CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 5 08/03/2019

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY AUDIT & RISK COMMITTEE

FOR DIS­CUS­SION

Title: STRA­TEGIC RISK REVIEW: WORK­FORCE MANAGEMENT

Pre­pared by: DAV­ID CAMER­ON, DIR­ECT­OR OF COR­POR­ATE SERVICES

Pur­pose

This paper presents an in-depth review of the stra­tegic risk included in the Authority’s Stra­tegic Risk Register asso­ci­ated with the Authority’s work­force man­age­ment strategy and asso­ci­ated activities.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Con­sider the in-depth review of the stra­tegic risk asso­ci­ated with the Authority’s work­force man­age­ment strategy activ­it­ies; b) Endorse the inclu­sion of an addi­tion­al stra­tegic risk in the risk register as set out at para­graph 18;

Over­view: Stra­tegic Risk – Work­force Management

1. The Authority’s stra­tegic risk register, as most recently con­sidered by the Board at its meet­ing on 7 Decem­ber 2018, includes a spe­cif­ic stra­tegic risk around the Authority’s work­force man­age­ment: Staff­ing: addi­tion­al extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects strains staff work­load capa­city with increased risks of stress and reduced morale.

2. This risk high­lights the under­ly­ing man­age­ment pri­or­it­ies with­in the Author­ity around pri­or­it­ising staff deploy­ment, work­load man­age­ment and more gen­er­ally imple­ment­ing a staff­ing struc­ture appro­pri­ate to and deployed to deliv­er the Authority’s agreed stra­tegic outcomes.

3. This risk has been noted as gen­er­ally main­tain­ing in level (stat­ic over­all like­li­hood and impact) over the pre­vi­ous cycles of risk mon­it­or­ing and reporting.

4. There are also a num­ber of wider resource-man­age­ment related stra­tegic risks under man­age­ment that are impacted by, and mit­ig­ated through the Authority’s approach to work­force man­age­ment. These include risk ​“AI” which focuses on the capa­city to alloc­ate suf­fi­cient resource to deliv­er the Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives, togeth­er with oth­er risks that focus on the capa­city to alloc­ate resources of the right type – fin­ance, staff or tech­no­logy – to achieve required outcomes.

5. The con­tent of the Authority’s stra­tegic risk register led to an intern­al audit review of the Authority’s resource plan­ning approaches under­taken in Autumn 2018 and repor­ted to the Authority’s Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee on 23 Novem­ber 2018. https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​/​d​o​c​s​/​b​o​a​r​d​p​a​p​e​r​s​/​2​3​1​1​2​0​1​8​/​1​8​1​1​2​3​A​u​C​t​t​e​e​P​aper4 Annex|ResourcePlanningReportFinal.pdf

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee mem­bers iden­ti­fied that the area of staff resource man­age­ment and deploy­ment would be an appro­pri­ate area for a more in-depth review of the risks asso­ci­ated with this aspect of the Authority’s intern­al con­trol struc­tures. While the res­ults of the intern­al audit high­lighted only three low-level recom­mend­a­tions for remedi­al action, Com­mit­tee mem­bers felt that the com­plex­it­ies of staff work­force man­age­ment with­in the cur­rent envir­on­ment mer­ited a more detailed review.

1. This paper was presen­ted to the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee for con­sid­er­a­tion and com­ment at its meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2019, pri­or to fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion by the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee. The Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee endorsed the dir­ec­tion of the paper. There was some dis­cus­sion around the word­ing of the pro­posed addi­tion­al stra­tegic risk set out at para­graph 18 which has now been adap­ted to seek to ensure there is a sense of require­ment for actions to begin to be taken in the short term on work­force man­age­ment in order to address long-term risks around work­force management.

Update on Work­force Man­age­ment Actions

1. One of the three low-level recom­mend­a­tions to the Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee in Novem­ber 2018 iden­ti­fied the require­ment to update the Authority’s Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy, in order to out­line the activ­it­ies and approaches to estab­lish and main­tain a pro­duct­ive and cost-effect­ive work­force. An updated Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy was presen­ted to the pre­vi­ous meet­ing of the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee 7 Decem­ber 2018 and approved by the Com­mit­tee at that meet­ing. The approv­al of this strategy helps mit­ig­ate risks around ensur­ing the stra­tegic work­force dir­ec­tion is being guided by an appro­pri­ate and up-to-date strategy that links to and takes account of the Authority’s cur­rent stra­tegic plans.

