Agenda item

Resolved: to note the report and to receive additional information, as requested.

Andreas Ghosh (Head of Human Resources) introduced the report and presentation. The following key points were noted:

• The Council aspired to have a workforce that represented Lewisham’s community.
• There were some areas where the Council was exceeding its targets for workforce representation and others where it was not doing as well.
• Tracking and monitoring of staff changes through the employee profile was of increased importance because of the redundancies and staff losses caused as a result of cuts to the Council’s budget.
• The Council’s workforce was broadly representative of the economically active population; however, as a result of reorganisations there had been a reduction in Black staff.
• There were a high number of job applications by people from the BME community, which demonstrated that the Council was perceived as a fair employer.
• The employment and retention of young people into the Council’s workforce was recognised as an area for improvement.
• The Council aimed to ensure that there was a representative workforce, but officers were mindful of the potential for target setting to be discriminatory.
• Trends in the Council’s employment data demonstrated that the Council’s non-schools work force had declined substantially in the past 15 years. This was for a number of reasons, including: the move to provide some services though partner organisations; increases in efficiency and the loss of some professions. This decrease was offset partly by the increase in schools staff, however, it was noted that the increase in schools was largely in non-teaching staff.
• A high number of employees lived in the borough; this demonstrated a significant commitment by residents in the borough to the Council and contributed to employees understanding of, and commitment to, local issues.
• The recent upturn in the economy would have an impact on the Council’s ability to attract and retain employees working in care because the Council continued to work with restrained resources, whilst this was not the case in the private sector.
• The majority of agency workers retained by the Council were in the areas of street cleansing and social care.
• Women were overrepresented in caring professions, but the Council also had one of the highest proportions of women in senior management positions in London.
• There were small numbers of self-declared disabled employees at the Council. It had been a struggle to ensure that there was an on-going disabled employee’s forum.
• The Council’s workforce was a characteristically older, not ageing, workforce. The older age profile of the Council was a result of the general employment of older people.
• Older people were employed at the Council more often for a number of reasons, including: the attractiveness of the Council as an employer for people returning to work (particularly women with caring responsibilities); that the Council was not a ‘trendy’ employer; the loss of the culture of apprentices, which the Council’s apprenticeships programme was attempting to reverse.
• High redundancy costs also made it more likely for the Council to hold on to its older employees.
• Information from exit surveys indicated that there had been a fall in the number of people who were satisfied on leaving the jobs at Lewisham. This was thought to be the result of the Council’s programme of reorganisations and redundancies.

In response to questions from the Committee, the following key points were noted:

• There was no official retirement age. People were entitled to take their pensions from the age of 60, with some exceptions.
• Information would be provided about the numbers of people working past the voluntary retirement age.
• The drop in motivation recorded by exit surveys could partly be explained by the programme of staff reorganisations and redundancies. Information from the last staff survey would be shared with the Committee.
• The Council would not discriminate against older people. The ambition was to ensure that the workforce represented the local population.
• Information was kept about disciplines and grievances. Numbers were low – so sharing any details about grievances would be difficult – because of the requirement to ensure staff anonymity.
• Year before last there was an increase in grievances and disciplinarys of staff at the lower grades. However, this was not disproportionate when viewed more widely.
• Information disaggregating the answers to the unknown/prefer not to say category of the equalities monitoring would be provided to the committee.
• Officers would be working with the various staff forums in order to determine how to encourage responses to equalities monitoring. As part of this work, it would be necessary to ensure that there were clear messages about what was being done with the data being collected.
• The Council had been successful in its attempts to reduce the amount of overtime being paid. A substantial proportion of time allocated as ‘overtime’ payments were in reality for weekend working.
• The number of applications for jobs available was typically 10:1, which was positive for the Council and appeared to show that the Council was an attractive employer.
• Information about the social work recruitment programme would be shared with the Committee. There were still some shortages of social workers, particularly in the area of child protection.
•  Ofsted inspections in neighbouring boroughs often had a detrimental impact on the Council’s ability to attract social workers, because authorities reacted to shortages by increasing rates of pay.
• There were some areas of under representation for staff from minority ethnic groups. This tended to be where there were low numbers of people from particular minority groups living in the borough- or where there had been a recent change in the local population.
• The internship/graduate programme was a small scale programme designed to give an opportunity to a few local people each year. It was established in order to ensure that there were opportunities at the Council alongside the National Graduate Development Programme.
• There were currently 13 on-going employment tribunals. The cost of bringing a tribunal had increased, which had reduced the numbers of staff coming forward. The number of tribunals taking place was also low in comparison to other organisations.
• Information collected in exit surveys and exit interviews was anonymous.

The Committee also discussed and noted the following key points:

• The perception of unfairness which could be created if the Council appeared to discriminate against older people in favour of young people by creating entry level jobs.
• A query was raised about whether there was sufficient targeting of Council employment programmes- to ensure support focused on people most in need.

Resolved: to note the report.