240219Paper4-DRAFTSCFMinutes

Paper 4 Draft Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um Minutes 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 1 of 8

For inform­a­tion

Draft minutes of Health & Safety Meet­ing Held 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024

In Attend­ance:

Dav­id Camer­on Rus­sell Jones (Board Mem­ber) Char­lotte Mil­burn Derek Ross (Board Mem­ber) Kate Christie Pip Mack­ie Mari­aan Pita

Apo­lo­gies:

Sarah Fletch­er James Lee Adam Streeter-Smith Richard Hardy (Pro­spect) Nas­im Mehrabi

Item 1 Wel­come and apologies:

1. Dav­id Camer­on wel­comed everyone.

2. Apo­lo­gies were received from the above.

Item 2 Review of minutes of 14 Septem­ber 2023 meet­ing and mat­ters arising

1. Minutes were agreed and action points were reviewed.

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 2 of 8

Item 3 Mis­car­riage Policy (Paper 1)

1. Kate Christie (KC) intro­duced the Sup­port­ing Staff Through Preg­nancy Loss Policy (for Share­Point pur­poses and ease of loc­at­ing it has been termed ​‘Mis­car­riage Policy’). The policy was developed as it was recog­nised that the Leave Policy did not expli­citly cov­er preg­nancy loss under com­pas­sion­ate leave. The policy in its cur­rent format has been through the intern­al staff Equal­ity Group and the extern­al Equal­ity Advice Pan­el for ini­tial over­sight and com­ment. The policy sets out the sup­port that may be avail­able from col­leagues and oth­er sup­port ser­vices. Feed­back had already been received from a staff rep about more loc­al­ised sup­port being avail­able and this will be included in the policy. KC asked the SCF for feedback.

2. The fol­low­ing points were raised: a) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion if ​‘ordin­ary ter­min­a­tion’ was covered under para­graph 10. KC advised that it was, and the word­ing would be amended to reflect this. b) The sec­tion cov­er­ing the rights of part­ners and par­ents was wel­comed. c) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion was sought if the rights of partners/​parents also applied to instances of still­birth and TFMR, as well as mis­car­riage and ordin­ary ter­min­a­tion (para 25). KC advised that they were, and this should already be covered under para 23. d) A request to either remove the ref­er­ence to part­ner (from para 11) or include a gen­er­ic state­ment that applies to all situ­ations. This would be looked into.

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

Item 4 Absence Man­age­ment Policy (Paper 2)

1. KC intro­duced the paper and advised that the pre­vi­ous policy had become dated and didn’t include ref­er­ence to gender reas­sign­ment. The policy had been assessed and amended by the CNPA law­yers to ensure that it remained leg­ally com­pli­ant, not only around gender reas­sign­ment but in gen­er­al terms as well. The policy would be intro­duced from today going for­ward and would be saved onto Eolas. How­ever, giv­en the size of the policy, it would con­tin­ue to evolve and be amended as required. KC asked the SCF for feed­back: a) There was no feed­back provided.

2. DC thanked every­one and the policy was adopted.

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 3 of 8

Item 5 Best Com­pan­ies: Staff Sur­vey Res­ults (Paper 3)

1. KC intro­duced the paper. The Best Com­pan­ies staff sur­vey had been car­ried out in Octo­ber 2023, 84 sur­veys were returned out of 103 (82% response rate) and was an improve­ment on last response rate of 77%. The CNPA have now scored 1 star, which is also an improve­ment on pre­vi­ous sur­veys. Charts had been shared which showed the over­all pos­i­tion and com­par­is­ons with pre­vi­ous surveys.

2. KC advised that there was a lot of inform­a­tion shared in the sur­vey res­ults. No com­par­is­on data to oth­er organ­isa­tions (that also scored 1 star) had been included. How­ever, it was recog­nised that this would be help­ful. It was advised that each Dir­ect­or­ate would be provided with their own res­ults to dis­cuss and that drop in ses­sions would also be held across the organ­isa­tion. This would enable the highlights/​shadows to be dis­cussed and iden­ti­fied by staff for fur­ther dis­cus­sion. On aver­age the res­ults were good and pos­it­ive inform­a­tion could be iden­ti­fied from the res­ults. It was hoped that the high­lights / shad­ows would be iden­ti­fied along with the pro­posed actions by next SCF meet in June. The Resources Com­mit­tee would also be con­sul­ted on the pro­posed actions.

3. Feed­back was provided as fol­lows: a) A query if cross com­par­is­on between teams were pos­sible. KC respon­ded that inform­a­tion would be shared on a Dir­ect­or­ate basis. b) Cla­ri­fic­a­tion as to why Best Com­pan­ies was selec­ted to run this sur­vey, recog­nising that there had been many new mem­bers of staff recently join the organ­isa­tion. DC advised that the com­pany had been selec­ted due to the breadth of cov­er­age and num­ber of organ­isa­tions that par­ti­cip­ate. It had ori­gin­ally star­ted as part of the Sunday Times sur­vey and CNPA had been par­ti­cip­at­ing since 2012. The sur­veys broadly cov­er the same inform­a­tion, which allows for the com­par­is­on of organ­isa­tion­al data across the years. Best Com­pan­ies is a nation­al pro­cess, inde­pend­ently run and guar­an­tees anonym­ity. The bench­mark­ing data is very bene­fi­cial, and the sur­vey is also used by LLT­NPA and a num­ber of oth­er pub­lic sec­tor partners.

