220812 ResourcesCtteePaper5AA220627DRAFTSCFMinutesV01

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum

Held via Lifes­ize 11:00am, on Monday 27 June 2022

Present Alix Hark­ness Car­o­lyn Cad­dick Dav­id Camer­on Deirdre Fal­con­er Ed Swales Kate Christie Lucy Ford Pip Mackie

Apo­lo­gies Adam Streeter-Smith Heath­er Trench Richard Hardy

Item 1: Wel­come and Apologies

1. Dav­id Camer­on (DC) wel­comed the group, and apo­lo­gies were received from the above.

Item 2: Review of Minutes of 7 March 2022 Meet­ing and Mat­ters Arising

1. Minutes were agreed and action points were reviewed.

2. Lock­ers — have arrived and are due to be installed and tri­alled in the top floor exten­sion space. If the tri­al is suc­cess­ful, more will be bought for oth­er office spaces.

Item 3: Paper 1: Right to Disconnect

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the paper and asked for feedback.

a. No points were raised and the charter was accepted.

1. The paper was accepted.

Item 4: Paper 2: New Nor­mal Sur­vey Results

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the paper and asked for feed­back. It was advised that this would be kept under review on reg­u­lar basis. She advised that Katherine

Will­ing had pulled togeth­er a book­let on hybrid work­ing, the office spaces avail­able and what they may be used for. This will be included in the induc­tion pack and has been cir­cu­lated to all staff. a. A request that the book­ing sys­tem for hot desk seat­ing in exten­sion be expan­ded to rest of build­ing. It was advised that Resource Cent­ral will be used for meet­ing rooms and when fully func­tion­al, can be used as an app on mobile phones. The old build­ing has ded­ic­ated spaces for teams with hot desks loc­ated in meet­ing rooms. There­fore the hot desk spaces for the old build­ing can be booked through Outlook/​Resource Cent­ral. b. It was recog­nised the huge chal­lenge that new nor­mal work­ing had brought and the pos­it­ive place the organ­isa­tion was now in. c. Cla­ri­fic­a­tion of why there was more pres­sure on desk space — if less desks were now in place or more staff in post? It was con­firmed that the organ­isa­tion now employed more staff due in part to the peat­land pro­gramme and Her­it­age Horizons.

1. KC thanked every­one for their feed­back on the paper.

Item 5: Dis­cus­sion: IT Issues Microsoft 365 / GIS

1. Ed Swales asked for an update regard­ing the cur­rent organ­isa­tion­al pos­i­tion on GIS. Dav­id Camer­on (DC) responded:

a. It was con­firmed that there was a con­trac­tu­al rela­tion­ship with LLT­NPA for GIS. The CNPA had fun­ded an addi­tion­al post in the GIS team at LLT­NPA, in order to get a fuller shared ser­vice approach. It was felt that it would be bet­ter for integ­ra­tion pur­poses to have the role placed with­in the exist­ing team. b. MT are look­ing at the stra­tegic GIS approach in due course and the wider GIS users in organ­isa­tion and a clear­er writ­ten state­ment will be pro­duced in the com­ing weeks. c. It was acknow­ledged that there had been an 18 month delay on tak­ing this for­ward due to recruit­ment pro­cesses and out­sourcing investigations.

1. DC gave update on MS365. He advised that there had been a note to staff cir­cu­lated few weeks ago. Train­ing on MS365 had been arranged for staff and this was still ongo­ing, the pur­pose was to famil­i­ar­ise staff with main points of Share­Point / One Drive. The approach to over­all records man­age­ment and the trans­ition to MS365 was still requir­ing fur­ther invest­ig­a­tion. Staff had pre­vi­ously been advised that the date for the R drive to be archived (made read only) would be I August. How­ever, this was look­ing to be post­poned to allow the new Gov­ernance, Data & Report­ing Man­ager to famil­i­ar­ise self with the spe­cif­ic details. The delay would pos­sibly be for ²⁄₃ months and until work on Metadata had been undertaken.