2. The revised Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy recog­nises in particular:

a) The need for flex­ib­il­ity in staff deploy­ment, allow­ing staff to be redir­ec­ted with­in con­straints of skills and know­ledge base, across dif­fer­ent deliv­ery pri­or­it­ies; b) A focus on staff con­tract man­age­ment over the long-term, deliv­er­ing an aware­ness of fixed-term con­tract peri­ods and for­ward plan­ning to deal with con­sequences of con­tract end points; c) Detailed, ongo­ing vacancy man­age­ment actions, afford­ing the key oppor­tun­it­ies with­in a con­text of ​“No Com­puls­ory Redund­ancy” strategy to adapt the Authority’s staff estab­lish­ment, includ­ing its struc­ture and asso­ci­ated fin­an­cial cost base; d) Reg­u­lar scen­ario plan­ning on fin­an­cial pos­i­tions and asso­ci­ated impacts on staff­ing levels to devel­op plans to adapt to vary­ing under­pin­ning fund­ing levels; e) Man­age­ment focus through Oper­a­tion­al Plan devel­op­ment and Pro­ject Plan­ning tools on staff deploy­ment across activ­it­ies, seek­ing to ensure from an organ­isa­tion­al con­trol per­spect­ive that over­all work­loads are man­aged with­in the para­met­ers set by avail­able staff resources; f) Main­tain aware­ness of Vol­un­tary Redund­ancy schemes as a poten­tial tool to deliv­er sig­ni­fic­ant struc­tur­al change and fin­an­cial sav­ings in staff levels in the medi­um to long term; g) Object­ive of con­tinu­ing the thrust of Human Resources policies to be seen as an excel­lent employ­er by its staff and also an employ­er seek­ing to recruit and retain staff with­in a dif­fi­cult, rur­al and eco­nom­ic­ally chal­len­ging mar­ket­place — deliv­er­ing a flex­ible, reward­ing and val­ued work­ing envir­on­ment to sup­port recruit­ment and reten­tion and deliv­er high staff sat­is­fac­tion as meas­ured by peri­od­ic staff surveys.

1. As such, the cov­er­age of the work­force man­age­ment strategy appears rel­at­ively com­pre­hens­ive as a guide to the Authority’s approach to our staff group and also to man­age the wider implic­a­tions of the organisation’s resource man­age­ment across staff, fin­an­cial, tech­no­logy and facil­it­ies investments.

Wider Work­force Man­age­ment Actions and Implications

1. The intern­al audit review high­lights fur­ther action is required on:

a) Suc­ces­sion plan­ning: high­light­ing key roles with­in the organ­isa­tion and determ­in­ing appro­pri­ate arrange­ments for cov­er­ing these roles in the event of a vacancy sud­denly arising; b) Skills and devel­op­ment: review approaches to identi­fy­ing the skills avail­able with­in the cur­rent staff group and the train­ing require­ments of cur­rent staff to both address the needs of cur­rent roles and wider organ­isa­tion­al skills gaps.

Suc­ces­sion Planning

1. Suc­ces­sion plan­ning is tra­di­tion­ally dif­fi­cult with­in the pub­lic sec­tor and the wider require­ments of that sec­tor to deliv­er equal­ity of oppor­tun­ity to job vacan­cies. This is of course a valu­able object­ive in itself, to ensure the Author­ity is at the fore­front of being an employ­er open to all. How­ever, it is often not com­ple­ment­ary to the notion of plan­ning for suc­ces­sion with­in the exist­ing staff group­ing. Nev­er­the­less, there is a great deal of mer­it in pur­su­ing the recom­mend­a­tion for action: it is very use­ful as an organ­isa­tion to identi­fy posts which are deemed to be ​“crit­ic­al” for vary­ing reas­ons and identi­fy­ing suc­ces­sion arrange­ments even for a short-term peri­od. Effect­ive suc­ces­sion plan­ning sup­ports intern­al train­ing and devel­op­ment pri­or­it­ies and staff reten­tion object­ives, giv­ing exist­ing staff the best pos­sible chance of pro­mo­tion or desired change in role, albeit through open com­pet­i­tion for posts.

2. A good cur­rent example of suc­cess­ful suc­ces­sion plan­ning can be seen in the Authority’s fin­ance and HR func­tions. The retire­ment of the pre­vi­ous Payroll Officer led to the redesign of the post to cre­ate a pos­i­tion for a train­ee account­ant, recog­nising the need for suc­ces­sion plan­ning around the Authority’s fin­an­cial and man­age­ment account­ing func­tions, in addi­tion to recog­nising the sig­ni­fic­ant increase in work­loads of this area in sup­port­ing large-scale extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects, while con­tinu­ing to deliv­er payroll ser­vices. We have now suc­cess­fully recruited and sup­por­ted the train­ing of the new Cor­por­ate Ser­vices Assist­ant, who has suc­cess­fully com­pleted their final exam­in­a­tion and now becomes a qual­i­fied account­ant, provid­ing suc­ces­sion with­in the fin­ance func­tion cur­rently covered by the Fin­ance Man­ager and Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices while still provid­ing core func­tions. Sim­il­arly, the HR Officer is under­tak­ing train­ing toward a pro­fes­sion­al HR qual­i­fic­a­tion while provid­ing sup­port to HR shared ser­vices pro­vi­sion for the Scot­tish Land Com­mis­sion, using income gen­er­ated from shared ser­vices to sup­port train­ing and suc­ces­sion plan­ning with­in this area of the business.

Skills and Development

1. The approach to mon­it­or­ing skills and determ­in­ing pri­or­ity devel­op­ment require­ments will be reviewed with­in our planned review of the Authority’s approach to staff apprais­al and review processes.

