 arguing with staff in committee to my name as Counselor William Jackson would and I'm the chair of the committee my usual vice chair of this committee Councillor Sally and heart cannot be with us today so i'd like to propose to the committee that we point councillor annabraðun as the vice chair of this meeting do I have a seconder for this proposal? Thank you. Ieithaf, Mark Howell. Can I take that by affirmation? Perfect, thank you. Thank you, Members, that's agreed. Councillor Badden, can you make your way up to the front table and assume the role of Vice-Chair? Thank you very much. Great, so we just have some housekeeping points to go through. Just a quick note to say that everything on your desk, including your laptop screen, is likely to be broadcast at some point. Can the camera also follow the microphone being switched on? So, councillors and officers are advised to wait a couple of seconds before speaking just to allow for the camera to catch up. And can those participating in the meeting via the live stream indicate that you wish to speak with the chat column? Please use the chat column. Please do not use the chat column for any other purpose. Please make sure that your device is fully charged and that you switch your microphone off unless you're invited to do otherwise. Please ensure that you've switched off or silenced any other devices so you do not have to interrupt any proceedings. Please use your headset when speaking and hold the microphone close to your mouth. When you're invited to address the meeting, please make sure that the microphone is switched on. When you're finished addressing the meeting, please turn off your microphone immediately. Please seek slowly, clearly, and please do not talk or interrupt anybody. Commissary members present in the Chamber, I will now invite each of you to introduce yourselves. Member, after I call your name, please turn on your camera and microphone. Wait a couple of seconds and say your name so that your presence can be noted. As I said earlier, my name is councillor William Jackson Wood and I'm the member for the Shelford Ward. My vice-chair is councillor Anna Bradman. I'm councillor Anna Bradman. I'm a member for Milton and Water Beach. Thank you. Thank you. councillor Peter Fane. Good morning Peter Fane. I'm the other member for Shelford Ward. Thank you. councillor Mark Howell. Good morning Chairman. My name is Mark Howell and I am one of the councillors for the Caxon and Papua Ward. Thank you. councillor Richard Stobart. Good morning Chair, good morning colleagues. I'm Richard Stobart. I'm one of the councillors for Gertin Ward. It includes the villages of Dry Drates and Maddingley. Thank you and councillor John Williams. Good morning. I'm John Williams. I'm the councillor, one of the councillors, to defend it in the football world. I'm also the lead cabinet member for resources. Perfect. Thank you. I can confirm the meeting as court. First point on our agenda today is Apologies. Can I ask our Democratic Services Officer Lawrence Demary Hoeman if there are any apologies for absence today? Thank you very much Chair, just the one apologies today from councillor Sally-Anne Hart and councillor Peter Fane has kindly stepped in to substitute. That's great. Thank you very much. Point number two is Declarations of Interest. Do you any members have any interests to declare in relation to any item of business on this agenda? If any interest is subsequently apparent in this meeting, could you please raise it at that point? Is there any declaration of interest at this point? No, perfect. Thank you. To continue to point number three, which is the minutes of the last meeting, are members happy to approve the minutes of the meeting of the committee held on the 8th of September, deferred to the 28th of September as correct record? Chairman, I had an alternative form of the wording for the minutes of the 8th, which I gave to Lawrence Demary Hoeman so that we could look at it to consider itself on the screen. It was just the preamble at the beginning that was a bit confused and so I thought it might be easier to put that explanation if members agree with it. It's the preamble prior to point one on the agenda. Indeed. At this point, I don't know if everybody's had the time to review the initial interest. Mark Howell? Sorry, Councillor Howell, have you gone to any points? Sorry, Chairman. Chairman, did the meeting really finish in 3.20? It says that on page two. Was it that long? No, the point was the meeting on the 8th only continued for about 40 minutes and it was adjourned and then the meeting, which was on the later date, started at 2.20. That's why I suggested this wording because the meeting was adjourned and then resumed. Sure, sorry. So, just to clarify, what we're talking about here is the initial meeting minutes for the meeting that was adjourned. Unfortunately, because of the situation in the room at the time, there was a little bit of a back and forth and I don't think it was particularly clear or Councillor Burnham had actually noted in fact that it's not particularly clear because it has actually proposed different notes from that meeting. Councillor Payne? It seems to me that the alternative proposed by Councillor Adam Braden and Ms Clearer deals with that point and that we should approve that amendment and with that I would recommend that we approve the minutes. Great. Thank you. Okay, on that basis, can we take it by affirmation that we approve those amendments? Great. Thank you. The committee therefore agrees with the improvements of the amendment to the meetings as created by affirmation. So, point number four. We have an update on the progress planning of the four-day week trial. Members, we now come to our four-day trial which updates on the progress planning over the trial of the four-day week. And we are asked to note this report. We have here the chief exec, Liz Watts, which is here to present the report. Thank you very much, Chair, and good morning, Members. So hopefully this report is fairly self-explanatory in the middle of the planning, literally right in the middle of the three-month planning period at the moment. I've summarised under paragraph seven the sort of key activities that have taken place so far and I'm happy to kind of respond to any queries that you've got. Generally, I'd say that the planning period is going really well. It's a real lesson in democratisation of change. This is one of those change projects where we have genuinely involved the whole organisation in taking part in how they want to plan a four-day week. And that's been incredibly powerful because I think people have felt a sense of ownership over the project and that they have an impact on how their lives are going to change as a result of the trial. Of course it's not without its challenges as any major changes, but we're working through kind of those issues very systematically. And my thanks go to all my colleagues, particularly in the project team, who are really being supportive in addressing all of the issues, challenges, opportunities as they come up. Just a brief note on this report, I sent this report also to strategy and resources committee at Cambridge City Council because obviously the planning service is part of the trial and that's a shared service. I will be going to their committee in January with an updated report and I'll email you that report and then I'll report back to you in February and to them in March. So there'll be a series of reports, some of which will come to your committee and some of which you'll get an email. Happy to answer any questions, Chair. Thank you. Councillor Stobart. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So from paragraph seven, which is a nice summary of this quite rich range of activities, I'd just like to ask Chief Executive, for the smaller groups that are working, is there a pattern emerging of how they're tackling the question of how do they change their working patterns and looked over the groups as a whole, are there any, I mean almost quotables of things that people are thinking, innovative steps, changes of practice, evidence of, I think you were saying, there's a real democratisation, so lots of inputs. How is it working out basically? So thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor Stobart. Missa, if you are at any point. Thank you and through you, Chair. I suppose there's a range of things that people are coming up with. We've actually got a really good ideas board now on insights where people can post ideas about improving productivity and that probably is a snapshot of how the organisation is thinking. So there's stuff around IT. Some people use IT brilliantly and some people are learning a lot about how to improve their use of IT. Some people are thinking about how they organise their day and there's lots of quite good evidence out there around time blocking, for example. Important but not urgent work, for example, quite often sits on people's to-do list. I think I've talked to members about that before. People are talking about how they're going to work within their teams to make sure that they are doing the high value work, but they're not doing stuff that they've always done just because they've always done it. So there's a real range of ideas around how people can become more productive. The way that we're going to... Obviously we ran all the red team sessions and a lot of productivity ideas came out of those as well. So what we're doing now is during November looking at solutions to issues, drawing together all of those, but also some kind of best practice around productivity. So, for example, this week we're sending out best practice around agenda planning. So how many meetings are people going to where it's not entirely clear what the purpose of the meeting is, not entirely clear why everyone was there. There's no timed agenda, so quite often, as I'm sure you'll experience, you can spend the first hour talking about one item and then the remaining six items don't get a fair look in. So we're sending out guidance about that. So by December, we will have a sort of principles of working document for the whole organisation to start the trial where we have guidance, which includes stuff around productivity and changes to the ways of working. That's great. Thank you very much. Councillor Bain, do you have a question? Thank you, Chair. I'm very interested here, chief executive, referring to the process of looking at the way we operate more widely and how we make better use of time. I think we as councillors need to reflect very closely on that. As chief executive knows, I have faced some quite tough questioning as she did herself from one of my parish councils, and I'm expecting more of that next week. I was interested in the reference to the chief executive of the head of HR from the city council attending, and again the chief executive mentioned this. I'm wondering, boss, it's not directly relevant to this council, how the city council is responding to this in relation to shared services, particularly planning, of course. And it has to be said that whilst it is a shared planning service, there is a certain tendency amongst staff to feel that they're either Cambridge City or Southcams, depending on where they come from, particularly those who've been here longer. And I'm wondering how city council is adjusting to the strains this will put on then that some of the people servicing city council roles are part of this trial. Thank you, Councillor Fane. There's the only thoughts around that. Thank you, Chair. So we're in really close dialogue with the city council. As you said, the head of HR is in the project team and the unison rep who we share between the city and Southcams is also in the project team. So in that sense, they have full sight of what we're doing, what we're planning and are feeding into how it will impact the city. But as you say, there's a planning service which is part of the trial and then there are the peripheral services who may be impacted by the trial. I think it's too early to talk in much detail about that, Councillor Fane, or draw any conclusions, but it's something that we are very alive to. We have a corporate responsibility to make sure that it's cost-sunting from one organisation to another. We have a responsibility to make sure that we don't shunt our successful productivity on to another organisation, and that turns out to be unhelpful for them. Having the city and the room is really important. I'm always in close dialogue with the Chief Executive from the city. As I said, I'm reporting back to the city's strategy and resource committee. I think it's too early to say... I suppose no issues have been raised of concerns so far in a way until we get into the trial. I think it's quite hard to say what might emerge that we couldn't necessarily have anticipated, but it's something that we're keeping a weather eye on. Thank you very much. Councillor Padman. Thank you, Chair. It's a very positive report. I noticed that the data goes up to the 1st of November, and I wondered if you'd had... I was just spotting that the 3.42 on... I was thinking about... because I've asked previously if people thought that they were having to work really hard to deliver their role before going to a four-day week to be worrying for them. I'm looking at this data, but when I think about delivering my role in a four-day week, I feel... and then 3.42 is what it was at the end of October, and that's between not sure and positive. I'm wondering if it's your perception, and I appreciate the data has to go in before to get the agenda out, but I was just wondering whether you felt that people are beginning to feel more positive than that over how to deliver the work. No sense, Padman. Does she have any thoughts about that? 11, electronic 11, 7, 8. 7, 8, yeah. Thank you, Councillor Padman. Sorry for the sight pause there. I was actually just looking for the live data from this week's... so we called this a pulse survey, which just gives people... it gives us a sense of, in the moment, how people are feeling, and obviously the committee publishing cycle means that you're getting slightly out of date data. So the data from this week so far, and it's only been 28 responses, when I think about the four-day week I feel is 4.32, so that's an improvement. When I think about planning for the four-day week I feel is 3.68, when I think about the support available is 4, and when I think about delivering my role is 3.79. So all of those have increased marginally. There were some sort of sticky issues, I suppose, that people were getting frustrated about because we weren't coming to a conclusion on them. One of those, for example, was can I take any day off? What does that have to be a particular day? Last week we put out some emerging guidance which addressed about 7 or 8 of those sticky issues, and I think that really grounded people in a sense of, okay, now I kind of feel like I've got a bit more sense of direction here, and I think that potential, I mean, I can't say, and therefore the results of the Pulsebe are increasing, but the mood music I get from the organisation is that people were really pleased to see the emerging guidance. I suppose just one thing on that is that, you know, as I mentioned, we're trying to democratise this project, we're trying to make sure that everybody has a say, and so while people quite often want to be told what to do, we are trying to make sure that we gather as many good ideas from people as we can before we land anything, because the best ideas are with come from the people who are doing the work. Is that helped? I'm very glad. Sorry, just coming back on that, if I may. I'm just very glad that you're keeping in mind that you have live data, because I think that's really crucial, because you could see an impact of one thing that might make your data dip, and it's good to patch that up. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. Councillor Hull, if you have a question. Yes, thank you. With regards to paragraphs there and the bullet points there, with regards to the bullet points, you have on that one of them a feedback form from the website of the member of the public and used to ask questions or make comments about the trial. May I ask, are we contacting or proactively contacting those members of the public that use our services on a very regular basis? So I'm thinking more, not so much member of the public, which we might only have a deal in south camps because a bin has been missed once a year or something like that, but more of those members of the public that are involved in the planning teams or other which have regular contact with the council as part of their data and can we be proactive in contacting them please and asking them what their opinion may be? That would be a very interesting secret. They are our customers on a regular basis as opposed to just providing a service. That was more of a suggestion. The other thing was that I believe when I first saw the details of this, one of the purposes with regards to make us more desirable should I say with regards to recruitment, how are we going to define whether or not that has worked over this time period because in essence this is quite a short time period and so I would like to know if any thought and maybe not at this present moment it's not been but how are we going to see if this is working, this particular part is working. Thank you, Shannon. Thank you, Councillor Howell. Okay, yes. Liz, do you have any thoughts or thoughts on that? Always. So thank you. The suggestion about the survey is really valuable and we've already introduced a five-minute survey that is available on our website. Most people are adding it to email signatures and planners in particular do regular surveys anyway. So some of our services are already doing it but you're right, we need to increase the feedback that we get from the public there because it's really, really important. Obviously you'll know that we do the South Cams magazine which goes out to 70,000 households in the district and we've got an item, a news item there in November, December issue and again we're asking for feedback there. So we're trying to get as much feedback as possible. Interestingly on the website and the form that you referred to in my report I think we've had about responses to that. Four were questions which we answered and five were comments. So obviously important but not going to be a rich source of data for us in terms of what service people are experiencing what service level people are experiencing. So you're absolutely right on that one Councillor Howell. In terms of recruitment so we were really clear when we proposed the trial to Cabinet in September that recruitment is something that is almost impossible to measure in three months. People don't join an organisation on the basis of a three month trial. Although anecdotally it appears that maybe they do. So anecdotally we are starting to see some really interesting jobs where we've struggled to recruit in the past and suddenly we've maybe advertised it, I'm thinking one job in particular where we advertised it twice and the third time we advertised it after the announcement of the trial we had a huge number of applications and a lot of qualified people. That is very anecdotal and it's one example we've had other anecdotes like that. So I think what the trial will do is I suppose put a marker down that this is an organisation that is progressive and takes the wellbeing of its people very seriously and is prepared to try new things. But in terms of measuring actually having quantitative data about recruitment we can't do that in the three month trial and the report to Cabinet was clear that if the three month trial is successful and we move to a longer trial say a year long trial that's when we would capture the data on recruitment because that's really I think and I'd be happy to know what members think when you might expect to see some significant impact on recruitment. It's not a question, it's a statement. If we are going to go on to another trial then those who are not only desk or bound people will be incorporated because there's a sense of unfairness otherwise. Thank you. Yes please. So just to confirm we're definitely planning two trials, two three month trials. One for desk based people and one for colleagues at the depot and the depot management team are already kind of working through the modelling around how a trial would work. As I've said in the past a depot trial is really really different because there's only so many ways that you can pick up a bin essentially or sweep the street and so the modelling around that is really different but we are definitely planning to do the depot trial sort of later next year. That's great, thank you very much. Councillor Sable's for the introduction. Thank you chair. So Councillor Howell did steal my thunder a little bit on those points so thank you very much. So this reaction to the request for information from the public I think it was very enlightened and I think the chief executive has nicely summed that up but I wonder about the kind of feedback that councillors are getting from residents through parish councils and so on and Councillor Fane referred to sticky meeting. I've had one or two messages from concerned or maybe even angry residents and we've taken the line I think that we've agreed on the benefits of the scheme but I wonder how we capture this emerging stuff that's coming from other sources and how do we best pull that although in my case Gertin resident said are you offering your south Cambridgeshire staff a 20% pay increase so we went through all of that and actually that particular resident came back somewhat pacified but I wonder if we are getting the message over. Thank you Councillor Sable. Sorry just from my understanding there so what we're saying there is the communication is actually going out to the public. It's two ways isn't it? Are we as councillors getting the message out where we are being asked and any feedback that we're getting is that being hopefully consolidated for the benefit of the south Cambridgeshire management team. Thank you very much. Any thoughts I'm wondering if that's something that you can answer. I mean I would really welcome feedback from you Councillor Fane said I attended Shelford Parish Council where actually the feedback was really mixed but polarised almost between councillors who were fully supportive and councillors who were adamantly against and as with the red teams we started to see a pattern of things coming through from people so it's unlikely that Parish councils are going to have unique feedback from every single one but it would be great to understand what your Parish councils are seeing so that we can start to see the pattern and maybe I could put something in my email to