230811ResourcesCtteePaper3WorkforceManagementStrategy

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 11 August 2023 Page 1 of 10

For dis­cus­sion

Title: Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy

Pre­pared by: Kate Christie, Head of Organ­isa­tion­al Development

Pur­pose: This Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy refreshes the strategy approved in December

1. The guid­ing stra­tegic policy dir­ec­tion from the Board at that time was that the Authority’s Exec­ut­ive team should seek to man­age the staff group with­in the organ­isa­tion in a man­ner bal­an­cing oper­a­tion­al needs against deliv­er­ing the max­im­um poten­tial flex­ib­il­ity in mak­ing budget pri­or­it­isa­tion decisions for the ²⁰¹⁷⁄₂₀₂₂ Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) cycle. The ²⁰¹⁷⁄₂₀₂₂ NPPP cycle has been suc­cess­fully con­cluded, with a new Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2023/​27approved by Min­is­ters in August 2022. The Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan cov­er­ing our con­tri­bu­tion and inten­ded resource deploy­ment to deliv­ery of the NPPP was agreed by Board in March 2023.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board Is asked to: a) Note the strategy

Stra­tegic context

1. The stra­tegic policy for work­force man­age­ment remains that estab­lished pre­vi­ously. The Exec­ut­ive Team should seek to man­age the staff group with­in the organ­isa­tion in a man­ner bal­an­cing oper­a­tion­al needs against deliv­er­ing the max­im­um poten­tial flex­ib­il­ity in mak­ing budget pri­or­it­isa­tion decisions. Our agreed Cor­por­ate Plan high­lights the inten­ded man­age­ment of the staff group with­in the con­text of total anti­cip­ated resources and expenditure.

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1. These 2023 — 2027 Cor­por­ate Plan object­ives come with­in the wider stra­tegic con­text of: a) A phased reduc­tion in the work­ing work from 37.5 hours/​week to 36 hours/​week from 1^st April 2023, and 35 hours from 1^st April 2024 to be imple­men­ted on the basis of effi­cien­cies in oper­a­tions and deploy­ment of staff time and without cre­at­ing a need for addi­tion­al staff­ing. b) An agreed increase in staff num­bers from the pre­vi­ously adop­ted 2018 Strategy, in order to deliv­er the increased invest­ment in peat­land res­tor­a­tion, the Her­it­age Hori­zons Cairngorms 2030 Nation­al Lot­tery Her­it­age Fund (NLHF) pro­ject, and Nature Res­tor­a­tion fund­ing, as well as the ongo­ing require­ment for an act­ive and engaged park-employed Ranger Ser­vice. c) A hybrid work­ing envir­on­ment as a res­ult of per­man­ent changes to the work­ing cul­ture fol­low­ing two years of lock­down and com­puls­ory home work­ing due to the Cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic d) Nation­al policy of No Com­puls­ory Redund­ancy (NCR) estab­lished through Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Pub­lic Sec­tor Pay Policy, which is expec­ted to con­tin­ue for fore­see­able future. e) Poten­tial longer term impact of the new Nation­al Park legis­la­tion f) Our con­tin­ued aspir­a­tion to be ​“the best small pub­lic body In Scot­land”, and to be innov­at­ive, quick to act and empower staff to deliv­er the strategies that are put in place by the Board. g) Con­tin­ued joint work­ing with LLT­NPA, across HR, IT and GIS ser­vices, and col­lab­or­a­tion with the EELG People Group, and the inclu­sion of some EELG part­ners in our intern­al recruit­ment pool h) Our ongo­ing com­mit­ment to retain an office in Bal­later, and provide office space in both the Bal­later and Grant­own offices for part­ner organ­isa­tions, as appropriate

Work­force Projections

1. Whilst staff num­bers have increased since the pre­vi­ous Work­force Strategy of 2018, the Cor­por­ate Plan 2023 ‑2027 pro­jects a mainly stat­ic resource demand for staff fun­ded by ​“core” recur­rent grant and oth­er income resources over the first year of the four year peri­od, with an increase in the fol­low­ing three years should the bid for the Her­it­age Hori­zons Cairngorms 2030 Deliv­ery Phase be approved by Decem­ber 2023. Staff­ing costs are pro­jec­ted to move from £4.43 mil­lion in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ to £4.84 mil­lion in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. The increases in staff payroll levels for ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ rep­res­ent to some extent

