Workforce Planning

1
Workforce Planning Stephen S. Moir Director of
People and Policy
2
Gone are the days of regiments of potential
public servants waiting for jobs..
3
We are engaged in a war for talent.
4
Too often with each other..
.and the competition doesnt always seem fair!
5
What Ill be talking about (in the context of my
organisation)

• The need to adopt a strategic approach to
  workforce planning in a modern public sector
  setting
• Steps towards an integrated approach to planning
  activities that includes workforce matters
• The role of the HR professional in supporting
  workforce planning
• The role of elected members in supporting a
  strategic approach to people management.

6
What Ill not be talking about..

• Lots of statistics and trends (although the
  ability to profile your workforce is important)
• Establishment control (however there is still a
  place for this as a tool to support workforce
  planning and financial management)

7
The importance of Workforce PlanningWhy is this
relevant to the public sector?

• Public services are usually the largest employers
  in a defined geographic area and have a major
  skills, employment and economic development role
  to play
• Our services are generally demand led, such as
  adult social care, and unlike other service
  industries we do not offer the same degree of
  consumer choice, on that basis we have to
  maximise the productivity of the people that we
  employ to ensure quality services
• Public service reform requires public authorities
  to develop new skills within the workforce to
  respond to an ever changing world
• The increasing complexity of employment
  legislation requires a focussed approach to
  workforce management issues, e.g. equal pay.

8
A snapshot of Cambridgeshire

• The fastest-growing county in England, 570,000
  people and rising
• Largest population of Travellers in the UK
• Rapidly growing migrant worker population
  (related to agricultural/rural economy)
• Lower crime rates and higher standards of health
  than England as a whole
• Annual budget of 570 million, 230 million per
  annum on employee costs
• In excess of 18,000 employees (6,500 non-schools
  based employees)
• 69 County Councillors (Conservative majority
  party)
• Corporate Investors in People accreditation.

9
The Cambridgeshire employment context

• Cambridgeshire County Council is the largest
  single employer in the County, however
• Unemployment rates are low, less than 1.4
• Housing costs are high
• Cambridge is within the London commuter belt
  area
• The local employment market includes public
  sector competitors and private sector
  competitors, e.g. Cambridge University,
  Addenbrookes Hospital, Microsoft and Silicon
  Fen.
• Responding to our workforce challenges means that
  we have had to take a strategic
• approach to talent management and as my leader
  would say to ensure more bang for our
• bucks.

10
Workforce Strategy

• We first adopted a whole organisation strategic
  approach to People Management and Development in
  2001.
• We refined our People Strategy in 2006 and
  underpinned this by a 4 year action plan.
• We made our People Strategy simple, meaningful
  and relevant to our employment market, elected
  members, senior managers, employees and trade
  unions. We did this by taking a relatively
  straightforward approach and then consulting
  extensively upon the strategy.

11
Writing the Workforce Plan

• We started by being clear about what our strategy
  actually waswe didnt want to produce a long
  winded document that sat gathering dust

12
Have a little passion and ambition

• We wanted to make our vision explicit
• To recruit, retain, reward, recognise and
  develop the right people, with the right skills,
  at the right time to deliver the vision for
  Cambridgeshire.
• taken from Cambridgeshire CC People Strategy
  2006-2010

13
Tailoring the Workforce Plan

• Understand where your organisation is today
• Be clear about where you want your organisation
  to be tomorrow
• Well skilled, well motivated, well informed,
  high performing employees, proud to work for
  Cambridgeshire County Council and committed to
  delivering high quality public services
• taken from Cambridgeshire CC People Strategy
  2006-2010
• Ensure that your strategy builds the bridge
  between today and tomorrow and then implement it.

14
The Cambridgeshire People Strategy

• 5 Strategic Themes
• Resourcing the Council
• Developing the Council
• Developing leadership skills and capacity
• Developing workforce skills and capacity
• Reward and recognition.
• All themes are underpinned by equality and
  diversity and all are clearly
• focussed upon the need to unlock and enhance the
  talent within our
• workforce.

15
Implementing the Workforce PlanA Lesson learned?

• By starting small and making sure the basics were
  right, weve been able to build functional
  credibility and reputation of HR (both internally
  and externally), e.g
• - Focus on reducing recruitment lead times, i.e.
  from advert to offer. Reduced from 40 days plus
  to an average of 33 days from advert to offer of
  appointment in the last 18 months
• - Implementation of signpost recruitment
  advertising, saving 500,000 per year expenditure
  which was then reinvested in front line services.

16
The Cambridgeshire experience?

• Talent Management is central to our People
  Strategy, now and in the future
• Talent Management is being embedded into
  individual Services and overlaid with corporate
  support from HR
• Talent Management is saving us money we are
  growing our own.