members asking members to afford me that feedback that would be really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. It's great that the Chief Executive is welcoming feedback from the public but I just wanted to ask again two things. One was my understanding that actually in terms of the public our intention was that delivery should be seamless so the public shouldn't actually notice any difference I suspect grumpiness at Parish councils might be an anticipation of what might happen so unless there are any real examples of things where people haven't been able to get through because it hasn't actually happened yet so I'm just a bit concerned about that that we shouldn't you know to accept that we're in the planning phase at the moment and people who are expressing concern about whether it will work or not they need to give us real examples and in fact they can give us those through a belief that complaints form is that right? So if they have a genuine concern they can raise that directly with the council through the complaints form in fact one of the things I asked early on was would it be a good idea to call that a queries form rather than a complaint form because sometimes people don't want to complain they just want to ask how will this work or what happens if I can't get hold of somebody so I wondered if through the chair whether it has had any thoughts about that That's a good point, thank you for your question Thank you, thank you council for that so look I think in terms of I'm always I suppose surprised at how many times you can think you've communicated something to people and then find out that you've epically failed to communicate and so from my perspective it's about having as many channels as possible that go both ways so us communicating through as many different channels as possible and us getting feedback from as many different channels as possible that there are some things where we'll just if somebody just wants to kind of have complain about something without actually having a what is the question at the end of it then they're perfectly entitled to do that but there's not much I can do with that but it's still really useful to get the feedback so I'd certainly encourage people to help us to make sure that we are capturing feedback because that is really important to us just to confirm Councillor Paddenham that on the website we do call it feedback and not complain so people don't feel like they necessarily need to be complaining That's great, thank you very much Councillor Williams you have a question Yes, thank you, I think it's a comment actually and I think this is a difficult thing to get across because we're asking people to change their concept of work and what work is so we're asking people to look at the output not the hours that are worked and it's very difficult for some people to grasp that living in a culture where up until recently you worked a certain number of hours you didn't you weren't judged by the output of those hours as such and what we're doing is saying to our colleagues what we're interested in is the output not interested in to be honest when you do it or how many hours it takes although obviously there is a contract and a certain number of hours but what we're really interested in is you delivering a good quality output and that's a very difficult concept to get across to some people and we must be patient but I do think that must be something that's the whole object of this exercise and that's what we should be trying to explain to people and get across to people that what we're doing here is delivering a high quality output and how we deliver that output is actually so long as it delivers the output it's down to the individual colleague Thank you councillor I completely agree yes it's productivity versus the actual hours like this did you have any thoughts around the comments that we've gone around or any points? I mean only to say I think you've summed up the whole colour project really really well it is exactly about that and that's the conversation that we are trying to focus on with colleagues is how can you change what you're doing to be more productive and in return get an extra day of the week that's the story and everything else is kind of I suppose sort of detail or issues around the edges of that but that's the key story how can you be more productive really change what you're doing how you're doing it and get a reward in return Great, thank you very much councillor, thank you very much Thank you chair Like councillor Williams it's more of a comment I haven't yet looked at the feedback form councillor House says I think it's particularly important we engage with customs the smooth running of the trial for instance will depend on how in part on how some other organisations work out how to engage smoothly and I think whilst we may get comments from individual parish councillors that will mainly be on a sort of political basis where they approve the principle of this effective pay rise as chief executive will recall from our conversations in Great Shelford but I think the key thing is parish clerks I think it is very important that parish clerks understand how they engage during the period and it would be unhelpful if parish clerks would give the indication to their parish councillors that it was not moving working smoothly and I wonder what efforts will be made to bring them on board Thank you councillor, thank you Yes, good point Again this I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that Initially I was at William Parish Council this week I was doing a ward walk and the parish clerk said exactly the same thing This is a tricky issue because the way that we are moving before we even thought about the four day week was to generic inboxes and a customer contact centre so that we had resilient response rates and obviously that's even more important in the four day week I think parish clerks and I completely understand this if you want to have a relationship with a person in the council or a few people in the council and I think that's absolutely right, we all know that work generally happens better when you've got a relationship with the person you're working with so it is something that is a live issue at the moment actually councillor Fein in terms of how do we address that and do we still need to be sharing slightly more detailed information with parish clerks but not to a wider audience so that we maintain the robustness of the generic inbox or the customer contact centre work which is part of our channel shift strategy but it's a really good point and it's something that we are actively in fact I've been actively discussing it this morning following my visit to Willingham That's great, thank you very much I don't think we have any more questions from the room as well so Matt, thank you very much for your and for presenting the report we are invited to note the contents of that report okay, moving on to number 5, item number 5 which is the retention and turnover report for the second quarter of this year again the committee is being asked to be noted sorry, the committee is being asked to note to this report we have Jonathan Corbett, a HR advisor here with us virtually to present the report Jonathan Corbett, HR advisor thank you very much just to give a summary a brief summary of the retention and turnover report this provides an analysis of the sorry Jonathan, just a quick sorry to interrupt you you're extremely quiet, we're just going to try and see if we can change the Jonathan oh really? Jonathan, I don't know if there's any chance that you could either change the mic