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the full year con­sequence of recruit­ment under­taken over the course of ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ in staff­ing our increased scale of deliv­ery: Her­it­age Hori­zons Cairngorms 2030, and Peat­land Res­tor­a­tion Pro­grammes each increased in scale over the course of the year. Longer term staff­ing pro­jec­tions to ²⁰²⁶⁄₂₇ are set out in the ​“For­ward Fin­an­cial Pro­jec­tions” included in the Cairngorms NPA Cor­por­ate Plan for 2023 to 2027.

1. The Author­ity acts as an employ­ing ​“host” for key pro­jects with­in the Nation­al Park, will­ing to take on the vari­ous risks of either act­ing as employ­er, or provid­ing ​“in-kind” sup­port, e.g. to part­ner ​“embed­ded” posts where we provide only part-fund­ing, or the use of the office and its facil­it­ies, in order to facil­it­ate the devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of multi-part­ner pro­ject deliv­ery on key activ­it­ies deliv­er­ing NPPP pri­or­it­ies. This role is not impacted by the stra­tegic dir­ec­tion around budget and work­force man­age­ment. Pro­ject staff are accoun­ted for sep­ar­ately in the Authority’s accounts and also with­in our man­age­ment account­ing pro­cesses, and are only included in the fig­ures quoted at para­graph 3 to the extent that pro­por­tions of their salary costs are fun­ded by the Author­ity as an ele­ment of our con­tri­bu­tion to pro­ject delivery.

2. The Authority’s role as a key ​‘host’ organ­isa­tion for sig­ni­fic­ant pro­ject deliv­ery across the Nation­al Park does impact sig­ni­fic­antly on our total staff­ing num­bers and on our con­sequent Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy and con­sequent actions.

Work­force Intel­li­gence and Action Points

1. With­in the stra­tegic con­text and our asso­ci­ated work­force pro­jec­tions, the Authority’s Work­force Man­age­ment Strategy is informed by assump­tions that have been made through the ana­lys­is of work­force data and intel­li­gence (as well as the equal­it­ies data we gath­er annu­ally and which can be found in: April-2023-Update- on-Equality-Outcomes-2021.2024V1.0.pdf (cairngorms​.co​.uk), as below:

a) The major­ity of our staff are aged 45 – 54 (35%), with equal num­bers (26%) aged at the oppos­ite ends of the spec­trum, 54 – 75+, and 16 – 24. Whilst this shows that the Park Author­ity has an aging work­force, there are no key risk areas in terms of impact of poten­tial retire­ments at this stage in the organ­isa­tion­al cycle giv­en that largest staff group still have a min­im­um of six years ser­vice pri­or to access­ing ele­ments of their pen­sion bene­fits without reduc­tion; none of the staff who could draw down their Civil Ser­vice pen­sion have indic­ated an inten­tion to

