230811ResourcesCtteePaper4DRAFTSCFMinutes230619

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 4 11 August 2023

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive Forum

Held via MS Teams 11:00am, on Monday 19 June 2023

Present Adam Streeter-Smith Dav­id Camer­on Ed Swales James Lee Kate Christie Mari­aan Pita Pip Mack­ie Richard Hardy (Pro­spect)

Apo­lo­gies Janet Hunter (Board Mem­ber) Nas­im Mehrabi

Item 1: Wel­come and Apologies

1. Dav­id Camer­on (DC) wel­comed the group and the new reps, James and Nas­im. He expressed thanks to the exist­ing reps for stay­ing on and to Heath­er and Lucy, who had recently stood down. for the time they gave whilst part of the group.
2. Apo­lo­gies were received from the above.

Item 2: Review of Minutes of 20 March 2023 Meet­ing and Mat­ters Arising

1. Minutes were agreed and action points were reviewed.

Item 3: Paper 1: Reas­on­able Adjust­ments Pass­port Policy

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the policy which sits along­side the Neurodi­versity Policy and advised that it had been developed through the

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intern­al equal­ity and diversity group. The policy seeks to sup­port con­tinu­ity through the organ­isa­tion and can be developed at any point for staff, includ­ing short term use. The fol­low­ing points were raised:

a. Con­cern that times­cales for require­ments not being actioned as quickly as they could be by line man­agers. KC advised that up until this point reas­on­able adjust­ments have been covered in the Absence Man­age­ment Policy, this pro­posed policy draws this out and should encour­age adjust­ments to be actioned promptly. b. Cla­ri­fic­a­tion sought as to how this policy relates to recruit­ment. KC respon­ded that there are sev­er­al oppor­tun­it­ies for an indi­vidu­al to declare if they require any reas­on­able adjust­ments dur­ing the recruit­ment and onboard­ing pro­cess. The HR team will also look at how to make this clear­er in recruit­ment adverts to encour­age people to come for­ward with any require­ments that they may have.

1. DC thanked every­one for the feed­back and the policy was adopted.

Item 4: Paper 2: Review of Hybrid Working

1. KC intro­duced the paper and advised that the hybrid approach appeared to be work­ing well. It was now time to make a policy decision on this and MT are minded to con­vert the hybrid approach to per­man­ent policy. Feed­back was provided as follows:

a. Con­flict­ing views about wheth­er anoth­er staff sur­vey should be car­ried out. KC pro­posed devel­op­ing a draft policy for con­sulta­tion with staff. At that point staff would have the oppor­tun­ity to com­ment on the policy and pro­pose amend­ments. This was agreed. b. The need for staff to under­stand the dis­tinc­tion between the approach to hybrid work­ing and the flex­ible work­ing policy. It was cla­ri­fied that the default pos­i­tion in the hybrid work­ing policy was that staff can work between home and office 50/50. If staff wished to work more than 50% at home then there was a need to sub­mit a flex­ible work­ing request and this would be set out in the policy. The need to man­age the risk that some staff may not be con­tent with this and there­fore oth­er policies need to sup­port that pos­i­tion. KC advised that so far there have been few FW requests received-and that it’s not expec­ted to receive a huge amount more.

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1. DC thanked every­one for their input and feed­back. It was con­firmed that a policy would be developed and staff con­sul­ted on it.

Item 5: Verbal Update: ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ Pay Award Process

1. DC advised the he was con­scious that the organ­isa­tion was cur­rently behind the timeline regard­ing the ²³⁄₂₄ pay award. As pre­vi­ously explained, this was due to delays on Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) pay strategy (which set out that the total cost of the basic award was cur­rently lim­ited to 5% of the organisation’s baseline pay­bill). Work had been under­taken on what the organ­isa­tion could do with­in the SG pay strategy and this will be presen­ted to the Resources Com­mit­tee meet­ing on 30 June to con­sider the options. DC advised that the organ­isa­tion would reopen the pay award for dis­cus­sion should the nation­al pos­i­tion change (as had happened last year with addi­tion­al mid-year pay award). Altern­at­ively, the pay award could be delayed for nation­al approach to be agreed but this would mean that any pay award would be delayed until later in year.
2. The fol­low­ing points were raised:

a. Richard Hardy gave an update on the back­ground con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place. He advised that the pay strategy that had come out from SG made expli­cit ref­er­ence to it being the guid­ing strategy not just for civil / pub­lic ser­vants but also for teach­ers / NHS work­ers (prin­ted after the agreed deal with teach­ers at 7%), there were there­fore lots of con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place. A meet­ing had taken place with the Deputy First Min­is­ter and a meet­ing with the First Min­is­ter had been sched­uled. He advised that he was not able to give a full update due to con­fid­en­ti­al­ity sur­round­ing the nego­ti­ations, which would con­tin­ue through­out June. b. Cla­ri­fic­a­tion was sought from staff as to what the pay award would mean for staff. It was advised that the pro­pos­al was likely to be that staff eli­gible for pro­gres­sion would get the con­trac­tu­al min­im­um pro­gres­sion award (1.5%) but the basic (cost of liv­ing) award total cost to the organ­isa­tion was lim­ited to 5% of baseline pay­able, with basic awards being set out in the pay strategy at a floor of 2% and max of 5%, aver­age of 3.5%. The basic award would be tiered across the salary bands (as had been done pre­vi­ously) and would not be a flat rate for all staff. Pos­sible options would be for the pay award to imple­men­ted in line with cur­rent pro­pos­als now (back­dated to April)