that you're using or to do something for your end at all because we can't really hear you unfortunately is that any better, can you hear me now? it's marginally better perhaps if you are I do apologise but if you can maybe speak up or something that might help perhaps to be closer to the mic unfortunately I don't have an alternative microphone that I can use no, ok, apologies about that we'll try and pay attention if you can speak up that would be great thank you very much so the retention and return over report is for quarter two of this year, first of July to the 30th September key trends are turnover rate is fairly stable since the previous quarter it reflects a continuation of the stable trend seen over the last few quarters and one of the most notable things that have happened is an increase in the percentage of people accepting new jobs within the private sector compared to the public sector and this would be something to keep a note on in case this trend continues in future months because it may be the start of a trend there's also a suggestion that one of the most cited reasons for leaving at the moment is achieving a better work-life balance so there is a possibility that it might be benefits from exploring new methods for improving retention at the council we've also got, if we're looking at the labour market trends as well, it says that quite a lot of employers, nearly half of all employers have hard to fill vacancies so focusing on recruitment and retention and we've recently recruited a new learning and development officer within HR to help with the goal of reviewing employee training trends and also as the four day week as we mentioned it provides a unique benefit which may help to improve recruitment and retention in the organisation thank you thank you very much Jonathan do we have any questions at all councillor Bregman thank you chair thank you Mr Corbett I had a couple of questions one was a simplistic one about the format and I was just surprised to see on some of these reports something like 9 digits after the decimal point which is superfluous but also slightly confusing to look at this data when there's so much data after the decimal point and in that particular case I'm looking at in the electronic version it's page 21 of 46 but I wondered if and I'm just hoping this is still within the same report just check yes it's the could you explain on page 18 there's a thing called fill rate it's in the appendix a quarter to 22 to 23 turnover charts so I just wanted to understand how how is that calculated that's on page 18 but 14 of the that's written at the bottom of the page but 18 in the electronic version thank you councillor Bregman Jonathan do you have any thoughts about that I'll need to double check that and come back and answer that question I don't have the raw data with me unfortunately at the moment just to clarify thank you very much so you're looking at the it's appendix a on in the printed copy it's page 14 but electronically it's page 18 so the fill rates and I've just said is that if we just take a date at let's just take the first bar quarter one, 21, 22 was over 80% fill rate does that mean over 80% of the vacancies or 80% of the whole staff thank you councillor Bregman Liz do you absolutely so fill rate is the success that you have been filling jobs so 80% of jobs in quarter one, 21, 22 were filled so that's fill rate of all jobs the jobs advertised in that quarter so it's that's 80% of those advertised in that quarter right thank you very much I did have some others yes also on page 26 is that still in this report I don't want to go on to another report accidentally hang on okay I'll wait about the next report okay so thank you thank you for your answer as well as the support councillor Stobos thank you thank you chair so one was a simple question Jonathan on this move to the private sector so there's been an uptick in the private sector perhaps jobs available and so on I wondered what it was about the private sector then that was creating this what it was about the private sector that was creating this demand and particularly if the reason for leaving was better work-life balance so how do we understand that and possibly how do we counter that in the way recruitment well future recruitment is done thank you councillor Stobos it's a good point so basically just to clarify we're looking at how we're assessing the understanding this private sector demand thank you so Jonathan Liz I don't know if you've got any thoughts around around that but I think a point to talk around how we're combating or how we're driving our attractiveness against the private sector think that in terms of that we would need to look a little bit more into the data and to see if there's any common factors I think in terms of the actual rule data it was just a number of people that were citing the private sector as one of the main reasons as opposed to a different reason other people may have been going to the private sector but not cited that reason so it would need to be investigated a little bit more thank you very much Jonathan Liz do you have any thoughts? I mean members you won't be surprised to hear me say that I think that the four day week is a key tool for us in terms of trying to and retain people in the council and that's exactly the purpose of the trial so yeah great thank you both for your thoughts and yes Jeff I think you've got some just have your hand up there so we've got some additional points yes thank you Jeff through you traditionally where the the difference between the where people went to the private sector and the public sector was based around often people went into the private sector because of the pay that they would receive whereas they'd come into the public sector because of the flexibility and work life balance what we've seen since Covid and the great resignation we're finding that the private sector was becoming more flexible so that actually our competitive edge is being lost a little bit I mean it's noticeable that it was the private sector that first did the four day week trial which is almost coming to an end so I think it's important that we continue to be innovative people want to come to local authorities often because they want that sense of community they want to be involved with what they're doing and feeling that they're having a positive impact on their the people that they know and live with so I think that's the area that we need to start hiding and certainly a successful four day week trial would bring us back into line I think at least with the private sector I think it's unlikely particularly in hard to feel roles that we're ever going to be in a position where we compete based around salary costs unfortunately that's great thank you very much thank you for those thoughts Councillor Bregman yes I found the question I was trying to ask which is in this paper and it was that in the table on it doesn't have a paper page number but it's on page 26 of it electronically which actually is still in this paper it's in the workforce analytics and what I notice was that we've got in that snapshot quarter we've got more people retiring in the current quarter so that's four relative to one in the previous quarter and I'm just wondering if we're losing if there is something which might be causing a loss of staff who are bound to be experienced and I wondered if we are at risk of losing expertise there I wonder if you could comment I don't know who's best placed in the room to be able to to essentially address those what Geoff? Yes again through you check thank you councillor Bradlin we are affected