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do so; and the fact the Park Author­ity oper­ates a ​“Open Retire­ment” Policy and can there­fore have some reas­on­able expect­a­tion of staff work­ing into their 60s. In addi­tion, the staff aged 45 and above are gen­er­ally across all dir­ect­or­ates and well integ­rated with young­er staff who are also rep­res­en­ted across all dir­ect­or­ates. Nev­er­the­less, we recog­nise that our Work­force Man­age­ment going for­ward will need to focus on the Youth Employ­ment Strategy, and cre­at­ing more oppor­tun­it­ies around appren­tice­ships, intern­ships and gradu­ate place­ments. This will be sup­por­ted by a ment­or­ing scheme, whereby seni­or staff will ment­or juni­or staff as part of the pro­cess of upskilling juni­or staff and increas­ing their skills and con­fid­ence, so that they are well placed to apply for more seni­or posts. Our work­force demo­graph­ic is how­ever a key met­ric that we will con­tin­ue to mon­it­or at least annu­ally recog­nising the enhanced risk man­age­ment asso­ci­ated with this par­tic­u­lar work­force man­age­ment con­sid­er­a­tion. b) An ana­lys­is of the stat­ist­ics of all ​“leav­ers” over the last 5 years indic­ated that the major­ity of ​“leav­ers” were those with 1 – 3 years’ ser­vice. Most of these staff were on short term con­tracts, so this stat­ist­ic is expec­ted and does not cause con­cern, and reflects the bene­fits of flex­ib­il­ity that short term fixed term con­tracts afford. Our Turnover KPI tar­get is not more than 10% in a 12 month peri­od and turnover is gen­er­ally sit­ing at about 8% (exclud­ing short-term and sea­son­al posts). This rep­res­ents a good bal­ance between reten­tion of exist­ing skills and exper­i­ence, and oppor­tun­it­ies for new staff to join the organ­isa­tion with new tal­ents and ideas. The one area that does require con­sid­er­a­tion is with­in the plan­ning team see below and appendix 1. c) 50% of our exist­ing staff com­ple­ment have worked for the Park Author­ity for 1 – 2 years. The major­ity of these posts are either short term sea­son­al posts, or new posts that have been developed to sup­port the Her­it­age Hori­zons pro­ject, and there­fore this is not unex­pec­ted. We will con­tin­ue to recruit Train­ee Rangers each year, as this has been the career pipeline for suc­ces­sion to Sea­son­al Ranger posts. We will also mon­it­or our pro­ject-led fixed term con­tracts to ensure a bal­ance between reten­tion of key skills and flex­ib­il­ity around fund­ing timelines. The Seni­or Man­age­ment Team (SMT) will review the register of fixed term posts reg­u­larly, and at least twice each year, to ensure that with­in the core para­met­ers of main­tain­ing effect­ive budget man­age­ment and man­aging staff estab­lish­ment, that action is taken to secure required skills and exper­i­ence held by staff on fixed term roles. d) 19% of our cur­rent work­force have worked for the Park Author­ity for over 10 years, and 16% for 5 – 10 years. Turnover at SMT levels has been high over the

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last 5 years (36%), such that we cur­rently have a fairly ​“new” SMT, although this is bal­anced in terms of cor­por­ate know­ledge and exper­i­ence by 5 of the 12 SMT mem­bers who have been in their roles for longer than 10 years. 7 of the cur­rent SMT have been in post for less than 5 years. Giv­en that seni­or officers stay with the Author­ity for a longer peri­od of time, with SMT leav­ers aver­aging 13 years of ser­vice each, we con­sider a rel­at­ively low risk of turnover at this level in the short to medi­um term. Nev­er­the­less, this is a good time to invest resource in train­ing and devel­op­ment to upskill staff as one of the actions to sup­port our suc­ces­sion plan­ning e) Absence levels across the organ­isa­tion are low, with stat­ist­ics on the down­ward tra­ject­ory. Sick­ness absence Is cur­rently 3.31 days/​person Whilst these absence levels do not sug­gest any risks with regards work­force man­age­ment, there have been two cases of recur­ring long term absences that require mon­it­or­ing and poten­tial recruit­ment to provide support.

1. Our actions arising from the ana­lys­is of these work­force man­age­ment stat­ist­ics are there­fore to: a) Mon­it­or at least annu­ally our work­force demo­graph­ic stat­ist­ics to assess the devel­op­ing risk of los­ing a cohort of key staff and asso­ci­ated cor­por­ate know­ledge and expert­ise to retire­ment. b) Review our register of fixed term staff con­tracts with SMT reg­u­larly and at least twice each year to sup­port achiev­ing our work­force and budget man­age­ment object­ives while seek­ing to main­tain and devel­op organ­isa­tion­al skills and exper­i­ence. c) Devel­op a ment­or­ship scheme for staff that allows ment­or­ing both with­in and out­with the organ­isa­tion, and which is avail­able to staff as part of their Con­tinu­ous Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment d) Revis­it the organ­isa­tions val­ues, and if required, change them to reflect the chan­ging staff demo­graph­ic and organ­isa­tion­al priorities

