211029ResourcesCtteePaper3DRAFTSCFMinutesV1 0

RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE Paper 3 29/10/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum

Held via Lifes­ize 11:00am, on Monday 27 Septem­ber 2021

Present Dav­id Camer­on (Chair) Kate Christie Richard Hardy (Pro­spect Rep)(arrived late) Pip Mack­ie Adam Streeter-Smith Ed Swales Heath­er Trench

Apo­lo­gies Car­o­lyn Cad­dick Deirdre Fal­con­er Mat­thew Hawkins

Item 1: Wel­come and Apologies

1. The Chair wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing. Apo­lo­gies were received from the above people.

Items 2: Minutes of Last Meet­ing & Action Points

1. The minutes from the pre­vi­ous SCF were approved and the action points updated.
2. It was agreed that Dav­id Camer­on, Kate Christie and Pip Mack­ie would go through the out­stand­ing action points before the next meeting.

Item 3: Paper 1: Office Return Pro­ject Consultation

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the item, she explained that there had been a sub­sequent option developed — Option 4 which was miss­ing from the doc­u­ments cir­cu­lated to SCF as this had been cir­cu­lated to staff later and invited feedback.
2. The fol­low­ing feed­back was provided:

RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE Paper 3 29/10/21

a) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion to what extent the days in the office would be spe­cified by the organ­isa­tion or by per­son­al choice. KC respon­ded that these would be reached in agree­ment between the employ­ee and line man­ager, but any pat­tern had to work for both the organ­isa­tion and the indi­vidu­al. The CNPA were not going down a pre­script­ive route. HR would only be involved where an agree­ment could not be reached. A request that this be included in the paper. b) The need to ensure that staff are aware that they may be required to attend the office on any of their work­ing days for meet­ings etc. DC respon­ded that staff would be expec­ted to attend the office when man­age­ment had a val­id organisational/​team reas­on for doing so, and that there would be no ini­tial con­trac­tu­al changes, with the approach being reviewed after 6 months and a full review after a year. KC replied that the approach relied on staff being flex­ible and appre­ci­at­ing that there may be times when people have to work in the office on days they may typ­ic­ally have chosen to be work­ing from home. c) ​‘Bank­ing’ of home work­ing days. DC advised that an ele­ment of flex­ib­il­ity was required, with the bal­ance of office/​home work­ing being assessed through­out the over­arch­ing flexi peri­od. d) It was recog­nised that it was key that line man­agers approached the con­sid­er­a­tions of staff work­ing pref­er­ences in a con­sist­ent man­ner, even if the out­come was that there were vari­ations of staff deploy­ment between remote and office loc­a­tions for ser­vice and busi­ness reas­ons. e) If staff and their line man­agers struggle to reach a mutu­ally agree­able work­ing pref­er­ences pat­tern and HR were involved to sup­port the pro­cess, the involve­ment of HR to not be seen as a neg­at­ive. KC agreed with this state­ment and advised that the HR team were happy to sup­port staff with this. f) Office based time not to be seen as assumed/​easier for staff liv­ing in GoS (due to the dis­tance to the office) and there­fore more require­ment for them attend­ing the office. DC respon­ded that there needed to be a rationale for staff being in the office wherever based, to get the most out of both team and the office space and this could vary on a weekly basis.

1. Dav­id Camer­on (DC) thanked every­one for respond­ing to the con­sulta­tion and attend­ing the drop in ses­sions. He also con­veyed thanks to the pro­ject team for all the work done. Kate Christie thanked every­one for their feedback.

