Cambridgeshire County Council is the largest employer in the county with around 18,000 staff, of which about 11,000 are directly employed by schools. The county has a range of locational advantages which the Council can draw on to attract staff but it also has many challenges including staff shortages exacerbated by low rates of unemployment and stiff competition from the buoyant and growing private and educational sectors. Its geography also presents challenges: recruiting from its large rural hinterland is difficult because of a lack of public transport and reluctance to travel among some communities.
Action taken
In order to address these issues and to plan effectively for meeting its objectives, the Council has put in place an integrated corporate approach which marks it out from other more ad hoc, service-specific initiatives. The elements of this approach comprise:
Creating strong links between strategic objectives and workforce issues
The Council recognises that success in achieving its strategic objectives rests on its ability to build the right workforce. For example, the achievement of its local housebuilding plans will only be possible if the Council and the district councils are successful in attracting planners to the area. The County Council sees the key risk to the achievement of this and the other objectives as a failure to recruit and retain skilled staff. Stephen Moir, Director of People and Policy, says: 'there's a very strong fit between overall Council priorities and people strategy'.
Recognising the need for leadership from the top
The Council has developed a county-wide People Strategy, which informs its service-specific strategies, for example for the children's workforce. The strategy is jointly signed off and endorsed by the chief executive, leader and cabinet, ensuring that workforce matters have high visibility in the corporate centre and continue to support corporate ambitions and priorities. This is reinforced by the Council's balanced scorecard approach that incorporates sections related to People Management and Learning and Growth, both pertaining to workforce issues and reported to the Cabinet on a monthly basis.
Creating an organisational structure that establishes a strong practical link between people issues and the formulation of its corporate policy
The Council merged the human resources and corporate strategy functions in April 2007, creating a people and policy directorate, headed up by a director of people and policy, one of only two such posts in England. This new directorate brings together a range of human resources functions including organisational development, payroll and pensions with corporate activities such as strategy, policy, diversity and partnerships, including the Local Area Agreement (LAA).
Having corporate strategy and HR strategy in one directorate has, the Council believes, been key to keeping workforce issues high on the agenda and to supporting the continuous improvement in its services. It also enhances the alignment of employee objectives to Council and LAA priorities.
Effective partnership working
The county works with the district councils, other public sector bodies and even the private sector, such as the British Antarctic Survey, to ensure that efforts to attract employees to the area are joined up. This has involved the building of a strong brand in conjunction with Cambridge City Council and the development of a shared jobs portal for public sector jobs in the County (jobsincambs.com).
Partnership working also has a physical manifestation. The Council has worked with other public sector bodies, for example the Cambridgeshire primary care trusts (PCT), to establish joint service buildings with touch down centres. For example, within the new community at Cambourne, council officers from Trading Standards are co-located with a GP surgery and a library.
The touch down centres allow individual employees the opportunity to work at a location more convenient to their home, thus cutting down on unnecessary journeys and giving staff greater flexibility. They offer short stay, drop-in facilities with fixed PCs or connections for laptops, giving staff access to the full range of the Council's software and systems.
Introducing flexible working
A key element of the Council's approach has been the introduction of flexible working across all departments. The council is committed to flexible working as a means to recruit and retain staff, improve work/life balance and to release efficiencies. It has introduced a range of changes focused on new, flexible working packages, such as annualised hours, compressed hours, term-time working, and so on.
These are now offered as standard across most of the authority and the Council promotes its policy strongly to staff and managers. This has involved, in some cases, efforts to counter the concerns of managers that increased flexibility might adversely affect service provision.
In building a more flexible working culture, the Council has drawn on the expertise of Project Nomad, an initiative that it hosts and whose aim is to promote the use of mobile technology and flexible working to councils.
Using technology effectively
In addition, and in collaboration with Project Nomad, the Council has installed new technology to underpin these changes. Most of the Council's systems can now be directly accessed from home by staff through broadband, and the Council is piloting a range of mobile technology, for example the use of digi-pens by social workers, to reduce the need for individuals to return to office bases from field work activities, thereby maximising time dealing with casework and reducing unnecessary travelling.
Outcomes
The Council's strong corporate approach to recruitment and retention has borne results. According to an Ipsos MORI survey of staff in 2000, 73 per cent are satisfied with their present job. On average, staff only take five days sick leave a year (figures for 2007/08), one of the best figures nationally and a significant reduction from a peak of over ten days in 2000/01 in Cambridgeshire.
The Council's approach to flexible working has borne fruit, with 72 per cent of staff in the recent survey saying they were satisfied with the opportunities for flexible working and the Audit Commission's corporate assessment highlighting that this had led to efficiency savings. A further indication of success is that many staff who leave often return to the Council after a period of employment elsewhere.
The Council has been operating a range of graduate pathway intakes since 1986 and receives a high calibre of applicants on an annual basis. For example, the Council received more than 180 applications for 3 general management graduate trainee appointments during 2007.
In addition to improving retention, recruitment and staff satisfaction, the Council's approach has led to success on its other agendas. The introduction of facilities such as the touch down centres helps the Council to overcome the challenges connected with its rurality and also contributes to its sustainable development and green travel objectives. Business and home to office mileage has been reduced by 5 per cent over three years which helps in terms of its carbon footprint as well as providing efficiency savings for the Council.
The Council estimates that £424,000 in productive staff time gains were achieved in 2005/06 through reduced mileage and cashable gains through reduced mileage expenses. The touch down centres and home working have also helped increase the Council's potential recruitment pool as it is now more attractive to potential employees from some of the more rural areas within Cambridgeshire. This has clearly assisted with recruitment activities and has been complemented by a focus to improve the performance of the recruitment team, reducing from an average of 40 days from advert to offer of employment in 2005 to 33.9 days at the end of the 2007 council year.
The Council undertakes close monitoring of its workforce trends and produces quarterly workforce profiles. In addition, it prepares an annual review which is used for benchmarking with other councils. To supplement this quantitative analysis, exit interviews are held with departing staff to collect qualitative data on why staff leave.
As well as this close internal monitoring, the Council's performance on workforce issues has also been subject to external scrutiny. The Council scored well in its capacity assessment (3=performing well) as part of the Audit Commission corporate assessment in October 2007 and received a maximum 4 out of 4 score for Use of Resources.
That assessment praised the Council's HR arrangements and found that they enabled the Council to make the best use of its people. In early 2008 the Council received reaccreditation under Investors in People for a further three years which involved meeting higher standards and satisfying new criteria.
Learning
The Council is very clear that the achievement of its corporate objectives is dependent on a skilled workforce. The leadership of the Council recognises that if they do not get recruitment and retention right they will be compromising their objectives and risk damaging services. This high profile for workforce issues has helped to change practices and convince staff of the need to put recruitment and retention at the centre of operations.
The Council has found that working in partnership with other public and private agencies can alleviate recruitment difficulties. Instead of assuming that all local bodies are in competition for the same staff, the Council has sought ways to work with other organisations to improve branding, share premises and seek out opportunities.
These approaches, combined with an enthusiastic response to the potential contribution of flexible working, has resulted in the Council achieving positive outcomes on staff satisfaction, sickness absence and recruitment and retention measures while at the same time improving its carbon footprint and contributing to efficiency savings.