Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority

INTERN­AL AUDIT REPORT

Staff Object­ive Set­ting & Appraisal

Novem­ber 2019

LEVEL OF ASSURANCE
Design	Oper­a­tion­al Effectiveness
Mod­er­ate	Mod­er­ate

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

IDEAS | PEOPLE | TRUST BDO

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CON­TENTS

Exec­ut­ive Sum­mary 3

Detailed Find­ings and Recom­mend­a­tions 5

Obser­va­tions 11

Appen­dices:

I Staff Inter­viewed 12

II Defin­i­tions 13

III Terms of Ref­er­ence 14

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

REPORT STATUS

Aud­it­ors: Gemma Macdonald

Dates work per­formed: 4 Novem­ber 2019 — 15 Novem­ber 2019

Draft report issued: 27 Novem­ber 2019

Final report issued: 17 Janu­ary 2020

DIS­TRI­BU­TION LIST

Dav­id Camer­on Dir­ect­or of Cor­por­ate Services

Kate Christie Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development

Mem­bers of the Audit Committee

Restric­tions of use

The mat­ters raised in this report are only those which came to our atten­tion dur­ing the course of our audit and are not neces­sar­ily a com­pre­hens­ive state­ment of all the weak­nesses that exist or all improve­ments that might be made. The report has been pre­pared solely for the man­age­ment of the organ­isa­tion and should not be quoted in whole or in part without our pri­or writ­ten con­sent. BDO LLP neither owes nor accepts any duty to any third party wheth­er in con­tract or in tort and shall not be liable, in respect of any loss, dam­age or expense which is caused by their reli­ance on this report. 2

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EXEC­UT­IVE SUMMARY

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

LEVEL OF ASSUR­ANCE (SEE APPENDIX II FOR DEFINITIONS)
Design	Gen­er­ally a sound sys­tem of intern­al con­trol designed to achieve sys­tem object­ives with some exceptions.
Effect­ive­ness	Evid­ence of non com­pli­ance with some con­trols, that may put some of the sys­tem object­ives at risk.

SUM­MARY OF RECOM­MEND­A­TIONS (SEE APPENDIX II)
High
Medi­um	1
Low	3
Total num­ber of recom­mend­a­tions: 4

OVER­VIEW

Back­ground

In accord­ance with the 2019 – 20 Intern­al Audit Plan, it was agreed that Intern­al Audit would review the design and oper­at­ing effect­ive­ness of the con­trols in place at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity (‘the Author­ity’) sur­round­ing arrange­ments for staff object­ive set­ting and appraisals.

The Author­ity have imple­men­ted a new approach to the staff object­ive set­ting and apprais­al pro­cess over the past year. This was as a res­ult of a work­shop held by Pro­ject Scot­land and atten­ded by the Authority’s Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment; the work­shop focussed on the dif­fer­ing work­ing styles asso­ci­ated with each gen­er­a­tion­al group and found that that the mil­len­ni­al work­force, which now makes up a large pro­por­tion of the Authority’s employ­ees, prefers to receive real time feed­back. Fol­low­ing con­sulta­tion with staff, it was found that the pre­vi­ous approach which involved an annu­al apprais­al was felt to be too cum­ber­some due to the large amount of asso­ci­ated paper­work and that it caused employ­ees undue work and admin­is­trat­ive pres­sure. The Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment there­fore decided that a more effect­ive approach would involve an ongo­ing dia­logue between staff and their line man­agers regard­ing per­form­ance with real time feed­back offered.

A Per­form­ance Man­age­ment Policy is now in place which reflects the new approach; the policy was presen­ted to the Staff Con­sulta­tion For­um on which the Staff­ing and Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee is rep­res­en­ted; minutes and feed­back of these meet­ings are there­fore fed back to the Board. The policy emphas­ises that to be effect­ive, the approach to per­form­ance man­age­ment should be con­tinu­ous and inter­act­ive; and that reg­u­lar, pos­it­ive, open and con­struct­ive dia­logue is required between employ­ees and their line manager.

The first step of the frame­work is for employ­ees to pre­pare a Job Plan in con­sulta­tion with their line man­ager. The Job Plan is a doc­u­ment which sets out the object­ives for each employ­ee for the cur­rent year and against which their per­form­ance will be mon­itored. In devel­op­ing the Job Plan, the job descrip­tion for that par­tic­u­lar role and the Cor­por­ate Plan for the Author­ity will be considered.