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and if the pay strategy changes imple­ment any increase later on, or, staff to wait for pay strategy to be amended (if this hap­pens) to reflect oth­er pub­lic sec­tor organ­isa­tions and then back­date to April. c. If the organ­isa­tion had moved to settle the pay award and then pay strategy were to change, dis­cus­sions would be reopened, and pro­pos­als brought back to SCF. d. The risk that those staff in the middle of pay band struc­ture will be pen­al­ised if there’s not a reas­on­able offer that CNPA can work with. DC gave assur­ance that the organ­isa­tion had been look­ing at a reas­on­able set­tle­ment offer to every­one across the pay bands. e. The risk that new staff may struggle get to top of band in any mean­ing­ful times­cale if the pro­gres­sion award was kept at the con­trac­tu­al min­im­um for sub­sequent pay awards. DC advised that the organ­isa­tion had been quite suc­cess­ful in imple­ment­ing pro­gres­sion awards and had made rel­at­ively few bal­loon pay­ments to get staff to top of their salary band in the com­mit­ted jour­ney time. It was recog­nised that pro­gres­sion awards will have to be looked at care­fully in sub­sequent years to get staff to top of pay bands in time giv­en (either 4 or 6 years).

1. DC thanked every­one for their input and feed­back. He advised that it was envis­aged to provide an update to staff in the first half of July. If an inter­im SCF meet­ing was needed to dis­cuss the pay award, this would be convened.

Item 6: Dis­cus­sion: Health and Safety Update

1. It had recently been high­lighted that a new mem­ber of staff had not received the appro­pri­ate PPE pro­cess as included in the induc­tion check­list. The H&S Com­mit­tee dis­cussed this at their May meet­ing. Fol­low­ing this, KC wrote to all line man­agers to remind and update them of this policy and the require­ment to carry out a per­son­al risk assess­ment and identi­fy if spe­cif­ic PPE was required. The PPE policy allows for the pur­chase of kit and any addi­tion­al train­ing that may be required, as neces­sary to an employee’s role. It was recog­nised that a lot of new staff joined the organ­isa­tion and remind­er to line man­agers regard­ing their respons­ib­il­it­ies was necessary.

Item 7: Dis­cus­sion: Leadership

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1. DC advised that the new Mem­bers had recently joined the Board fol­low­ing a round of min­is­teri­al appoint­ments. There was anoth­er pub­lic appoint­ment round to be car­ried out over the sum­mer (2 more appointments).
2. DC advised that in July he would be lead­ing on work focus­sing on organ­isa­tion­al val­ues and cul­ture and revis­it­ing what that means and how this is por­trayed. DC will come back to SCF in Sept with more information.

Item 8: Dis­cus­sion: Equalities

1. KC advised that the con­tract with JRS KnowHow had now been com­pleted and closed. Dur­ing the equal­it­ies train­ing staff had the oppor­tun­ity to use Slido and make com­ments, fol­low­ing these JRS KnowHow had pro­duced a Q&A and use­ful resources and these would be cir­cu­lated to staff later this month.
2. KC advised that CNPA now had a part­ner­ship agree­ment in place with Black Pro­fes­sion­al Scot­land. This would include tar­geted recruit­ment, fur­ther train­ing and a ment­or pro­gramme — all would be explored in the near future.
3. CNPA were tak­ing a stall at High­land Pride, tak­ing place in Inverness on 22 July. Staff in attend­ance would be Kate Christie, Pip Mack­ie, Dav­id Clyne, Becky Wilson and Olly Dav­ies. Attend­ance at Pride had been iden­ti­fied as an action through the LGBT Charter plan. Focus will be on show­cas­ing the work of the Author­ity gen­er­ally, as well as the LGBT Charter Action Plan
4. Equal­it­ies update report had been pub­lished in April, and was due to go to the Board later in the week. It had been a use­ful and inter­est­ing pro­cess and high­lighted that there was a lot of work going on. The report brought togeth­er all the work the organ­isa­tion was doing. It would be looked at how to present this inform­a­tion to staff in an eas­ily digest­ible format.

Item 9: AOB

1. There were no items raised.

The meet­ing con­cluded at 12:15pm.

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Ref	Action	Respons­ible	Due Date
09.12.19	Amend Terms & Conditions:	KC	June 20
Para 6	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 07.11.22: Ongo­ing 25.01.23: Ongo­ing 20.03.23: Update: Word­ing has now been provided by law­yers and dis­cus­sions are ongo­ing. 19.06.23: Still in discussion
06.12.21	Elec­tric Car Salary Sac­ri­fice Scheme	KC	June 22
Para 19	Future updates to be brought back to SCF
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 19.06.23: still progressing
27.06.22	Staff Induc­tion Process	PM	Sep 22
Para 12a	Feed­back from staff sur­vey on induc­tion pro­cess to be presen­ted at SCF 25.01.23: Ongo­ing 20.03.23: Ongo­ing 19.06.23: Ongoing
23.03.23	Shed at Rear of Building	KC	Mar 23
Para 14	Dust issues to be raised with Facil­it­ies team

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19.06.23: Floors now been sealed. Com­plete 23.03.23 | Pigeon­holes | KC | June 23 Para 25 | Cur­rent sys­tem to be looked at and revised if neces­sary. 19.06.23: Ongoing | |

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