Item 4: Paper 2: Com­plaints Hand­ling Policy

1. Kate Christie intro­duced the papers and invited feedback.
2. The fol­low­ing feed­back was provided:

a) Where com­plaints are received regard­ing out­door access issues, these would not be seen as a com­plaint against the CNPA. KC respon­ded that the com­plaints pro­ced­ure being dis­cussed was sep­ar­ate to rep­res­ent­a­tions made for access or plan­ning issues. b) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion at what point would a rep­res­ent­a­tion to an access / plan­ning issue become a com­plaint against the organ­isa­tion. DC respon­ded that this would be reli­ant on indi­vidu­al staff judge­ment, but it was recom­men­ded to be expli­cit in 2

RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE Paper 3 29/10/21

cor­res­pond­ence with mem­bers of the pub­lic e.g. any fur­ther cor­res­pond­ence will be treated as a com­plaint rather than through the stat­utory pro­cess. DC also advised that com­plaints aren’t to be seen neg­at­ively but high­light­ing areas that are caus­ing dis­sat­is­fac­tion and spot­light­ing where improve­ments can be made in the CNPA’s ser­vice provision.

1. Kate Christie thanked every­one for their feedback.

Item 5: H&S Update

1. KC advised staff that the H&S Com­mit­tee con­tin­ued to meet quarterly. The mem­bers are: Mark Pocock, Vicky Walk­er, Alan Smith, Pip Mack­ie and Kate Christie. KC advised that the Resources Com­mit­tee had over­sight of the minutes and are avail­able for staff to access on the R drive.
2. A staff rep raised the recent Fire Mar­shall train­ing course and felt that the train­ing could have been delivered with more con­tent and in a more time effect­ive way. Pip Mack­ie respon­ded that all feed­back was wel­come and that a train­ing eval­u­ation form would be sent to all par­ti­cipants for their input, as this helped to shape future events.
3. A staff rep raised the issue of Columbia uni­form and PPE. They reques­ted that as the Columbia spon­sor­ship deal would end in due course, would it be pos­sible to look at both uni­form and PPE require­ments and find a pro­vider that could cov­er both these options. KC replied that PPE kit is cur­rently avail­able sep­ar­ately from the Columbia kit, should a high­er spec of item be required. DC advised that the timeline for the Columbia spon­sor­ship would need to be looked at and how to move for­ward would be picked up in due course.

Item 6: Leadership

1. DC advised that there had been a change to the Com­mit­tee struc­ture at Board level. Com­mit­tees now covered Resources (fin­ance, staff etc.), Per­form­ance (assur­ance role regard­ing the deliv­ery of third party fun­ded pro­jects e.g. TGLP / CCP etc.); Gov­ernance and Audit & Risk
2. DC was cur­rently work­ing on a Gov­ernance Respons­ib­il­ity Frame­work, which looked at provid­ing more clar­ity around stra­tegic Board decisions and those taken at an oper­a­tion­al level.
3. KC provided an update on staff turnover. Since Nov 20 to Sept 21, there had been 45 posts recruited, of which 14 went to intern­al appoint­ments. This was a pos­it­ive story as it showed that the organ­isa­tion had cre­ated open­ings for career devel­op­ment, some­thing which pre­vi­ously had been high­lighted as hav­ing ​‘lim­ited oppor­tun­it­ies’ in the Best Com­pan­ies staff survey.
4. Richard Hardy joined the meet­ing. 3

Item 7: Equal­it­ies RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE Paper 3 29/10/21

1. KC advised that some of this work had been delayed due to Cov­id-19 but that it was now a pri­or­ity. KC provided an update on the Equal­it­ies work which had either been star­ted or was planned for implementation:

