Some good news. After an agreement reached between national trade unions and employers this year’s pay award has been agreed at 3.2% across the board. In the past it has sometimes taken until towards the end of the year to get it across the line. This year it will appear in your pay in August, backdated to April. The pay rise applies to all our staff except teachers, whose arrangements are managed separately. Find out more here.
On Monday I joined up with Ness Young, Rachael Davies and Trade Unions and colleagues from across the council who are overseeing the Workforce and OD transformation programme. It’s been a busy few months with the introduction of the Management of Absence (MoA) policy and more updated policies being worked on for roll out in the autumn. The meeting noted that more than 400 managers have completed the MoA training, which is good news and allows us all to work together to try and reduce absence levels across the Council. My thanks to Ness, Rachael and the team for their hard work and to all the managers who’ve been engaged so far. We want to be seen as an employer of choice, recruiting and retaining the best talent possible so we can continue to improve services for the people of Swansea successfully and sustainably. Excellence in workforce and OD management is among the building blocks of that ambition.
Yesterday it was time to look at the overall transformation programme, Successful and Sustainable Swansea, at a joint Cabinet and CMT awayday. You can find more about the programme here and practical examples of the programme in action here. The board heard of the important progress being made across all our services. Fundamentally, we must continue to change and improve to meet the needs and expectations of our residents in the modern world, while balancing our budget and becoming ever more efficient. It means changes to what you do on the frontline as well as in the back office, such as our workforce and digital transformation programme, which was also discussed at the away day, are having a positive impact.
Next month we’re planning to launch the annual staff survey for 2025. CMT and Heads of Service are currently reviewing actions we’d said we’d take in response to what you told us in last year’s survey. It’s really important than when we receive feedback from our staff that we act on it. We can’t of course do everything that might be suggested, but we should always feedback on what we can or maybe can’t do and the reason why. You can find out about some of the actions taken so far here. We’re also looking at what we want to learn from this year’s survey as well. I’ll update you on that closer to the launch. If, in the meantime, you have any thoughts about what we should be asking, please let your manager know during your 121s which all services have committed to. Similarly, if you have ideas about how we can ensure more of our staff can take part in the survey – even if they don’t have access to our intranet or email systems – I’d like to hear from you.
One of the important things coming out of last year’s survey was your wish that there should be wider recognition for long service and staff achievements. I’ve always included those kinds of updates as often as I can in the blog. I’m pleased to say that this week there’s four more examples of long service to celebrate. So, congratulations to Gary James, fleet engineer in the Central Transport Unit (50 years) and our highways network manager Dean Howard (47 years). Also, a big thank-you to Kelvin Carpenter from our transport team (40 years) and Simon Kennedy (30 years), a supervisor in our ground maintenance team. Collectively, that’s 167 years’ experience and service to the people of Swansea which is something to be proud of, and my thanks to all of them.
And finally, like many people, I will be taking a few days leave next week so there will be no blog next week. It will return on August 15.
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