a little bit by the law of small numbers one and four are quite small numbers so it can seem to be quite a dramatic increase whereas probably it's more due to the age demographic that we've got more people just happen to have fallen to a position where they're able to take early retirement again I think what we're seeing is this is part of a national trend it's not just happening in the the public sector or south camp it's happening more across the board people have re-evaluated their life they're looking at the plans that they're making for what they're going to be doing for their rest of their life whether seeing they've got the opportunity to take early retirement they're taking that opportunity whereas perhaps five years ago they'd been planning to work right through to the 85 well 75, 76, 77 or whatever the the current arrangement so again I don't think that's unique to us but it is certainly something we need to keep an eye on and it would be interesting to see whether again the four day week starts to have an impact on that because some of the things that people often do if they're thinking of retiring is they'll go through a period where they reduce the number of days that they work so they'll go from working five days to four days to three days so again it'll be interesting to see whether the option of having that four day week means that people don't feel the need to reduce their hours and perhaps stay on a little bit longer hope that's helpful Thank you That's great, thank you very much Geoff in good point it'll be interesting to see what the we actually have a cross centre analysis for the industry as a whole as well because that might be something to worth noting I don't think we actually do I think we'll just look at our own data Liz if you have any thoughts on that or Geoff It's certainly something we can look to obtain we certainly haven't at the moment part of the problems chair is of course this is a little bit retrospective and it takes time for the information to come through but we can certainly look to talk to colleagues in the sector and see if we can share data on that because I think it's something that's important to most councils at the moment so we'll put that in hand Fantastic, thank you very much Great, thank you for your comments there Councillor Stoball, have you had another question? Chair, it wasn't so much of a question as a comment and contrast between the private sector and the public sector of course the private sector has a adherence to certain qualities and that might include flexible working we'll tend to vary according to the state of the business and the size of the order book and such like so the one thing amongst many others that the public sector can offer is a kind of solid commitment so there is a contrast there beyond beyond what we were talking about which is that ability of the public sector to be committed long term to a set of qualities so I think that could be part of the narrative if you will Great, yes thank you Councillor Stoball a good point I know that was more of a comment but I didn't know if Jeff or Liz if you had any thoughts around Again, through you Chair, yes actually that's a very insightful comment we have been talking to ILGA about how we can do better to advertise the totality of what we offer as a local authority because you're absolutely right Councillor there's a lot of benefits that perhaps we've not been very clear on advertising so people will often look and compare maybe days leave, salary and they'll make their judgement based upon that whereas we need to be pushing forward all the other advantages that we offer as a local authority and ILGA giving us some advice on how we can best do that Perfect, that's great, thank you very much Yes Councillor Fane did you have a question here? Yes it's in what Jeff Maybury was saying in relation to the flexibility that local authorities can offer I think one of the I haven't seen any specific data on this one of the reactions to the cost of living crisis as many people are considering whether to postpone retirement and of course there can be significant advantages to employers and keeping on people who may be very fit and able beyond retirement age and I wondered how flexible the district council is able to be in encouraging people to stay on beyond normal retirement age Good point, thank you Councillor Fane So just to clarify So just to clarify just to understand the flexibility that the council has in respect to enforcing at a time of age I don't know if Jeff you got a thought Yes I mean we're pretty flexible as a local authority the challenge often is that people coming up to retirement will often want to reduce their hours and some of the challenges that we have is around the impact that that has on their pension when they finally do retire so I'm not being a technical expert on pensions it's difficult for me to give a detailed answer on that but I think that's the challenge that we're looking at overcoming would it be okay if we get back to Councillor Fane for a more detailed explanation That's absolutely that's good Thank you very much, thanks Jeff Good Thank you very much for for presenting and answering the questions Do we have any other questions in the room at all? No Okay Again, thank you Jonathan, thank you Jeff and thank you Liz for your thoughts on that We're invited again to note the comments on the report and with that we can move on to our sixth item which is the final item for business today which is the sixth absence for the second quarter of the year Again, we are invited to note the content of this report We have Claire Loma Hill a HR advisor to present this report for us today, Claire Okay, thank you very much So just to follow on from the that we've moved from in conversations with Jeff, we've moved to a dashboard style of reporting so this is a lot sort of brief version of the report and then the further analytics report which follows So just to confirm that the best value performance indicator for sickness absence for quarter two we're actually under target this last quarter 2.97 days for the depot and the rest of the council 5.9 days We've just put in the top three reasons for absence of stress anxiety and depression COVID-19 and cancer and further into the report we've put sort of actions that HR have taken to support employers with absence through various communication methods such as HR newsletters through Liz's chief executive weekly vlog and further signposting further information via email and on insight such as employee assistance programs mental health first aiders and things like that. We've also recently had in-house training for McMillan to support line managers so they can support individuals who are affected by cancer and then very recently we've sort of added to the menopause policy that we're putting further support in place for managers and colleagues, training, awareness and menopause cafes for individuals to attend and further information again is available on insight and communicated via various communication methods so just a very quick overview and if anyone has any questions. That's great, thank you very much Claire for that. Yes Councillor Bramond Do you have a question? Thank you very much chair. Yes I was alarmed to see in the data I mean I know you're aware of it that we've got quite high numbers of days and you've summarised it in your summary as well high numbers of days lost due to stress, anxiety and depression and obviously you're taking steps to offer support to staff through that and we can't it wouldn't be appropriate to ask people necessarily whether that's stress