a) The Main­stream­ing Report was required to be pub­lished every 4 years and updated every 2 years. The most recent ver­sion had been pub­lished in April 2021. CNPA, togeth­er with a num­ber of organ­isa­tions had approached the Equal­ity and Human Rights Com­mis­sion for an exten­sion to the April 21 dead­line, due to Cov­id 19. This had not been gran­ted, as the Com­mis­sion felt that minor­ity groups had been dis­ad­vant­aged by the pan­dem­ic and there­fore it was even more import­ant for these doc­u­ments to be pub­lished. It was recog­nised that although the report that was pub­lished covered what was required to ensure com­pli­ance with the PSED, it was not an enga­ging of doc­u­ment and was bare of ima­gess. Vanessa Alt­weck was cur­rently work­ing on improv­ing the presentation/​appearance of the report to include infograms, case stud­ies, graphs etc. and make it more enga­ging. It would go to the Resources Com­mit­tee in Feb­ru­ary and then be presen­ted to the Board in March b) The Borad Resources Com­mit­tee has over­sight of the bien­nu­al reports, but it was agreed these reports would also be presen­ted to full board. In addi­tion, Resources Com­mit­tee would get an annu­al update of the deliv­ery of the Equal­ity Out­comes.. c) The Equal­it­ies Advis­ory Pan­el had now been in place for a year and met monthly. Mem­bers were a mix of experts and enthu­si­asts who advise on a range of equal­ity issues. Cur­rently look­ing to recruit more mem­bers and staff are wel­come to attend meet­ings. d) In the pro­cess of devel­op­ing an intern­al equal­it­ies advocacy group. There had been one pre­vi­ously but this had dropped off at the same time as Inclus­ive Cairngorms. Cur­rently draft­ing the Terms of Refernce, in terms of which the group would seek to have rep­res­ent­at­ives from across the dif­fer­ent teams, includ­ing Con­ser­va­tion, Land Man­age­ment, Comms, Cor­por­ate Ser­vices, Vis­it­or Ser­vices, Rangers, Plan­ning. In addi­tion it may include Staff who felt they rep­res­en­ted a minor­ity and the group would be a space to share views and inform the work of the organ­isa­tion. KC advised that there would be some mem­bers of staff who, due to their roles or respons­ib­il­it­ies, would be ​‘ex offi­cio’ or auto­mat­ic mem­bers of the group. After dis­cus­sion, it was agreed that it would be most appro­pri­ate for the mem­bers of the group to decide if a mem­ber from SMT would also sit on the group. KC advised that after the Terms of Ref­er­ence had been com­pleted, they would go to SMT for approv­al and a request for volun­teers to join the group sent out. e) It was recog­nised that the last sub­stan­tial equal­it­ies train­ing had been car­ried out some­time ago, although ELMS online equal­ity train­ing was cur­rently required to be car­ried out on join­ing the CNP and then refreshed every 2 years. There­fore, a train­ing brief was cur­rently being developed to pro­cure a pro­gramme of equal­it­ies train­ing, this would focus less of the legis­lat­ive frame­work, and more on lived exper­i­ences of equal­ity issues and all staff and Board Mem­bers would be required to attend. A com­mit­ment had been made to deliv­er this with­in the cur­rent fin­an­cial year and the inten­tion was still to meet this times­cale. A 4

RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE Paper 3 29/10/21 sug­ges­tion was made that the equal­it­ies advocacy group be formed before organ­ising the train­ing, so that mem­bers could be con­sul­ted and be involved in this work. Recog­ni­tion from staff that it was more import­ant to get the train­ing right than deliv­er with­in this fin­an­cial year. f) It was recog­nised that the CNPA was a small organ­isa­tion and poten­tially had a small num­ber of people rep­res­ent­ing dif­fer­ent minor­ity groups. Dis­cus­sions were being held with NatureScot to explore if CNPA staff could join their staff sup­port net­work groups. A sug­ges­tion was made that if no pro­gress was made with NS to con­sider look­ing at oth­er organ­isa­tions who may be able to offer this opportunity.

1. A staff rep provided feed­back on equal­it­ies that had been received from a small group of people. The delay on equal­it­ies work due to Cov­id being under­stood but dis­ap­point­ment expressed at the post­pone­ment, as minor­ity groups had been dis­ad­vant­aged due to the pan­dem­ic. DC replied that the dis­ap­point­ment was acknow­ledged, the delay was due to oth­er organ­isa­tion­al pri­or­it­ies and not an unwill­ing­ness to pro­gress the work.

Item 8: AOB 35 Hour Week:

1. DC advised that this was still on the radar as part of a future pay remit. Staff would be con­sul­ted on this issue. How­ever, it was not felt to be appro­pri­ate to con­sult with staff at the same time as the return to the office project.

