resources in one place and provided wellbeing information to promote wellbeing when recruiting, as she thought pay was not always the issue when people were looking for a job, it was actually the services that support you in the workplace. She had also engaged with the Employee Assistance Programme, provided by Care First where they had a lot of quantitative data but not a lot of qualitative data which more information was needed. Lastly, she advised she was going to engage with employees who are non-office based to provide wellbeing support and information/advice.  She concluded that they had an action plan in place which they were addressing some of which some would be quick wins and others would take longer to provide.

A Member referred to sickness absence monitoring over the year, that non-work-related absence due to stress had been higher in the Social Services and Wellbeing Directorate and in Schools and queried why non-work-related absence would not be similar across all Directorates. He also referred to a newly published report on a Future Fit for Wales and a road map to a shorter working week and advised that they were looking for organisations for a pilot and he thought maybe that was something the Council may start to consider looking at for the future.

The Group Manager, Human Resources and Organisational Development advised the reports on stress related absences were provided following a previous report to the Committee looking at absence across the Council and as a direct recommendation from this Committee, they had started recording the information differently and took it back to the beginning of the financial year. She was confident that the information was being input correctly and advised they had mechanisms to check that was the case, but she would need to comment further outside the Committee when she had the graphs in front of her. Regarding the working week, it would mean people not losing pay which would be a subject for some discussion at the next Public Service Board meeting, but the report had only been recently released, so no doubt there would be more information to follow.

The Cabinet Member for Social Services and Early Help expressed a four-day working week would give them the opportunity to further develop specific workforce, but that the conversation that needed to be had was how they would do it without reducing anyone’s pay.

A Member referred to the staff survey and only 14% saying they would want to be part of the Staff Network Group and asked how they were going to address the disengagement. He also asked for the number of people who took part in the learning and development programme and the workshops in the report.

The Group Manager, Human Resources and Organisational Development advised that they continued to do all they could to ensure that staff feel they are able to engage with the Authority and respond in a range of ways through local management arrangements, staff surveys and trade union colleagues. The staff survey feedback report, she explained was being considered by a Heads of Service Group and an Action Plan had been developed. The 14% was quite a number given the number of responses, but she advised it was important that they progressed with it.  In terms of the learning and development attendance numbers, they could provide information but did not have it to hand.

A Member asked for clarification on the care first usage, as the information in the first table captured usage between April 2021 and December 2021 and suggested that it was higher in quarter one than in quarter two and three. The second table however, suggested that the new clients had increased in quarter three, so she wondered why the usage seemed lower but the new clients by directorate seemed higher in quarter three.

The Group Manger, Human Resources and Organisational Development advised that they were two different views, the first table talked about the number of sessions or the nature of the contact, which could be for the same person, whilst the second table was about how many new people had accessed this service during the reporting period.

The Chairperson advised that there were no further questions from Members of the Committee for the Invitees for this report, thanked the Invitees for their attendance and advised that they may leave the meeting.

RESOLVED:     That having regard to consideration of the content of the 

                          report and the responses to the questions asked, the

                          Committee made the following recommendations:

1.    The Committee welcomed the positive developments following the appointment of the new Health and Wellbeing Officer from August 2021 and the new approach of toolbox talks, and engagement with staff in different parts of the front line of the Council.

2.    With regard to the four day working week report from the Future Generations Commissioner, the Committee recommended that the Authority considers being part of a future pilot project.

3.    The Committee requested that the numbers of people who took part in each Workshop and Course be circulated, in preference to percentages included in the report.