that's coming from domestic situations or stress coming from work but do you have a feel for that at all or are you able to ask that question I'm not sure if it's an okay question to ask but I just wondered if it's cost of living crisis going on isn't it and I'm just wondering if that's the sort of stress that's increasing rather than stress to do with work-based situations Sorry thank you Councillor Bramond I don't know Claire or Lizard I don't know if you've got any type of thoughts Yes I'm happy to answer so we can the reason we are at least able to work out on whether it's work personal or work and personal so we've got some indication if there's any more support we might need to sort of angle it more from a work support place or if it's personal sign postings more information to help support them personally we've done a lot of work recently through our communication channels such as HR's newsletters, emails very much so about financial well-being training and sign postings information out there because you know what sort of advice is there to help them employee assistance what training and so on to help them so that's very much key sort of something that we are trying to promote and support colleagues at the moment Great thank you very much Claire Do we have any other questions? Yes Councillor Helm Thank you Chairman Chairman I see number one as Councillor Bradman has already said is the stress anxiety and depression and yet we have also got many actions that we are trying to do under paragraph 5 I'm concerned that even though we've got all these bullet points that we're trying to do doesn't seem to be having an impact are we doing the right thing or should we be taking a completely different approach and maybe something which would cost us more but in the long run will save us quite a lot of time and more importantly seeing the anxiety and stress of our actual employees so all very good these but it don't seem to be having that much of an impact even though our figures are below what we want them to be which is good thank you Chairman Thank you Councillor Helm Claire I don't know if you've got any thoughts or insights into that and I think is all I can add really is that it may be we want to in the first instance make people very much aware of what helping support is out there and it does depend on that take up of that support if they feel they're able to if it's the right support for them and I think and often is we know it will also depend on how much they're sort of able to talk and share with whether it be HR or their line manager as to what support we can put in place really and it may sort of take it's may not show an immediate impact but maybe it may be take a longer over a longer period of time to show that Thank you Claire and Jeff I've just seen Yes thank you through you we do talk regularly with the unions to try and make sure that we're keeping on top of best practice and we're very happy to look at any suggestions that they have and we do regularly meet with we send representatives to the head of HR meetings nationally where things such as the best way of tackling challenges such as this are discussed so we're keeping very much alive to it I know we in the HR team very much aware that we're doing what we believe to be the best thing but other people could have really good ideas and if we hear about those good ideas we're very happy to adopt them so I can reassure Councillor Howell that we're keeping an open mind and we're keeping our ear to the ground to make sure that we're doing the best that we can to address these challenges Great, thank you Jeff for those thoughts Councillor Howell did you have any additional thoughts on that? Thank you Chairman My little broken arm is normally quite a set procedure of how to set it when you've got something which is stress and anxiety you have to be able to look at 101 different options to be able to help the individual so I understand what you're doing and saying I'm just I'm very glad that you're keeping an open mind and I do hope that we'll keep on doing that because I do think this is one thing that not one size doesn't fit all but thank you, thank you Chairman Thank you both and actually on that point I'm definitely not saying like too much of a broken record but I think it would be really good to and I don't know because I can't see it in the report but if we're keeping track on like national averages and comparisons to other councils as well just to sort of like look at how we're doing all fairing comparisons to that I don't know, Jeff obviously just popped out are we keeping track of that? We try to Chairman the problem we always have is as I said there's a delay before the information is available about what's happening nationally and certainly one of the things that's been highlighted here today is over the last few months the cost of living crisis is really starting to bite so it will probably be something like six to nine months before we get any accurate information that we could do some meaningful comparisons but again we'll do our best to gather the information as it comes in and we'll look to see whether or not we can benchmark against that and perhaps bring a report back to a future committee when we've got that more reliable information so we can be confident of what we're telling you. Super, thank you very much. That's great, thank you both. Councillor Stavart, can you have a question? Thank you chair, maybe this is more of a comment but this comparison quarter by quarter year by year and so on is actually quite a difficult business I mean we asked a statistician they'd come back with highly technical things like the need for significance testing but our sample sizes here might be so small so maybe back to a point the chief executive made earlier about diversity but diversity in a different context that picking up signs of things, take up of advice of the feel that a manager or colleagues might have a better situation as well as the numbers and I think this is probably particularly significant as the impact of the process towards the four day week and the trial take place is a kind of a balance well we can't see it in the data but there may be anecdotal information that when taken as a whole does give a very strong indication of change and improvement so who are I think it's a tricky area and requires some delicate judgment but there is always that result to the highly technical when you do want to compare for example with national behaviours but I just wanted to point that out and understand the difficulties of the situation but diversity is always a good process Thank you very much councillor Stobart again understanding that was a comment but actually yeah if we have any thoughts on that from any officers So can I take that one away too Thank you Thank you very much councillor Bunan Thank you Another thing that crosses my mind is I know from the outset and before back in 2019 and 2020 we've done a great job of enabling our staff to work from home and that's been a godsend while people had to work from home and I know because of that that we've set up good working team working arrangements but I just wondered in this how would we know if a member of staff was struggling on their own is that a well rehearsed interaction that we have between team leaders and staff I just wondered about somebody feeling a bit overwhelmed and working from home and maybe feeling a bit isolated Thank you Thank you councillor Brugman Yes Is there any thoughts from any officers at all around that Sorry Claire I was just going to say is we very much from HR is want to sort of put out there