Agenda and minutes

www.swansea.gov.uk/DisclosuresofInterests

In accordance with the Code of Conduct adopted by the City and County of Swansea, the following interest was declared: -

 

Councillor M Thomas - agenda as a whole - my wife works for the Authority.

 

NOTED that Councillor M Thomas had received dispensation from the Standards Committee in respect of his wife.

 

 

To approve & sign the Minutes of the previous meeting(s) as a correct record.

RESOLVED that the Minutes of the meeting held on 29 June 2016 be agreed as correct record.

 

Councillor C E Lloyd, Cabinet Member for Transformation & Performance attended the meeting and updated Members of the Committee on the Customer Contact Aspect Terms of Reference.  He outlined that it was important to assess the customer contact services of the Authority and how to improve.

 

He made reference to the following that were contained in the Terms of Reference: -

 

·         Support Customer Service Model;

·         Preferred method of contact;

·         Digital Contact – Cost less;

·         Hours of opening / out of hours;

·         Follow up / Keeping customer informed – reduce multiple contact;

·         Customer Charter / The Swansea Standard – Impact?;

·         Non-Customer facing etiquette – Phone handling, e-mail;

·         Not exhaustive list.

 

The Committee asked a number of questions of the Cabinet Member, who responded accordingly.  Discussions centred around the following: -

 

·         Services provided by the Contact Centre, Civic Centre and the centralisation of staff to improve customer contact;

·         How the digital element had improved customer contact, including self-service provision for internal staff / councillors;

·         Public perception of Council services being influenced by the initial contact made via the Contact Centre and receiving relevant feedback from customers regarding their experiences;

·         Building upon the work of the Scrutiny investigation on Corporate Culture;

·         Managing expectations of customers;

·         The need to introduce automated systems for telephone and web enquiries.

 

The Chair thanked the Cabinet Member for his report.

 

RESOLVED that: -

 

1)    The contents of the report be noted;

2)    The Head of Communications & Customer Engagement and the Contact Centre Customer Service Manager be invited to attend the next scheduled meeting to discuss the Customer Care Aspect.

Linda Phillips, Organisational Development Project Officer provided an update report regarding the Gender Pay Gap Project.

 

Further to previous Committee discussions, she reported that Dr Alison Parken of Cardiff University, the leading research specialist in this area, had undertaken further analysis of the Council’s workforce data and reported back to the Head of Human Resources &Organisational Development on 12 July 2016. 

 

Dr Parken’s overview of June data 2016 summary was provided as follows:

 

·         10665 employees (headcount) at point of downloading the data into the tool.

 

·         Gender Composition: women 72% and men 28%. 

 

·         Stock of jobs: 35% are offered on a FT basis and 65% PT

 

·         62% of posts are permanent, 37% temporary, 1% casual.

 

·         Half of permanent posts are offered on a full time basis, half part time.

 

·         Men hold 35% of all permanent jobs (over-representation)

 

·         Women hold 65% of all permanent jobs (under-representation)

 

·         Men hold 16% of all temporary posts, women 84% (over-representation)

 

·         Men hold 57% of all full time posts (over-representation); women hold 88% all PT posts (over-representation) (3815 FT posts, 6850 PT posts)

 

·         Women are more than twice as likely to be in temporary work than men.

 

·         Women are over-represented in part time permanent jobs and temporary jobs.

 

It was added that crucially, men hold 60% of all full time permanent posts – the route to progression. This was also the route to ‘making work pay’ in low grades posts (women overwhelmingly were working part-time in low grade posts).

 

The ‘elite’ – permanent full time roles - are dominated by men; at 28% of the workforce they hold 60% of all these jobs, with 69% of all men working in this contract type/pattern.

 

Full time work was usually most associated with mid to higher graded work, while part-time was associated with the lowest three grades. These patterns would inevitably create and sustain gender pay gaps.

 

Most temporary jobs are part time, therefore the addition of temporary full time jobs only brings the percentage of women working full time up to 21%.

 

Dr Parken’s view was that overall, the Authority is a ‘typical’ local authority, with one exception, the size of our temporary workforce.  There is a higher stock of full time jobs in this employment when compared to other local government workforces in Wales, but no difference in the percentage of that stock held by women at 17%.

 

It was pointed out that the temporary workforce was high because the Authority does not generally offer ‘fixed term contracts’ any longer.  They were all classed as ‘temporary’, which could account for the relatively high figure, but this would be investigated further as part of the project.

 

Following the initial interview, Dr Parken suggested the following: -

 

1.    Investigate Casual workers data further;

2.    Investigate ‘Multiple’ post-holders and the size of this ‘issue’;

3.    Investigate the Chief Officers / HOS data in the GEPA tool;

4.    Job Families analysis;

5.    Pipeline Analysis;

6.    Comparison with other Local Authorities;

7.    Policy Analysis;

8.    Workforce Engagement for in depth context analysis.

 

It was added that work would continue to analyse ‘actual hours’ data for casuals / relief staff and to build a Job Families report and input into the GEPA tool.  A further update would be provided in October 2016.

 

The Committee asked questions of the Officer who responded accordingly.  Discussions centred around the following: -

 

·         Definitions of employees, e.g. ‘casual workers’;

·         Makeup of the workforce, particularly staff who are multiple post holders;

·         Comparing the workforce with those of other local authorities;

·         Number of employees using the option of flexible retirement;

·         Part-time work offering women more flexibility;

·         Workforce engagement;

·         Managing workforce expectations.

 

RESOLVED that: -

 

1)    The contents of the report be noted;

2)    An update report be provided in October 2016 on the items 1-6 on the list above.

 

The Chair presented an updated Work Programme 2016-2017.

 

RESOLVED that: -

 

1)    The contents of the report be noted;

2)    The Head of Communications & Customer Engagement and the Contact Centre Customer Service Manager be invited to attend the meeting scheduled for 31 August 2016.