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EXEC­UT­IVE SUMMARY

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

OVER­VIEW

Employ­ees will then agree with their Man­ager a set of object­ives, activ­it­ies to deliv­er the object­ive, a times­cale for deliv­ery and meas­ures of suc­cess. The Job Plan is required by the policy to be com­pleted each April and is to be signed off by the Line Manager.

Staff mem­bers are then to have a Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tion (PDC) with their Line Man­ager every 4 – 6 weeks at which per­form­ance against their Job Plan is to be dis­cussed. Employ­ees are encour­aged to take respons­ib­il­ity for their own per­son­al devel­op­ment and hence the arrange­ment and con­tent of these meet­ings is at the dis­cre­tion of the indi­vidu­al employ­ee and their Line Man­ager but the Policy notes that the Job Plan should be dis­cussed at every PDC. Sug­ges­tions of top­ics for dis­cus­sion at PDCs are provided with­in the Policy and also on a tem­plate PDC form that is provided by the Author­ity. The PDC form is an aide rather than a require­ment as the Policy spe­cifies that PDCs do not need to be recor­ded except where an employ­ee is being man­aged for pay pro­gres­sion or for per­form­ance improve­ment. For employ­ees pro­gress­ing through the salary scale for their grade, there must be at least one doc­u­mented PDC each year, usu­ally between Janu­ary and March to coin­cide with the pay award. Where the PDC has been recor­ded, the form is to be signed by an employ­ee and their man­ager, then counter signed by anoth­er manager.

There were sev­er­al steps taken to com­mu­nic­ate the new per­form­ance man­age­ment pro­cess to staff. The new policy was brought to the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um for review and feed­back pri­or to imple­ment­a­tion. A post was then made on the intranet in March 2019 announ­cing the new approach and provid­ing links to the policy, FAQs, Job Plan Tem­plate and PDC forms. The Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment delivered a present­a­tion on the new pro­cess to all staff in May 2019 and then atten­ded team meet­ings to answer any ques­tions relat­ing to the new pro­cess and also offered one to one ses­sions for any staff who missed the ori­gin­al presentation.

Line Mangers do not receive spe­cif­ic train­ing on deliv­er­ing apprais­als, how­ever, all man­agers at the Author­ity attend a bespoke man­ager train­ing work­shop which cov­ers skills rel­ev­ant to the per­form­ance man­age­ment pro­cess. The work­shop is delivered on an annu­al basis and the last ses­sion ​“Man­aging with Impact” was delivered by the firm Wild Think­ing, team devel­op­ment spe­cial­ists. Some of the skills included in the train­ing include; man­aging chal­len­ging beha­viours, hav­ing dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions, and coach­ing staff. In advance of the ses­sion, the Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment met with staff to go through the rel­ev­ant policies, which included Per­form­ance Management.

Scope and Approach

The scope of our review was to assess whether:

• There is a per­form­ance apprais­al and object­ive set­ting pro­cess and man­age­ment framework;

• There are policies and pro­ced­ures in rela­tion to staff apprais­als and object­ive set­ting; 4

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EXEC­UT­IVE SUMMARY

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

OVER­VIEW

• The appro­pri­ate­ness of pro­cesses in place, includ­ing review of estab­lished per­form­ance attrib­utes for spe­cif­ic grades and job role types;
• There is train­ing and guid­ance provided to staff and management;
• Per­form­ance reviews are timely;
• Actions and object­ives are set and monitored;
• Per­form­ance reports are gen­er­ated to sup­port the apprais­al pro­cess and ongo­ing man­age­ment of staff; and
• Staff views are soli­cited to provide a per­spect­ive on the apprais­al and object­ive set­ting sys­tem in place with­in the Authority.

Our approach was to con­duct inter­views to estab­lish the con­trols in oper­a­tion for each of our areas of audit work. We then sought doc­u­ment­ary evid­ence that these con­trols are designed as described. We then eval­u­ated these con­trols to identi­fy wheth­er they adequately address the risks.

Fur­ther, we sought to gain evid­ence of the sat­is­fact­ory oper­a­tion of the con­trols to veri­fy the effect­ive­ness of the con­trol through use of a range of tools and techniques.