that support that's available so that people feel at ease and open to speak to their line managers about any issues and that the individuals can come to HR if they feel difficult to speak to their line manager or line managers can come to us to ask for any sort of support I think it's being knowing that we're there and open and the support that is out there and getting that message across The question actually was how would we know if a member of staff was struggling on their own and didn't want to say So I mean I'm not asking whether we're checking parameters or I mean how would we know would we be checking their output I mean that's the whole point of planning for the four day week isn't it setting up methods by which we can check about people's outputs it's complicated isn't it because they might be outputting brilliantly but actually struggling emotionally or they might be okay emotionally but actually not out producing any output I just wondered how we keep track of that thank you Yes I've seen you've popped your hand up there Geoff so Thank you chair just to add what Claire was saying obviously an important part of management in working in a hybrid environment is to keep in contact with your team and what we're doing is making sure that our team managers got the skills to do that effectively we're running a comprehensive training program for them which would make sure that they're delivering on that but yeah we do monitor performance on a regular basis we monitor sickness on a regular basis because there are patterns that you often see with people who are starting to feel stress you might start seeing short term intermittent absence due to things like headaches we have and we'll be bringing a more detailed report back to this committee for a future meeting but we have recently undertaken a very comprehensive staff survey which went into a lot of detail with individual people about how they were feeling within themselves and about the organisation and then gave each individual person that completed that survey a personal report which talked about the areas that where things were going well some areas that they needed to do a little bit more work on and identified some potential danger signs and highlighted them the sort of things that they can do to head off those sort of challenges so we're trying to be as proactive as we possibly can I mean one of the things that I think you're right councillor brother if people are working only from home it's particularly challenging to keep an eye on their wellbeing so we're encouraging teams to get together at least a couple of times a month for a day or a half day or whatever so that you can actually have eyes on people and you can start to see whether the behaviour is changing how their interactions with other people are going and potentially give them the opportunity to talk about any challenges in the way that they're feeling and the mental health first aiders that Claire's already mentioned about gives people that might not be comfortable necessarily talking to their line manager about these challenges an opportunity to have those discussions with somebody who is independent of their direct working environment in case they're worried that they might be weak or non-productive by doing so so we're putting quite a lot of levers in place now it is a bit of a two-way street we can encourage people to contact us in a way that's most appropriate for them but we do also encourage people to recognise in themselves when they're starting to potentially display some symptoms of stress and to take up the opportunity of getting the guidance or the support that they need also I know that colleagues in HR who have regular interactions with members of the services on a regular basis will highlight if they've got concerns and we can offer them the opportunity to have a confidential talk with a councillor that even we in HR wouldn't necessarily know the details of so that they've got that anonymity which gives them the confidence to talk about it it is a national problem I think as you've highlighted we've got the challenge of a cost of living crisis where people are worried about what's going to be happening in their private lives and that often puts strain not only on their financial part of their private life but on their relationships as well there's a lot of evidence that shows that as people feel the pressure financially can have pressure on their personal relationships so we're very conscious of that and we're trying to make sure that we keep that range of opportunities available as councillor Howell says it's easy to, we know what to do to mend a broken arm but there's a wider range of things that's needed for people who are potentially starting to suffer from stress again I hope that's helpful That's great, thank you very much Geoff Can I expand what's your thoughts on that? Thank you, I'm really reassured to hear all of that Geoff and I'm really pleased that you're being so intuitive about it and that our managers are being supported to help their staff Are we offering any similar support to members? Yes Geoff, are you already thoughts on that? I must I need to go and speak with Jonathan Moulton who's I know preparing some member development opportunities, I don't recall off the top of my head the detail of what's involved in all of those so if that's okay councillor Braddom I'll get back to you after the meeting Thank you very much Great, thank you very much, thanks Geoff councillor Fein, if you've got a question Thank you on an unrelated issue, very simple question arises out of the table on page 29 which includes the total employee count so when for instance we have in shared planning 122.9674636 employees, FTE bases of course 123 as I might call it is that the total number in shared planning for both Cambridge City and South Cairns or is that some sort of an apportionment, I think it is the form but I want to just confirm simply for shared waste Thank you councillor Fein, sorry just to clarify so you're looking at page 29 29 of the printed version, I'm sorry I don't know, I think it may be page 14 the absence analytics for quarter two table is headed absence by organisation structure Thank you both and thank you councillor so that's page 33 in the digital copy Can you answer that question at all? So it will be the average count of it is the shared of the shared partnership between for waste and greater Cambridge planning it is the combination of the two so all those are employed by South Cairns Sorry, can I just clarify that point, sorry Claire so that's the total or the average or is it combined? So just to get that so that is page 33 and just to clarify it was the employee count FTE That's correct, so the current FTE Yes, so that is all staff so that's just Just to clarify when we're saying FTE we're talking about full time equivalent or actual number of individuals So it's actually full time equivalent so they're working hours rather than a head count Okay so not head count councillor, does that answer your question? Perfect, thank you for the clarity and sorry for the confusion there Did we have any other questions at all? No, okay Good, well thank you very much Claire and thank you Jeff for all your important support there Great, thank you very much Again, the committee I would like to note to the contents of that report So thank you that actually brings our business today to a close The meeting for this committee Sorry, the next meeting for this committee is to be held on Thursday the 23rd of February 2023 I got confused there because it's next year but thank you very much and we'll see you then