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Cairngorms Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 4 Nation­al Park Author­ity 30 June 2023 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 1 of 7

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum

Held via Lifes­ize 11:30am, on Monday 20 March 2023

Present Adam Streeter-Smith Dav­id Camer­on Ed Swales Heath­er Trench Kate Christie Lucy Ford (arrived late) Mari­aan Pita Pip Mack­ie Richard Hardy (Pro­spect)

Apo­lo­gies Deirdre Fal­con­er (Board Mem­ber and chair of Resources Committee)

Item 1: Wel­come and Apologies

1. Dav­id Camer­on (DC) wel­comed the group.
2. Apo­lo­gies were received from the above.

Item 2: Review of Minutes of 25 Janu­ary 2023 Meet­ing and Mat­ters Arising

1. Minutes were agreed and action points were reviewed.

Item 3: Paper 1: Neurodi­versity Policy

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the policy and advised that it had been developed through the intern­al equal­ity and diversity group, and had also been dis­cussed by the extern­al Equal­ity Advice Pan­el. The fol­low­ing points were raised:

a. The policy being wel­comed. b. The policy reflect­ing the import­ance of the work plan­ning process.

c. It being incum­bent on the organ­isa­tion to get reas­on­able adjust­ments agreed and in place as soon as pos­sible. KC respon­ded that the forth­com­ing Reas­on­able Adjust­ment Pass­port would align to this policy which should reas­sure staff on this matter.

1. KC thanked every­one for the feedback.

Lucy Ford joined the meeting.

Item 4: Paper 2: Staff Con­sulta­tion on Pro­posed Phased Move to 35hr Work­ing Week

1. DC and KC intro­duced the paper and explained the approach to the phased intro­duc­tion of reduced hours, tri­al peri­od and mon­it­or­ing and eval­u­ation pro­cess with a view to imple­ment reduced hours from I April 2023.
2. KC high­lighted that this was an oppor­tun­ity for staff to see what their work pat­tern may look like. Pip Mack­ie (PM) would be con­tact­ing all staff to obtain their spe­cif­ic work pat­tern to set up in PeopleHR (as this would affect annu­al leave record­ing). It was also pro­posed that all annu­al leave would be recor­ded in hours (as is cur­rently done for part time staff) for all employ­ees, as this allows for vari­ab­il­ity of work pat­terns, but this was later dis­coun­ted and it was agreed to con­tin­ue to record leave in days for full time staff (see para 9).

a. Con­cern regard­ing the avail­ab­il­ity of people (par­tic­u­larly man­age­ment) for meet­ings etc. with every­one work­ing dif­fer­ent work pat­terns. DC advised that this would be mon­itored and reviewed. b. Cla­ri­fic­a­tion if any work pat­terns would be unac­cept­able e.g. someone doing major­ity even­ing work­ing. DC advised that it was expec­ted that staff would respond with work pat­terns broadly cov­er­ing the stand­ard work­ing week (between 07:30 – 6:30pm), and broadly resem­bling their exist­ing work pat­terns. Any request for a move to com­pressed hours would be reques­ted through FWR. c. Capa­city for work­load need­ing to be mon­itored. d. Dif­fer­ing work pat­terns will require staff to keep cal­en­dars updated with days / hours of work. e. Flexi sheets – the pos­sib­il­ity of revert­ing to record­ing the total hours worked that day (as was done dur­ing Cov­id). PM respon­ded that it was envis­aged that a new flexi sheet would be star­ted from I April reflect­ing the new hours of work and adjus­ted accord­ingly for indi­vidu­al staff work pat­terns. f. Cla­ri­fic­a­tion was sought over staff abil­ity to accrue and use flexi if con­tinu­ing to work 9 — 5pm. DC advised flexi would accrue as cur­rently and tak­ing of flexi would be for dis­cus­sion between staff and line man­ager. g. Line man­agers to use flexi to mon­it­or staff work­load (e.g. if staff are accru­ing large amounts of flexi cred­it). KC advised that job plans and per­form­ance devel­op­ment con­ver­sa­tions were import­ant and to use as a check in for mon­it­or­ing work­load. Any issues should be flagged to HR.

1. DC thanked every­one for their input and feedback.
2. Note: A guid­ance update was sub­sequently cir­cu­lated advising that, after dis­cus­sion, full time staff would con­tin­ue to have their annu­al leave cal­cu­lated in days.

Item 5: Paper 4: New Nor­mal Survey

1. KC advised that the new nor­mal way of work­ing star­ted in June 2022 and there­fore it was still in the I year tri­al peri­od with a review every 3 months. AV equip­ment to be installed in Board Room on 17 April. The fol­low­ing points were raised:

a. It being the respons­ib­il­ity of the meet­ing organ­iser to spe­cify wheth­er meet­ing is in per­son or online. Out­look can auto cre­ate a Teams invite lead­ing to con­fu­sion if the meet­ing is to be held in per­son. It was con­firmed that it was for the meet­ing attendee to request the pos­sib­il­ity of attend­ing in a dif­fer­ent way e.g. online. Staff would be reminded of this in the next staff news­let­ter and also of how to switch off the Teams auto cre­ation link. b. It was high­lighted that the key­boards at desks were clunky and noisy. Feed­back will be provided to IT. c. There cur­rently being 2 desk book­ing sys­tems and the pos­sib­il­ity of this being stream­lined. KC respon­ded that it would. Resource Cent­ral had been pur­chased but would only work after the organ­isa­tion had moved over to the Scot­tish Wide Area Net­work (SWAN), this will be imple­men­ted once move taken place.