Dur­ing the review we kept man­age­ment informed of any issues which arose as a res­ult of our testing.

A de-brief meet­ing was under­taken over the phone.

Good Prac­tice:

Dur­ing our review, we iden­ti­fied a num­ber of areas of good prac­tice as follows:

• There is an appro­pri­ate frame­work in place for the object­ive set­ting and apprais­al pro­cess which is clearly doc­u­mented in the Per­form­ance Man­age­ment Framework;

• There is a clear timetable in place for the per­form­ance man­age­ment pro­cess which is com­mu­nic­ated to staff through the Per­form­ance Man­age­ment Policy;

• Staff are encour­aged to form­ally dis­cuss their per­form­ance with man­agers every 4 – 6 weeks;

• Line Man­agers have received train­ing in man­age­ment skills which are rel­ev­ant to the apprais­al pro­cess; 5

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EXEC­UT­IVE SUMMARY

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

OVER­VIEW

• All employ­ees inter­viewed had a job plan in place with estab­lished per­form­ance tar­gets that are rel­ev­ant to the achieve­ment of the Authority’s object­ives; and
• On the whole, employ­ees inter­viewed felt that the new approach to object­ive set­ting and apprais­als was an improve­ment and allowed a fair and reflect­ive assess­ment of their per­form­ance wherein they could be more relaxed.

Key Find­ings

Not­with­stand­ing the areas of good prac­tice noted above, we also iden­ti­fied a num­ber of oppor­tun­it­ies for improve­ment in the object­ive set­ting and apprais­al pro­cess as follows:

• Occur­rence of Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tions: not all mem­bers of staff are arran­ging PDCs with their line man­agers in accord­ance with the Per­form­ance Man­age­ment Policy;
• Job Plan Align­ment with Cor­por­ate Plan: Job Plans do not make spe­cif­ic men­tion of the Cor­por­ate Plan or identi­fy where staff object­ives align to Author­ity objectives;
• Job Plan Sign Off: the sec­tion of the Job Plan which requires the date of man­age­ment sign off was not com­pleted consistently;
• Per­form­ance Eval­u­ation Report­ing: the Author­ity do not under­take any report­ing on the out­come of the per­form­ance man­age­ment process.

Con­clu­sion

We can provide mod­er­ate assur­ance over the design and oper­a­tion­al effect­ive­ness of the object­ive set­ting and apprais­al pro­cess at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity. 6

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EXEC­UT­IVE SUMMARY

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

RISKS REVIEWED GIV­ING RISE TO NO FIND­INGS OF A HIGH OR MEDI­UM SIGNIFICANCE

• An appro­pri­ate object­ive set­ting and apprais­al frame­work may not be defined and oper­at­ing across the authority.
• A clear timetable for the annu­al apprais­al and object­ive set­ting pro­cess may not have been set and com­mu­nic­ated to staff.
• Apprais­ing Man­agers may not have received adequate train­ing to sup­port them in their apprais­al role.
• Per­form­ance attrib­utes have not been estab­lished for spe­cif­ic grades and job role types.
• Per­form­ance attrib­utes may not have been developed to sup­port the achieve­ment of the Authority’s objectives.
• Per­form­ance attrib­utes and require­ments may not have been clearly com­mu­nic­ated to mem­bers of staff.
• Tar­get levels of per­form­ance may not have been estab­lished, recor­ded and approved for each mem­ber of staff.
• The apprais­al pro­cess may not sup­port an object­ive review of per­form­ance against indi­vidu­al aims and object­ives. Assess­ments may not be fair or reflect­ive of true performance.
• There may be inad­equate report­ing to identi­fy both the extent and out­come of the per­form­ance eval­u­ation pro­cess. 7

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EXEC­UT­IVE SUMMARY

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT
Ref.	Sig.	Find­ing Summary	Recom­mend­a­tion
1		We found that not all mem­bers of staff were arran­ging reg­u­lar per­form­ance devel­op­ment con­ver­sa­tions with their line man­agers in accord­ance with the require­ments of the Per­form­ance Man­age­ment Policy.	It is our recom­mend­a­tion that CNPA pro­ceed with their inten­tion to begin car­ry­ing out ran­dom spot checks on the diar­ies of staff mem­bers and line man­agers to ensure that they have arranged Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tions. We also recom­mend that HR send out an email to all staff every six weeks remind­ing them to arrange a Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tion with their line man­ager if they haven’t already.