Work­force Management

1. To meet expec­ted budget con­straints mov­ing for­ward, and also deliv­er on the Board’s and Man­age­ment Team’s longer term strategy of mov­ing toward budget and resource alloc­a­tion flex­ib­il­ity, the Authority’s Man­age­ment Team will man­age all staff invest­ment decisions col­lect­ively dur­ing the Cor­por­ate Plan cycle, tak­ing the above intel­li­gence and actions into account. While there is capa­city to redir­ect staff across dif­fer­ing pri­or­it­ies to a degree, max­im­um flex­ib­il­ity comes in the form of free

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fin­an­cial resource cap­able of invest­ment into either new, refo­cused staff posts filled through open, com­pet­it­ive recruit­ment or dir­ect fin­an­cial invest­ment into pro­ject activities.

1. In the case of our role as a host for pro­ject staff, as the leg­al employ­er, we have respons­ib­il­ity to ensure all required and desir­able man­age­ment and sup­port sys­tems are in place, includ­ing Health and Safety prac­tice and man­age­ment and all apprais­al, care and sup­port ser­vices. We are also respons­ible ulti­mately for all employ­ment law implic­a­tions flow­ing from recruit­ment, in par­tic­u­lar as pro­jects and the require­ment for asso­ci­ated deliv­ery staff come towards their con­clu­sion. We must there­fore exer­cise par­tic­u­lar focus and atten­tion on staff con­tract man­age­ment across the organ­isa­tion and includ­ing all pro­ject activ­it­ies with­in this overview.

2. In the expect­a­tion of the NCR policy con­tinu­ing through­out the peri­od, the Man­age­ment Team will: i. ii. iii. iv. a) Review all vacan­cies arising with a view to determ­in­ing what course of action may be required in the stra­tegic resource and work­force man­age­ment con­text. Con­sid­er­a­tion will include: Redeploy­ment of exist­ing staff where appro­pri­ate from roles com­ing to an end, for example due to end of fund­ing sup­port or com­ple­tion of pro­ject activ­it­ies. No replace­ment of post — retain­ing and real­loc­at­ing asso­ci­ated budget to non- staff areas; Reduc­tion in level of FTE asso­ci­ated with the post and asso­ci­ated reduc­tion in object­ives to be delivered through staff input, deliv­er­ing asso­ci­ated sav­ing in staff budget; and/​or Reduc­tion in levels of respons­ib­il­it­ies to be alloc­ated to replace­ment post, with con­sequen­tial reduc­tion in grad­ing of post deliv­er­ing asso­ci­ated sav­ing in staff budget; and/​or V. Alter­a­tion between per­man­ent and fixed term con­tract pos­i­tion for future recruit­ment, with fixed term recruit­ment offer­ing poten­tial future flex­ib­il­it­ies in work­force. b) Review the adequacy of staff levels through high level alloc­a­tion of staff resource against annu­al Oper­a­tion­al Plan activ­it­ies. c) Con­sider the imple­ment­a­tion, poten­tially on a tar­geted basis, of time record­ing sys­tems to mon­it­or deploy­ment of staff against key activ­it­ies. d) Scen­ario plan for future budget settlements.

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1. The Author­ity has made use of vol­un­tary sev­er­ance schemes in pre­vi­ous years, which has helped secure budget sav­ings and also allow the redir­ec­tion of staff resources to new and emer­ging pri­or­ity areas of work. Such schemes remain an option as a stra­tegic man­age­ment tool for work­force man­age­ment, par­tic­u­larly in the con­text of the assump­tion of the NCR policies con­tinu­ing for a num­ber of years.

