Issue - meetings

To communicate the Employment Committee’s recommendation to Cabinet that the People Strategy 2022 – 2025 be approved.

Note: Councillors Kelham Cooke and Rosemary Trollope-Bellew, and the Chief Executive and the Director of Growth and Culture rejoined the meeting. Councillor Kelham Cooke resumed the chairing of the meeting.

Purpose of report

To communicate the Employment Committee’s recommendation to Cabinet that the People Strategy 2022 – 2025 be approved.

Decision

That Cabinet:

1. Approves the People Strategy 2022 – 2025.

Alternative options considered and rejected

One option considered was not having an updated People Strategy. If this option were taken there would be no clear message to staff of how the Council intended to deliver the objectives of the Corporate Plan 2020 – 2023 to ensure that SKDC was a high performing Council that attracted and retained the best staff to deliver high-quality services.

Reason for decision

The People Strategy was designed to inspire and achieve widespread, organisation-wide alignment on the Council’s goals and priorities through its employees. The six different themes of the Strategy were:

• Recruitment – focussing on attracting the right people;
• Development – training and developing skills to create high performing employees;
• Engagement – interacting with the workforce, strengthening employee engagement and inspiring staff members;
• Diversity – recognising the benefits and strengths that having a diverse workforce brought;
• Reward and Recognition – setting out how to attract and motivate staff; and;
• Wellbeing – focussing on a safe and healthy working environment for employees.

The People Strategy formed part of the thread from the Corporate Plan through to service and team plans and individual objectives and incorporated the Council’s values and behaviours. It was designed to evolve with the needs of the Council and its employees.

Recent years had been challenging for staff, many of whom had had to work harder to adapt and keep services running throughout a global pandemic; this had an impact on staff wellbeing.

The People Strategy could help staff understand the value of their efforts and how to access the support they needed to maximise their potential. Another forum through which staff could raise concerns and ask questions was the People Panel, an internal meeting including staff from different departments across the Council.

It was key to ensure there was an up to date People Strategy which would help the Council deliver against its priorities and deliver the vision of the Corporate Plan. The People Strategy had been recommended to Cabinet by the Employment Committee.