All our find­ings and recom­mend­a­tions are set out in the fol­low­ing pages and include those of low sig­ni­fic­ance which have not been sum­mar­ised above. 8

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DETAILED RECOM­MEND­A­TIONS

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

RISK: Staff may not have adequate oppor­tun­it­ies through­out the year to dis­cuss their per­form­ance form­ally with their managers.

Ref.	Find­ing	Sig.	Recom­mend­a­tion
1	It is import­ant that employ­ees have reg­u­lar oppor­tun­it­ies to dis­cuss their per­form­ance form­ally with their line man­ager. Our inter­views with staff mem­bers iden­ti­fied that not all mem­bers of staff were arran­ging reg­u­lar per­form­ance devel­op­ment con­ver­sa­tions with their line man­agers in accord­ance with the require­ments of the Per­form­ance Man­age­ment Policy. There is a risk that staff are not adher­ing to the policy and as a res­ult may not be receiv­ing reg­u­lar feed­back on their per­form­ance or dir­ec­tion on how they can con­trib­ute to the Authority’s object­ives. Per­form­ance issues and oppor­tun­it­ies for devel­op­ment may not be iden­ti­fied and staff may not have an oppor­tun­ity to voice any con­cerns they may have.		We recom­mend that CNPA pro­ceed with their inten­tion to begin car­ry­ing out ran­dom spot checks on the diar­ies of staff mem­bers and line man­agers to ensure that they have arranged Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tions. We also recom­mend that HR send out an email to all staff every six weeks remind­ing them to arrange a Per­form­ance Devel­op­ment Con­ver­sa­tion with their line man­ager if they haven’t already. Finally, we recom­mend that employ­ees retain records of the dates on which they had PDCs to provide vis­ib­il­ity that con­ver­sa­tions are being car­ried out.

MAN­AGE­MENT RESPONSE	RESPONS­IB­IL­ITY AND IMPLE­MENT­A­TION DATE
Agreed. We pro­pose adding a box on the flexi sheet (which all staff and man­agers sign off on 4‑weekly cycles) in which to add the date of a per­form­ance apprais­al con­ver­sa­tion if one took place in that 4 week peri­od. This will also make it easy for HR to sample when we are also check­ing for sign off of the timesheet itself.	Respons­ible Officer: Kate Christie Imple­ment­a­tion Date: Janu­ary 2020

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DETAILED RECOM­MEND­A­TIONS

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

RISK: Per­form­ance attrib­utes may not have been developed to sup­port the achieve­ment of the Authority’s objectives.

Ref.	Find­ing	Sig.	Recom­mend­a­tion
2	It is import­ant that per­form­ance object­ives align to the Cor­por­ate Plan in order to ensure that staff are mak­ing a defined con­tri­bu­tion to the Authority’s object­ives. Whilst we found that the Cor­por­ate Plan is con­sidered by staff dur­ing the devel­op­ment of Job Plans and that object­ives on the whole were in align­ment with the Cor­por­ate Plan, the Job Plans make no men­tion of the Cor­por­ate Plan or its pri­or­it­ies. There is a risk that staff may have set object­ives which are not in pur­suit of the Authority’s object­ives as job plans do not require a spe­cif­ic link to the Cor­por­ate Plan.		We recom­mend that a field is added to the Job Plan tem­plate which requires object­ives to be ref­er­enced to the rel­ev­ant pri­or­ity from the Cor­por­ate Plan.

MAN­AGE­MENT RESPONSE	RESPONS­IB­IL­ITY AND IMPLE­MENT­A­TION DATE
Agreed.	Respons­ible Officer: Kate Christie Imple­ment­a­tion Date: Janu­ary 2020

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DETAILED RECOM­MEND­A­TIONS

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

RISK: Tar­get levels of per­form­ance may not have been estab­lished, recor­ded and approved for each mem­ber of staff.