1. DC thanked every­one for their input and feedback.

Item 6: Dis­cus­sion: Dogs in CNPA Vehicles

1. KC advised that a mem­ber of staff had quer­ied if it would be pos­sible to take dogs to site vis­its in pool vehicles. KC had con­tac­ted EELG col­leagues to find out their approach to this. Their gen­er­al pos­i­tion was that they did not allow dogs at work under any cir­cum­stances oth­er than ​“ser­vice” dogs. This was due to sev­er­al reas­ons, not every­one has same rela­tion­ship with dogs, clean­ing implications/​costs and the vari­ous reg­u­la­tions for dogs being secured in vehicles includ­ing vent­il­a­tion, as well as a pleth­ora of issues regard­ing dogs on sites. From an organ­isa­tion per­spect­ive, we did not think we were likely to change our policy pos­i­tion but happy to hear thoughts. DC advised that this had been raised before and our policy pos­i­tion had been that this had not been allowed. Points dis­cussed were:

a. It being a per­son­al choice to take dog on site and the pos­sib­il­ity of using your own vehicle. b. If dogs were allowed in cars, it would have to be lim­ited to one vehicle and high­lighted as such, this would restrict the num­ber of vehicles avail­able to staff with aller­gies. DC respon­ded that if the organ­isa­tion endorsed staff tak­ing a dog to work (even on site vis­its), the CNPA could be liable for any actions of that dog. There­fore we had always taken the view that there should be a blanket ban on hav­ing dogs (or oth­er anim­als) at work. Richard Hardy was sup­port­ive of this approach, as the organ­isa­tion would be respons­ible for the anim­al, Risk Assess­ments would have to be car­ried out and would this cov­er all anim­als? If CNPA were to sup­port this, then there would have to be a ded­ic­ated vehicle for use, as well as robust risk assess­ments to sup­port it. c. The pos­sib­il­ity of sig­ni­fic­ant repu­ta­tion­al risk to CNPA (if any incid­ent were to occur).

d. High­light­ing that site vis­its take place on vari­ous landown­ers land (not CNPA owned land — this is a dif­fer­ent pos­i­tion to oth­er organ­isa­tions eg. NTS), and there­fore land own­er per­mis­sion would be required every time someone took a dog on site, and asso­ci­ated risk assess­ments com­pleted. e.

1. It was agreed that this would not be imple­men­ted and an update on this pos­i­tion to be included in the next staff news­let­ter. DC thanked every­one for their input and feedback.

Item 4: Dis­cus­sion: Health and Safety Update

1. There were no updates from employer.
2. The con­crete floor in shed at the rear of build­ing had not been sealed and was dusty. The Ranger team had been advised not to sweep it out due to fine nature of dust particles. KC to feed­back to the Facil­it­ies team and raise with the builders.

Item 5: Dis­cus­sion: Leadership

1. DC advised that the CNPA were now in the round of Board Mem­ber dir­ect elec­tions. This pro­cess was being man­aged by the High­land Coun­cil, with the count due to take place on 23 March. Mem­bers would be announced fol­low­ing the clos­ure of this vote. Cur­rent pub­lic appoint­ments round was also under­way, with 6 places in total. It was advised that these would bring sig­ni­fic­ant changes at Board level and induc­tion plan for new the new mem­bers was cur­rently being finalised.

Item 6: Dis­cus­sion: Equalities

1. KC advised that ELMS (online learn­ing portal) was cur­rently being updated, with many more equal­ity and diversity courses being added. There cur­rently wasn’t any times­cale for these being launched but staff would be advised in due course. It was advised that due to these updates (to all courses) the ELMS plat­form was cur­rently not to be used and staff would be updated of this in the forth­com­ing staff newsletter.
2. Cla­ri­fic­a­tion if the new courses were man­dat­ory. KC advised that they weren’t. How­ever, where a course aligns to an organ­isa­tion­al policy, then the course will be com­puls­ory for staff.

Item 7: AOB

Pay Award

1. DC advised that no inform­a­tion had yet been received from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment regard­ing the ²³⁄₂₄ pay award. The budget pro­pos­al was going before Board this week and some assump­tions had to be made. How­ever, the fig­ures would be updated once pay award inform­a­tion had been received.

Richard Hardy advised that a meet­ing taken place and the uni­on had been informed that the SG Pay Policy should be pub­lished before the end March (includ­ing met­rics for pay awards). It had been indic­ated that, unlike pre­vi­ous years, Pro­spect were not to receive advance copy. It was expec­ted that the Pay Policy was likely to include a 2 year fig­ure for awards in the region of 12%, which was sim­il­ar to that being dis­cussed with the NHS and teach­ers. DC advised that any pay award would apply from I April, but there was a need to look at our budget and Pay Policy, and giv­en the late­ness of this being pub­lished it was likely that imple­ment­a­tion would be sev­er­al months down the line There­fore, an update on the pay pos­i­tion would be brought to the next SCF meet­ing to be held in June.