17
What tactics has Cambridgeshire adopted?

• Graduate Trainee recruitment pathways including
  Finance, HR, Property, Planning, Highways,
  Communications and General Management (since
  1986)
• Succession Planning for senior management roles
  since 2003 (currently leading a joint succession
  planning programme with 2 other authorities)
• Extensive investment in employee learning and
  development, included accredited Management
  Development to Executive Diploma levels
• Specific activity to encourage and support Women
  into Management, in partnership with Cranfield
  University
• Restructured and centralised the HR function in
  2005 to support the emerging People Strategy and
  talent management/workforce planning.

18
HR Delivery Model
Employees Line Managers
Recruitment / HR Advice / Payroll / Learning
Development Solutions / Job Evaluation /
Pensions Business Partners / HR Prof. Services /
Transactional Centre
HR policies / Workforce Planning /
Reward Strategic HR / Centre of Excellence
Customer focus
Improved performance
Organisational Development/
Culture Change People Strategy
Corporate plan
19
Integrated service planning

• Is not
• Easy to achieve
• Just workforce profiling and producing lots of
  data or about budget setting
• Owned only by HR or Finance you have to strike
  the right balance with line managers.

20
Achieving integrated service planning

• Is
• about making sure people issues are part of the
  DNA of your organisation.
• About challenging the way services are delivered
• About understanding the total costs of a service
  in terms of salaries, skills and capacity.

21
Steps to help achieve integrated service planning

• Check when you last reviewed your service
  planning approach and who leads this
• Bring a team of people together to work out how
  the new approach would work in practice and what
  is needed to achieve this
• Standardise the approach across the organisation
  with a clear timescale
• Create the opportunity to include a People and
  Capacity section

22
Steps to help achieve integrated service planning

• Make it clear to managers what is expected from
  them and provide guidance and training
• Drive learning and development budget allocation
  through service planning and align skill
  priorities to organisational priorities to get
  line manager buy-in
• Be clear what Finance and Performance colleagues
  want to gain from service planning and help them
  to achieve it.

23
The role of the Human Resources/Personnel
Professional

• Have to be able to see the bigger employment
  picture, understand their organisation and the
  people management issues that relate to current
  and future organisational success
• Ensure that a people agenda is understood by
  and important to elected members and senior
  managers alike and actively champion this at all
  levels of the organisation
• Act as a role model in terms of good people
  management within their own team, including
  tackling poor or weak performance
• If part of the senior managerment team then be a
  senior manager first and a HR officer second
  (corporate responsibility combined with
  professional expertise) if not part of the
  Senior Management Team, then work to rectify the
  situation, HR is not a second rate service!

24
The role of Elected Members

• Ensure that the Workforce Plan/Strategy is
  owned by the Executive/Cabinet ultimately
  members are the employers
• Take an active interest in strategic HR issues
  but not necessarily the detail, such as grading
  changes and establishment control
• Act as champions for workforce issues and
  consider the links between being a good employer
  and improving public satisfaction with services.
  A large proportion of your employees are also
  your residents and service users
• Think about the role of HR/Personnel in your
  authority and consider why if 60 or more of your
  budget is spent upon people costs then shouldnt
  this level of investment be reflected in Chief
  Officer postion for your most senior HR
  professional to ensure that this is managed
  effectively?

25
People Strategy2007 business outcomes

• Reduced level of employee turnover down to 10
  on average
• Reduced levels of sickness absence being
  sustained, 5.1 days per FTE
• HR Ratio of 1106 employees (excluding schools)
• Cost of HR expressed as a of the overall pay
  bill is 1.85
• Improved employee satisfaction levels 73
  satisfied
• (Source Ipsos MORI 2007 Survey - compared to
  62 LA / public sector comparators and 63
  overall).
• Improved employee advocacy about the Council as
  an employer 50 speak highly
• (Source Ipsos MORI 2007 Survey - compared to
  33 LA / 41 overall).
• Satisfaction with reward and benefits (excluding
  salary) 67 satisfied
• (Source Ipsos MORI 2007 Survey compared to 58
  LA/public sector and 58 overall).

26
Concluding remarks

• Adopting a strategic approach to workforce
  planning is about a lot more than adverts,
  interviews and appointments and it isnt just a
  HR issue

• Being surrounded by poor people means you are
  always chasing rabbits..they ask the wrong
  questions or focus on the wrong issues. They
  ultimately limit what your organisation can
  achieve
• Dick Parsons CEO, Time Warner

• Where to startask yourself and your management
  team
• What would I do about workforce planning if the
  success of my organisation depended upon
  it?.because it does!