2. DF left meeting.

3. d Swales raised the issue of the facil­ity to record vir­tu­al meet­ings (via Teams) and FOI / EIR implic­a­tions. DC advised that it was ok to record meet­ings on basis that all par­ti­cipants are aware and approved it. He con­firmed that any record­ing would

Item 6: be with­in scope of FOI/EIR request and there­fore could be released and made pub­lic. All staff would be made aware of this via the staff newsletter.

Dis­cus­sion: Staff Induc­tion Process

1. The staff induc­tion pro­cess was raised, with con­cern that some new mem­bers of staff were miss­ing key inform­a­tion and it was quite admin­is­trat­ive and not very engaging.

a. Pip Mack­ie (PM) respon­ded that fol­low­ing this being raised a sur­vey had been sent to staff who had recently joined the organ­isa­tion, as they were best placed to give feed­back on the pro­cess. The feed­back would be looked at to see if there were any areas of con­cern and/​or improve­ment. KC advised that the sur­vey res­ults would be col­lated and presen­ted at the next SCF meet­ing. b. PM advised that dur­ing lock­down the induc­tion pro­cess had been over­hauled to make it appro­pri­ate for deliv­er­ing vir­tu­ally. This now included timelines for induc­tion. It was recog­nised that some parts of the induc­tion were admin­is­trat­ive. How­ever, many of these had to be done for Health & Safety and organ­isa­tion­al pur­poses e.g. read­ing policies. C. KC advised that a large amount of respons­ib­il­ity sat with line man­agers for the induc­tion pro­cess and the suc­cess of it was very much depend­ent on an individual’s line man­ager and was there­fore out with the con­trol of the HR team.

Item 7: Dis­cus­sion: Driv­ing Licence Requirement

1. The require­ment for a driv­ing licence to be essen­tial in order to apply for some posts was raised. This was felt to be an issue due to the back­log for driv­ing tests due to Covid.

a. KC advised that this had also come up through Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el in terms of fuel poverty. It was advised that this is being looked at and the HR team assess the need for a driv­ing licence for a role on a case by case basis.

1. DF joined meeting

Item 8: Dis­cus­sion: Milk

1. KC advised that pre-Cov­id milk was provided by CNPA. This hadn’t been able to be reim­ple­men­ted due to staff work pat­tern changes and staff­ing in the admin team. It had been announced 2 weeks ago that CNPA would now provide semi-skimmed milk for staff. Mari­aan Pita, the Exec­ut­ive Sup­port Man­ager, had kindly agreed to col­lect it and bring it into the office.

Item 9: Dis­cus­sion: Health and Safety Update

1. There were no updates from employ­er. It was advised that there was a meet­ing com­ing up at end-July, staff will be asked for dis­cus­sion items near­er the time.

2. The increased num­ber of Cov­id cases was raised and the need for clear­er guid­ance around access to office. KC advised that staff could be reminded about the cur­rent guid­ance, though there is no cur­rent require­ment for people to test. It would be recom­men­ded that if staff feel unwell to under­take a lat­er­al flow test and CNPA will reim­burse the cost. It would also be recom­men­ded that, in terms of pro­tect­ing the work­space, staff should not attend the office if they or a fam­ily mem­ber is feel­ing unwell. This guid­ance would include not attend­ing work and shar­ing vehicles for those staff who are field-based and also a remind­er about wip­ing desks, leav­ing win­dows open etc.

3. The pos­sib­il­ity of hav­ing lat­er­al flow tests avail­able in the office was raised. How­ever, this had implic­a­tions for poten­tially pos­it­ive mem­bers of staff com­ing in to col­lect them.

Item 10: Dis­cus­sion: Leadership

1. No issues were raised.

Item 11: Dis­cus­sion: Equalities

1. KC advised that man­dat­ory equal­it­ies train­ing would soon be launched with 5 dates to be avail­able later in July/​August. Staff would be able to select a date to suit them. The train­ing would look at beliefs, chal­len­ging beliefs and how as a staff group, we can be as inclus­ive as pos­sible. An email would be cir­cu­lated explain­ing the train­ing and book­ing details. The train­ing would be delivered in per­son whilst the future train­ing for Board mem­bers and Line Man­agers would be vir­tu­al due to prac­tic­al reas­ons (with a live train­er) (2 x ¹⁄₂ days). Fur­ther dis­cus­sion could take place wheth­er I full days face to face train­ing would be preferred.