2. The Author­ity will con­tin­ue to look flex­ibly, on a case by case basis, at any one-off requests received from staff to enter into con­tract ter­min­a­tion nego­ti­ations. The Author­ity prides itself in treat­ing all staff as indi­vidu­als, and deal­ing with any requests they may have on a dis­crete and case by case basis. The Author­ity also has to seize on any and all oppor­tun­it­ies to con­sider the poten­tial for medi­um to long term sav­ings in its staff­ing with­in the con­text of the NCR policy.

Human Resource Man­age­ment Policy and Procedures

1. While some of our work­force man­age­ment strategy must be driv­en by fin­an­cial con­sid­er­a­tion, the Author­ity is also mind­ful of both its desire 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.

2. We have had a few recruit­ment chal­lenges over the last few years, due to:- a) The type of con­tract (fixed term versus per­man­ent). Whilst we will mon­it­or this, there are sig­ni­fic­ant bene­fits of fixed term con­tracts that can­not be dis­coun­ted, par­tic­u­larly with regards the flex­ib­il­ity they provide the organ­isa­tion in an uncer­tain budget­ary cli­mate. How­ever, we recog­nise that longer fixed term con­tracts (2 – 3 years) are more likely to secure reas­on­able can­did­ate short­l­ists and be appoin­ted than ones of up to 18 months. Vacancy man­age­ment will take account of this con­sid­er­a­tion in determ­in­ing con­tract dur­a­tion. b) Work loc­a­tion. Increas­ingly fol­low­ing the 2 – 3 years of home work­ing as a res­ult of the Cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic, applic­ants expect flex­ib­il­ity around the work:life and home:office base bal­ance. The nation­al cli­mate in this regard is of increased flex­ib­il­ity, and we can­not risk los­ing poten­tial appointees to more flex­ible organ­isa­tions. Whilst the cur­rent ​“offer” is a hybrid approach of 50% home:50% office based, we will scru­tin­ise all offers and retain flex­ib­il­ity to ensure they best suit both the needs of the busi­ness, as well as those of the pro­spect­ive appointee. c) The dif­fi­culty in secur­ing long term hous­ing in the area. As a res­ult, some applic­ants have had to turn down offers of employ­ment or have moved to outly­ing areas, includ­ing Inverness, Forres and Elgin. Added to this is the fact that

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i. pub­lic trans­port ser­vices in the nation­al park are poor, which fur­ther restricts where staff might live, and lim­its oppor­tun­it­ies for people who may not wish to relo­cate d) Con­trac­tu­al hours. The Park Authority’s con­trac­tu­al hours. have until recently been 37.5/week, where many com­par­at­or organ­isa­tions offer a short­er work­ing week. This is in the pro­cess of being addressed through a phased reduc­tion to 36 hours ini­tially in 2023 and to a con­trac­tu­al 35 hour week from April 2024. e) Specialist/​niche roles. There are a few roles that require par­tic­u­lar, niche spe­cial­isms that are more dif­fi­cult to appoint to – e.g. data man­age­ment roles. We will be innov­at­ive in our approach to such roles, con­sid­er­ing upskilling rel­ev­ant staff where pos­sible; and also con­sid­er­ing out­sourced con­tracts to secure the skill sets required as an altern­ate option to staff employ­ment. f) In the last 5 years, we have lost 8 plan­ning staff, on vari­able fixed term and per­man­ent con­tracts. we have iden­ti­fied two issues: Salary. Whilst the Park Author­ity plan­ning team’s roles are bet­ter paid than the equi­val­ent roles across the Eng­lish Nation­al Parks, there is a short­age of plan­ners in Scot­land and we have noticed recently that our salar­ies are no longer com­par­able to those offered by the Scot­tish Loc­al Author­it­ies. We risk los­ing staff and poten­tial job applic­ants to the Loc­al Author­it­ies. This is anoth­er area to bench­mark fully and mon­it­or. g) The CNPA is con­sidered to be a good career-path place­ment for plan­ners who join the Park Author­ity to gain key skills to enable them to pro­gress into more seni­or roles elswhere. This is partly due to its unique call-in arrange­ments through which plan­ning staff with­in Cairngorms NPA handle more com­plex and sig­ni­fic­ant applic­a­tions. Whilst a ​“churn” in staff teams can be healthy, we are mind­ful of the organ­isa­tion­al risk of such a churn to deliv­er­ing one of our stat­utory respons­ib­il­it­ies. As such, we have star­ted to address this issue by cre­at­ing sev­er­al ​“career-graded” posts in this team, such that appointees may be gradu­ates or exper­i­enced officers. This flex­ib­il­ity seems to have addressed the churn and turnover in this area has plat­eaued at the cur­rent time. The chal­lenges facing resourcing the plan­ning ser­vice is an area to be closely monitored