2. The planned dir­ec­tion of travel of this review is to move away from one or two staff meet­ings each year which are labelled as ​“apprais­al review” meet­ings, to ensur­ing that dia­logue between staff and their line man­agers on object­ives, deliv­ery, train­ing, work-life bal­ance and gen­er­al well-being is a reg­u­lar activ­ity through­out the year. We want to ensure that staff are sup­por­ted through­out the year, and also that work pri­or­it­ies and object­ives are reg­u­larly reviewed and revised if neces­sary, in order to sup­port wider object­ives of work­force flex­ib­il­ity and respons­ive­ness. We also want to ensure that the organ­isa­tion­al man­age­ment eth­os is focused on early iden­ti­fic­a­tion and res­ol­u­tion of issues, rather than them only being raised at meet­ings that are planned to hap­pen twice each year.

3. The HR team will ensure that the new apprais­al pro­cess is designed to cap­ture any key changes in skills and exper­i­ence of the staff group, and con­tin­ue to cap­ture the devel­op­ment­al require­ments expressed by both staff mem­bers and/​or their line man­agers. This will con­tin­ue to allow organ­isa­tion­al train­ing and devel­op­ment pro­grammes to be estab­lished, while provid­ing reg­u­lar updates on our inform­a­tion about the key skill­sets and exper­i­ence of our staff mem­bers should we need to deploy staff into new pro­ject activities.

Work­force Man­age­ment Risk Evaluation

1. We believe that the man­age­ment approaches out­lined in the earli­er sec­tions of this eval­u­ation estab­lishes that there are appro­pri­ate mit­ig­a­tion actions in place to man­age the stra­tegic risk iden­ti­fied at para­graph 1. The exist­ing stra­tegic risk itself, as expressed at para­graph 1, also remains val­id. The ​“stat­ic” or ​“amber” risk rat­ing for this risk also appears to remain appro­pri­ate as some of the under­pin­ning mit­ig­a­tion activ­ity and responses to intern­al audit recom­mend­a­tions remains at the early stages of development.

2. On fur­ther reflec­tion of the Authority’s cur­rent pos­i­tion, there also now appears to be a fur­ther stra­tegic risk to man­age res­ult­ing from our role as a lead body for a range of large-scale extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects. This risk area is around the Authority’s man­age­ment of the total staff group over the medi­um to long term in a man­ner that both respects our organ­isa­tion­al val­ues and aspir­a­tion to retain a motiv­ated staff group, while main­tain­ing an appro­pri­ate resource bal­ance between staff num­bers and fin­an­cial resource for invest­ment in pro­jects. The sug­ges­ted risk is that fail­ure to effect­ively man­age staff­ing num­bers in the long term will reduce the capa­city for the Author­ity to deploy adequate fin­an­cial invest­ment toward pri­or­ity pro­jects in the Nation­al Park. This addi­tion­al stra­tegic risk appears to encom­pass the remain­ing risk to be man­aged over the cur­rent Cor­por­ate Plan peri­od, while we can expect the risk of the stretch on staff resources from the extern­ally fun­ded pro­jects to begin to dimin­ish over time as these pro­jects come toward their end point and also the oth­er con­trol meas­ures iden­ti­fied provide pos­it­ive mit­ig­a­tion impacts.

3. A wider risk assess­ment around the mor­ale and motiv­a­tion of the staff group will be under­taken on the basis of the next staff sur­vey due in Autumn 2019. We do not cur­rently assess the gen­er­al mor­ale and motiv­a­tion of staff as a stra­tegic risk, fol­low­ing the pos­it­ive out­come of the 2017 staff sur­vey. While we have seen a steady turnover of staff over the last two years, exit inter­views sup­port a view that there are no under­ly­ing con­cerns around gen­er­al mor­ale or motiv­a­tion prompt­ing this turnover and nor, there­fore, is there reas­on to sig­nal a stra­tegic risk around these mat­ters at this stage. Staff absence and oth­er per­form­ance indic­at­ors also sup­port this pos­i­tion at this point in time.

Con­clu­sions and Risk Assessment

1. In con­clu­sion, there­fore, an addi­tion­al stra­tegic risk is sug­ges­ted as being added to the Authority’s risk register: fail­ure to effect­ively man­age staff­ing num­bers with a view to the long-term busi­ness need will reduce the capa­city for the Author­ity to deploy adequate fin­an­cial invest­ment toward pri­or­ity pro­jects in the Nation­al Park.

Risk Mit­ig­a­tion Recommendation

1. The deploy­ment of meas­ures already iden­ti­fied in the Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy will mit­ig­ate this risk, and in par­tic­u­lar the devel­op­ment of a long-term over­view identi­fy­ing key pres­sure points posed by cur­rent staff­ing and con­tracts asso­ci­ated with pro­jects sup­por­ted by fixed-term extern­al fund­ing and estab­lish­ing appro­pri­ate man­age­ment strategies to deal with these.

2. The Com­mit­tee is there­fore asked to endorse the inclu­sion of an addi­tion­al stra­tegic risk in the risk register as set out at para­graph 18.

Dav­id Cameron 26 Feb­ru­ary 2018 Davidcameron@​cairngorms.​co.​uk