Volun­teer­ing Days

1. KC advised that a paper had been cir­cu­lated to staff reps from Colin Simpson regard­ing volun­teer­ing oppor­tun­it­ies. This was aligned to the King’s Coron­a­tion in May and was seek­ing to encour­age people to volun­teer dur­ing the week of the Coron­a­tion (W/​c Mon 8 May). It was pro­posed to have some organ­ised staff volun­teer­ing events on I day that week and the Vis­it­or Ser­vices team were look­ing at cre­at­ing and organ­ising oppor­tun­it­ies for staff to engage. This would give a more struc­tured approach for staff to be able to use volun­teer­ing (paid) time.
2. This was wel­comed but the it was high­lighted that all staff may not be able to take part if the volun­teer­ing was for one day only due to dif­fer­ing work pat­terns. DC respon­ded that it was always dif­fi­cult get­ting the best fit for all staff. There was the pos­sib­il­ity for staff (with notice) to change their work­ing days that week to allow them to engage in the activities.
3. It was high­lighted that not all staff live near the office or they may already volun­teer and may wish to do some­thing near­er to home or take part in some­thing they are already involved in. KC respon­ded that staff were able to volun­teer at altern­at­ive events. The spir­it of the volun­teer­ing days policy was to encour­age people to volun­teer in the Park. How­ever, it didn’t pre­clude staff from volun­teer­ing out­with the Park. This would also sup­port the organ­isa­tion­al approach to green­ing with staff not hav­ing to travel to a volun­teer event at the office.
4. If any­one had sug­ges­tions or ideas for wider volun­teer oppor­tun­it­ies, these should be fed back to Colin Simpson’s team.

Pigeon­holes

1. It was reques­ted if the staff pigeon­hole sys­tem could be looked at. There were now more staff than pigeon­holes. The pos­sib­il­ity for hav­ing team pigeon­holes was sug­ges­ted, espe­cially giv­en the reduc­tion in post being received at the office. It was agreed that KC would pick this up with Mari­aan Pita.

The meet­ing con­cluded at 12:50pm.

Ref Action Respons­ible Due Date 24.06.19 Men­tal Health First Aid Policy: Para 7 Addi­tions to policy: KC 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 07.11.22: Ongo­ing 25.01.23: Ongo­ing 20.03.23 – to be included in sched­uled policy review. Timetable of policy review sched­ule to be brought back to SCF. Action removed. 09.12.19 Amend Terms & Con­di­tions: Para 6 Any staff deal­ing with payroll to be con­sul­ted KC June 20 regard­ing hav­ing a spe­cif­ic con­fid­en­ti­al­ity clause inser­ted into their con­tract. 05.10.20: Ongo­ing 06.12.21: Ongo­ing 27.06.22: Ongo­ing 07.11.22: Ongo­ing 25.01.23: Ongo­ing 20.03.23: Update: Word­ing has now been provided by law­yers and dis­cus­sions are ongo­ing. 06.12.21 Elec­tric Car Salary Sac­ri­fice Scheme Para 19 Future updates to be brought back to SCF KC June 22 27.06.22: Fin­ance team look­ing into and any pro­pos­al will be brought to MT 07.11.22: Still pro­gress­ing 25.01.23: Ongo­ing 20.03.23: Update: Sup­port had been received from NatureScot who had recently launched a sim­il­ar scheme. Any pro­pos­als would go to MT then be brought back to SCF 27.06.22 Staff Induc­tion Pro­cess Para 12a Feed­back from staff sur­vey on induc­tion pro­cess PM Sep 22 to be presen­ted at SCF 25.01.23: Ongo­ing 20.03.23: Ongo­ing 07.01.23 ODS & Best Com­pan­ies Sur­vey: Para 4 Update to be provided on revised mem­ber­ship of KC June 23 pro­gramme boards, ODS and Best Com­pan­ies sur­vey 20.03.23: Update: Revised terms of ref­er­ence had been cir­cu­lated to members

of the OD pro­gramme board and an invite sent for the next meet­ing (19 April). It was con­firmed that the Best Com­pan­ies sur­vey will be car­ried out later this year. Com­plete. 07.01.23 Sign In Sys­tem: Para 8a Check if 2 mobile phones can be registered on the BS June 23 sys­tem for the same per­son Para 8^d Any staff train­ing to include Board mem­bers 20.03.23: Update: Train­ing on the sys­tem was under­way. It was con­firmed 2 num­bers could be registered and the Board train­ing was sched­uled for April. Com­plete. 23.03.23 Shed at Rear of Build­ing Para 14 Dust issues to be raised with Facil­it­ies team KC Mar 23 23.03.23 Pigeon­holes Para 25 Cur­rent sys­tem to be looked at and revised if KC June 23 necessary.