Ref.	Find­ing	Sig.	Recom­mend­a­tion
3	Under the new pro­cess, it is import­ant that mem­bers of staff have tar­get levels of per­form­ance in place that have been appro­pri­ately reviewed and signed off by man­age­ment. Dur­ing our test­ing, we found that the sec­tion of the Job Plan which requires the date of man­age­ment sign off to be recor­ded was not com­pleted con­sist­ently. There is a risk that staff may not have agreed per­form­ance tar­gets in place for the begin­ning of the year, this may threaten the achieve­ment of Author­ity objectives.		We recom­mend that line man­agers are reminded of the import­ance of prop­erly record­ing their review and approv­al of job plans. Ran­dom spot checks should be car­ried out by HR to check that job plans are in place and have been appro­pri­ately reviewed and signed off by man­age­ment, includ­ing the date of sign off.

MAN­AGE­MENT RESPONSE	RESPONS­IB­IL­ITY AND IMPLE­MENT­A­TION DATE
Agreed.	Respons­ible Officer: Kate Christie Imple­ment­a­tion Date: Imme­di­ate and on-going

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DETAILED RECOM­MEND­A­TIONS

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

RISK: There may be inad­equate report­ing to identi­fy both the extent and out­come of the per­form­ance eval­u­ation process.

Ref.	Find­ing	Sig.	Recom­mend­a­tion
4	It is import­ant that the res­ults of the per­form­ance man­age­ment pro­cess are mon­itored and repor­ted on to facil­it­ate improve­ment from les­sons learned. The Author­ity have not his­tor­ic­ally under­taken any report­ing on the object­ive set­ting and apprais­al pro­cess. There is a risk that seni­or man­age­ment are not being provided with any mean­ing­ful man­age­ment inform­a­tion in rela­tion to the apprais­al pro­cess. There is also a risk that there could be unknown issues such as non- com­pli­ance with the pro­cess that are not iden­ti­fied or acted on by the Author­ity if there is not suf­fi­cient over­sight of the process.		It is our recom­mend­a­tion that the Seni­or Man­age­ment Team out­line what their expect­a­tions are in respect of the out­comes of the per­form­ance man­age­ment pro­cess and pro­duce an annu­al report on the out­comes of the object­ive set­ting and apprais­al pro­cess for present­a­tion to the Recruit­ment Com­mit­tee. This report should cov­er the degree of com­pli­ance with the pro­cess and details of any con­cerns iden­ti­fied in order to assess the ongo­ing effect­ive­ness of the per­form­ance man­age­ment process.

MAN­AGE­MENT RESPONSE	RESPONS­IB­IL­ITY AND IMPLE­MENT­A­TION DATE
Agreed	Respons­ible Officer: Kate Christie Imple­ment­a­tion Date: Decem­ber will be the report schedule

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

APPENDIX I — STAFF INTERVIEWED

NAME	JOB TITLE	NAME	JOB TITLE
Kate Christie	Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development	Lucy Ford	Con­ser­va­tion Engage­ment Officer — Con­ser­va­tions & Vis­it­or Experience
Laura Byers	PA to Directors	Dot Har­ris	Sup­port Officer — Plan­ning and Rur­al Development
Alis­on Fleming	Com­mu­nic­a­tions Officer

BDO LLP appre­ci­ates the time provided by all the indi­vidu­als involved in this review and would like to thank them for their assist­ance and cooper­a­tion. 13

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

APPENDIX II — DEFINITIONS

LEVEL OF ASSUR­ANCE	DESIGN of intern­al con­trol frame­work	OPER­A­TION­AL EFFECT­IVE­NESS of intern­al controls
	Find­ings from review	Design Opin­ion	Find­ings from review	Effect­ive­ness Opinion
Sub­stan­tial	Appro­pri­ate pro­ced­ures and con­trols in place to mit­ig­ate the key risks.	There is a sound sys­tem of intern­al con­trol designed to achieve sys­tem objectives.	No, or only minor, excep­tions found in test­ing of the pro­ced­ures and controls.	The con­trols that are in place are being con­sist­ently applied.
Mod­er­ate	In the main there are appro­pri­ate pro­ced­ures and con­trols in place to mit­ig­ate the key risks reviewed albeit with some that are not fully effective.	Gen­er­ally a sound sys­tem of intern­al con­trol designed to achieve sys­tem object­ives with some exceptions.	A small num­ber of excep­tions found in test­ing of the pro­ced­ures and controls.	Evid­ence of non com­pli­ance with some con­trols, that may put some of the sys­tem object­ives at risk.
Lim­ited	A num­ber of sig­ni­fic­ant gaps iden­ti­fied in the pro­ced­ures and con­trols in key areas. Where prac­tic­al, efforts should be made to address in-year.	Sys­tem of intern­al con­trols is weakened with sys­tem object­ives at risk of not being achieved.	A num­ber of reoc­cur­ring excep­tions found in test­ing of the pro­ced­ures and con­trols. Where prac­tic­al, efforts should be made to address in-year.	Non-com­pli­ance with key pro­ced­ures and con­trols places the sys­tem object­ives at risk.
No	For all risk areas there are sig­ni­fic­ant gaps in the pro­ced­ures and con­trols. Fail­ure to address in-year affects the qual­ity of the organisation’s over­all intern­al con­trol framework.	Poor sys­tem of intern­al control.	Due to absence of effect­ive con­trols and pro­ced­ures, no reli­ance can be placed on their oper­a­tion. Fail­ure to address in-year affects the qual­ity of the organisation’s over­all intern­al con­trol framework.	Non com­pli­ance and/​or com­pli­ance with inad­equate controls.