1. The Author­ity will con­tin­ue to work with its staff group and Board, through the Board’s Resources Com­mit­tee, to devel­op appro­pri­ate Human Resource (HR) Man­age­ment policies and wider Organ­isa­tion­al Devel­op­ment activ­ity that sup­port staff in achiev­ing a good work-life bal­ance, and also sup­port flex­ible, effi­cient work­ing prac­tices for the organ­isa­tion. Through these policies we aim to contribute

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to deliv­ery of an effect­ive, per­form­ing organ­isa­tion as will be meas­ures through our cor­por­ate Key Per­form­ance Indic­at­ors, and to main­tain and sup­port a sat­is­fied, motiv­ated work­force, as meas­ured by peri­od­ic staff surveys.

1. In terms of our plan­ning for Pub­lic Sec­tor Pay Policy, our assumed response to those policies is that the Author­ity will con­tin­ue to offer pay set­tle­ments estab­lished with­in the allowed parameters.

Suc­ces­sion Planning

1. Our HR approaches will focus on the need for risk man­age­ment and pro­por­tion­ate suc­ces­sion plan­ning around the Authority’s work­force. While end-to-end suc­ces­sion plan­ning is extremely lim­ited by require­ments for open recruit­ment in the pub­lic sec­tor, and for trans­par­ency around equal oppor­tun­it­ies for all staff, we will con­tin­ue to work with our Exec­ut­ive to mon­it­or the key intel­li­gence and risks around our work­force man­age­ment on an organ­isa­tion-wide and team spe­cif­ic basis, and deliv­er appro­pri­ate mit­ig­a­tions of those risks.

2. A detailed ana­lys­is of all posts, teams and dir­ect­or­ates across the Park Author­ity, as well as any spe­cif­ic risk areas and suc­ces­sion plan require­ments (where appro­pri­ate) will be car­ried out annu­ally by the col­lect­ive Seni­or Man­age­ment Team.

3. The fol­low­ing inter­ven­tions are/​will be developed around the suc­ces­sion prin­ciples of sup­port­ing exist­ing staff mov­ing into pro­moted roles with­in the organ­isa­tion:- a) Intern­al Recruit­ment Policy. All vacant posts below dir­ect­or level are recruited intern­ally in the first instance, provid­ing exist­ing staff with the ini­tial oppor­tun­it­ies to apply for posts. The intern­al recruit­ment pool includes staff of some pub­lic sec­tor part­ners, includ­ing SEPA and Nature.Scot. b) Career graded posts. Posts in the more tech­nic­al areas that can be more chal­len­ging to recruit will be advert­ised as ​“career graded” when appro­pri­ate, mean­ing that their grade will be depend­ent on the skills/​experience the appointee brings to the post, on the basis that if they start the post as an entry level grade, they will move to the next grade up upon the attain­ment either of key skills, train­ing or levels of per­form­ance without the need to re-open recruit­ment of the post or re-write job descrip­tions. c) Ment­or­ship scheme. This will be developed over the com­ing year, match­ing seni­or staff as ment­ors for juni­or staff, to guide them on their pro­fes­sion­al journeys.

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d) SMT have a quarterly Policy Day. There will be a stand­ing agenda item to identi­fy cross organ­isa­tion­al talent/​skills with a view to nur­tur­ing and sup­port­ing that tal­ent. In addi­tion all fixed term con­tracts as well as redeploy­ment cases will be mon­itored at these times.

Dav­id Camer­on Kate Christie