2. KC advised that CNPA had signed up to the LGBT charter. Staff will receive an email from LGBT Youth for a 3 hour train­ing ses­sion. The train­ing is not man­dat­ory, but we do need 70% of staff to under­take it in order to pro­gress with the Charter. The train­ing will run through August and staff are reques­ted to encour­age col­leagues to under­take it.

Item 12: AOB

1. No items were raised.

The meet­ing con­cluded at 12:10pm. Ref|Action|Responsible|Due Date —-| — -| — -| — - 24.09.18 Para 9c|Data Breach Policy: A tool­box talk to be arranged on the policy after a staff meet­ing. To be done after March Staff meet­ing. 05.10.20: Ongoing|KC|Dec 18 24.06.19 Para 7|Mental Health First Aid Policy: Addi­tions to policy: Review in one year’s time Inclu­sion of flow dia­gram. 15.06.20: Ongo­ing 06.10.20: Ongo­ing 06.12.21: Ongo­ing – MHFA train­ing last week, policy to be looked at with new MHFA and reviewed in New Year|KC|| 09.12.19 Para 4h|Travel & Sub­sist­ence Policy: Include a worked example of an expenses claim. 15.06.20: Ongo­ing 05.10.20: Ongo­ing 06.12.21: Ongo­ing 27.06.22: With fin­ance team for feed­back pri­or to reis­sue – mileage rates 45p per mile depend­ent on HMRC for amend to rates, if move above entirety of pay­ment would be taxable|DC|Mar 20 09.12.19 Para 6|Amend Terms & Con­di­tions: Any staff deal­ing with payroll to be con­sul­ted regard­ing hav­ing a spe­cif­ic con­fid­en­ti­al­ity clause inser­ted into their con­tract. 05.10.20: Ongo­ing 06.12.21: Ongo­ing 27.06.22: Ongoing|KC|June 20 16.03.20 Item 4|Volunteering Policy: Mike Woolv­in to have a dis­cus­sion with oth­er part­ner organ­isa­tions regard­ing sign­ing up to CNPA’s volun­teer­ing policy. 05.10.20: Ongo­ing 06.12.21: Ongo­ing 27.06.22: Remove – Becky Wilson now in post and events now overtaken|KC/MW|Sept 20 27.09.21 Item 5 Para 12|Columbia Kit:|DC/KC|April 22 |To be kept on review with hybrid work­ing and return to office 27.06.22: Remove – core train­ing require­ments will be looked at by HR team and brought back to future meet­ing| | | |End date for Columbia spon­sor­ship deal to be invest­ig­ated and future options for uniform/​PPE to be invest­ig­ated. 06.12.21: cla­ri­fy already PPE procs in place for add kit to be pur­chased 27.06.22: Con­firm­a­tion from NP Part­ner­ships – still offer­ing dis­coun­ted rate at end of spon­sor­ship deal, pending any new spon­sor­ship being arranged.|| | 06.12.21 Para 17|Active Travel: Update on act­ive travel staff sup­port via the return to office pro­ject. 27.06.22: Remove – this was regard­ing open­ing of showers, they are now open. Facil­it­ies staff look­ing into e‑bike stor­age provision.|KC|Mar 22 06.12.21 Para 19|Electric Car Salary Sac­ri­fice Scheme Future updates to be brought back to SCF 27.06.22: Fin­ance team look­ing into and any pro­pos­al will be brought to MT|KC|June 22 06.12.21 Para 22|Equalities: Email to be sent to staff advising mem­bers of the intern­al equal­ity advocacy group 27.06.22: Done|KC|Jan 22 07.3.22 Para 5b|Best Com­pan­ies Sur­vey: KC and DC to pro­pose indi­vidu­al team dis­cus­sions of the res­ults atten­ded by KC at a future seni­or man­age­ment team meeting.|KC and DC| Para 51|KC and DC to fur­ther dis­cuss re-sur­vey­ing par­tic­u­lar sec­tions of the survey.|KC and DC| 27.06.22 Para 12a|Staff Induc­tion Process|PM|Sep 22 ||Feed­back from staff sur­vey on induc­tion pro­cess to be presen­ted at SCF|||