Recom­mend­a­tion Significance

| HIGH | A weak­ness where there is sub­stan­tial risk of loss, fraud, impro­pri­ety, poor value for money, or fail­ure to achieve organ­isa­tion­al object­ives. Such risk could lead to an adverse impact on the busi­ness. Remedi­al action must be taken urgently. | | MEDI­UM | A weak­ness in con­trol which, although not fun­da­ment­al, relates to short­com­ings which expose indi­vidu­al busi­ness sys­tems to a less imme­di­ate level of threat­en­ing risk or poor value for money. Such a risk could impact on oper­a­tion­al object­ives and should be of con­cern to seni­or man­age­ment and requires prompt spe­cif­ic action. | | LOW | Areas that indi­vidu­ally have no sig­ni­fic­ant impact, but where man­age­ment would bene­fit from improved con­trols and/​or have the oppor­tun­ity to achieve great­er effect­ive­ness and/​or effi­ciency. | 14

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

APPENDIX III — TERMS OF REFERENCE

BACK­GROUND

In accord­ance with the 2019 – 20 Intern­al Audit Plan, it was agreed that Intern­al Audit would review the design and oper­at­ing effect­ive­ness of the con­trols in place at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity sur­round­ing arrange­ments for staff object­ive set­ting and appraisals.

PUR­POSE OF REVIEW

The pur­pose of this review is to provide man­age­ment and the Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee with assur­ance that Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity has well designed, effect­ive con­trols in place in rela­tion to their staff object­ive set­ting and apprais­als. We will assess wheth­er the Author­ity has effect­ive staff object­ive set­ting and apprais­al arrange­ments in place. As part of this review, we will also fol­low up on pro­gress in man­aging and updat­ing a staff skills register, which was raised in the Resource Plan­ning intern­al audit review (August 20118).

KEY RISKS

Based upon the risk assess­ment under­taken dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the intern­al audit oper­a­tion­al plan, through dis­cus­sions with man­age­ment, and our col­lect­ive audit know­ledge and under­stand­ing the key risks asso­ci­ated with the area under review are:

• An appro­pri­ate object­ive set­ting and apprais­al frame­work may not be defined and oper­at­ing across the Authority;
• A clear timetable for the annu­al apprais­al and object­ive set­ting pro­cess may not have been set and com­mu­nic­ated to staff;
• Staff may not have adequate oppor­tun­it­ies through­out the year to dis­cuss their per­form­ance form­ally with their managers;
• Apprais­ing man­agers may not have received adequate train­ing to sup­port them in their apprais­al role;
• Per­form­ance attrib­utes have not been estab­lished for spe­cif­ic grades and job role types;
• Per­form­ance attrib­utes may not have been developed to sup­port the achieve­ment of the Authority’s objectives;
• Per­form­ance attrib­utes and require­ments may not have been clearly com­mu­nic­ated to mem­bers of staff;
• Tar­get levels of per­form­ance may not have been estab­lished, recor­ded and approved for each mem­ber of staff;
• The apprais­al pro­cess may not sup­port an object­ive review of per­form­ance against indi­vidu­al aims and object­ives. Assess­ments may not be fair or reflect­ive of true per­form­ance; and
• There may be inad­equate report­ing to identi­fy both the extent and out­come of the per­form­ance eval­u­ation pro­cess. 15

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper | Annex 1 27/03/20

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