Act­ive Travel:

1. The return to the office pro­ject being a good oppor­tun­ity to embed act­ive travel and sup­port staff with provid­ing lock­ers, dry­ing areas, pro­mot­ing cycle to work scheme etc.
2. KC replied that the bath­room in No 16 was to be con­ver­ted into a dry­ing room. How­ever, due to build­ers being incred­ibly busy this hadn’t yet taken place. It was pro­posed that the office next door to the bath­room (Will Boyd Wal­lis’ old office) could be a tem­por­ary area for leav­ing kit.
3. KC advised that at the present time, due to the clean­ing sched­ule and avail­ab­il­ity of the clean­ing staff, it was not pos­sible for showers to be used as this was con­sidered to be too high a Cov­id risk. This could be looked at going for­ward as it was recog­nised that it was a bar­ri­er to act­ive travel.
4. DC advised that staff were able to use the ​‘act­ive’ flexi cred­it and this could be used whilst home work­ing, where staff would have shower­ing facil­it­ies avail­able to them.

Propsect Update:

1. Richard Hardy gave an update on Pro­spect. He advised that it was good to see the hybrid work plan pro­gress­ing. Work is start­ing on next years pub­lic sec­tor pay remit, with the budget due to be announced in Decem­ber. Work is being done on the ​‘right to dis­con­nect’ cam­paign, which is explor­ing what good looks like when access­ing work out­with nor­mal work hours.

Staff Reps: 5

RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE Paper 3 29/10/21

1. Pip Mack­ie advised that the call for SCF staff reps had been delayed from March due to the pan­dem­ic. It was agreed that the call for staff reps would be cir­cu­lated to staff.
2. The meet­ing con­cluded at 12:40.

Ref Action Respons­ible Due Date 24.09.18 Data Breach Policy: Para 9c A tool­box talk to be arranged on the policy after a staff meet­ing. To be done after March Staff meet­ing. KC Dec 18

05.10.20: Ongoing		

24.06.19 Men­tal Health First Aid Policy: Para 7 Addi­tions to policy: 

Review in one year's time		
Inclusion of flow diagram.	KC	
15.06.20: Ongoing		
06.10.20: Ongoing		

09.12.19 Travel & Sub­sist­ence Policy: Para 4h Include a worked example of an expenses claim. DC Mar 20

15.06.20: Ongoing		
05.10.20: Ongoing		

09.12.19 Amend Terms & Con­di­tions: Para 6 Any staff deal­ing with payroll to be con­sul­ted regard­ing hav­ing a spe­cif­ic con­fid­en­ti­al­ity clause inser­ted into their con­tract. KC June 20

05.10.20: Ongoing		

16.03.20 Volun­teer­ing Policy: Item 4 Mike Woolv­in to have a dis­cus­sion with oth­er part­ner organ­isa­tions regard­ing sign­ing up to CNPA’s volun­teer­ing policy. KC/MW Sept 20

05.10.20: Ongoing		

16.03.20 Best Com­pan­ies Staff Sur­vey: Item 5 Con­sulta­tion events to be facil­it­ated for Bands A‑C regard­ing ena­gage­ment. KC Sept 20

05.10.20: Ongoing		
Contact Best Companies for the definition of 'Giving Something Back' and advise staff of the		

6

RESOURCES COM­MIT­TEE Paper 3 29/10/21 defin­i­tion pri­or to the next sur­vey being under­taken. KC Sept 20 05.10.20: Ongoing

05.10.20 Cov­id 19: Organ­isa­tion­al Work­ing Item 3 Para 2b Fit for pur­pose assess­ment to be under­taken of all soft­ware in use. IT Mar 21

Para 2j Staff teams to be set up to dis­cuss col­lab­or­at­ive work­ing solu­tions KC/DC Mar 21 07.06.21 Ongoing

27.09.21 Action Points: Item 2 To be gone through to check if still rel­ev­ant DC/KC/PM Nov 21 Para 3 27.09.21 Return to Office Pro­ject: Item 3 Inclu­sion of guid­ance as to how office/​home work Para 5a agree­ment should be reached and cla­ri­fic­a­tion of HR involve­ment. KC Oct 21

27.09.21 Columbia Kit: Item 5 End date for Columbia spon­sor­ship deal to be Para 12 invest­ig­ated and future options for uniform/​PPE to be invest­ig­ated. DC/KC April 22 7