4. DC thanked every­one for their input and feedback.

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 4 of 8

Item 6 Verbal Update: 2024/2025 Pay Award

1. DC advised that CNPA were cur­rently wait­ing for Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to issue spe­cif­ic pay policy guid­ance and was aware that the pay award date of 1 April was rap­idly approach­ing. At present there was no clar­ity of under­stand­ing of the pay policy timetable and there­fore it may be required to have an addi­tion­al SCF meet­ing spe­cific­ally to dis­cuss the award once fur­ther inform­a­tion was available.

2. It was quer­ied how the pay award set­tle­ment in this cur­rent year com­pared to the pub­lic sec­tor aver­age. DC advised that a num­ber of pub­lic organ­isa­tions had not yet settled. How­ever, oth­er pay awards may wish to be assessed for the forth­com­ing year as some organ­isa­tions had agreed a 2‑year settlement.

Item 7 Dis­cus­sion: Health and Safety Update

1. KC advised that the H & S Com­mit­tee meet quarterly. Mem­bers are KC (Chair), Pip Mack­ie (PM) (HR rep), Mark Pocock and Beccy Stan­ton (Facil­it­ies team), Colin Simpson (Vis­it­or Ser­vices rep), Alan Smith (Ranger’s rep) and Emma Stew­art (Peat­land rep). There had recently been an audit on H&S which had high­lighted some scope for improve­ment, includ­ing SMT to receive a copy of the meet­ing minutes (these already go to the Audit Com­mit­tee), and ELMS train­ing records to be shared with SMT.

2. Feed­back was very pos­it­ive from staff who had com­pleted the ELMS train­ing, and it was bet­ter and more effi­cient than hav­ing to attend courses in per­son. How­ever, the audit high­lighted that some staff had not under­taken the train­ing and a cul­tur­al shift was needed.

3. DC cla­ri­fied that the H&S Com­mit­tee were respons­ible for coordin­at­ing the dis­char­ging of the H&S respons­ib­il­it­ies across the organ­isa­tion. How­ever, H&S was kept as a stand­ing item on the SCF agenda as an altern­at­ive route for staff to raise

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 5 of 8

any issues they may have. It was also anoth­er for­um for dis­sem­in­at­ing H&S inform­a­tion to staff.

1. Thanks were expressed to PM for the back­ground improve­ment work done on the ELMS courses.

Item 8 Dis­cus­sion: Equalities

1. KC advised that an in-per­son event was to be held for mem­ber of the Equal­ity Advis­ory Pan­el. The event was to be held in Pit­lo­chry with 14 of 17 mem­bers attending.

2. KC advised that Feb­ru­ary was LGBT his­tory month. As such a cof­fee and cake event was planned in the Board Room for Thursday 29 Feb­ru­ary at 3pm. It was a chance for staff to meet, chat and find out what the CNPA had been doing over the last 18 months towards LGBT Youth Scot­land accreditation.

Item 9 AOB

1. A query as to why staff don’t seem to be noti­fied of intern­al recruit­ment oppor­tun­it­ies for roles at SNH/SEPA/FLS if they are part of our intern­al recruit­ment round. KC cla­ri­fied that FLS were not part of the intern­al recruit­ment group. This issue had pre­vi­ously been raised with col­leagues at both SEPA and NatureScot (pre­vi­ously SNH) and we were advised they would address the issue. It was recog­nised that at the present time, there was not a huge amount of recruit­ment tak­ing place at these organ­isa­tions. How­ever, the issue would be flagged again.

The meet­ing con­cluded at 3pm.

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 6 of 8

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 19.02.24: Com­plete – clause in con­tract regard­ing con­fid­en­ti­al­ity and the Code of Con­duct cov­ers this.
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 19.02.24: Craig Lewis from the fin­ance team will come to SMT to give an update.
27.06.22	Staff Induc­tion Process

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 7 of 8

Ref	Action	Respons­ible	Due Date
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 19.02.24: Marked as com­plete – if any changes are to be made, this can be fed back through the OD Strategy	PM	Sep 22
23.03.23	Pigeon­holes	KC	June 23
Para 25	Cur­rent sys­tem to be looked at and revised if neces­sary. 19.06.23: Ongo­ing 19.02.24: Com­plete
14.09.23	Gender Diversity Policy	KC	Mar 25
Para 5b	Policy to be reviewed in 12 – 18 months time Guid­ance brief­ing issued to staff inc. there being no hier­archy amongst the pro­tec­ted characteristics,		Dec 23
Para 5c	The Dig­nity at Work policy to be reviewed and brought back to SCF for discussion		Mar 24
Para 5e	Addi­tion to Hand­book re organ­isa­tion­al cul­ture and event organ­isa­tion. 19.02.24: The guid­ance brief­ing was issued to staff. Cur­rently updat­ing Equal Oppor­tun­it­ies and Dig­nity at Work Policies were in the pro­cess of being reviewed.
14.09.23	Hybrid Work­ing Policy	KC	Oct 23
Para 9f	Right to Dis­con­nect policy to be ref­er­enced in the links to oth­er policies sec­tion 19.02.24: Com­plete

DRAFT Minutes of the Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um 19 Feb­ru­ary 2024 Page 8 of 8

Ref	Action	Respons­ible	Due Date
19.02.24	Intern­al Recruit­ment Policy	KC	Jun 24
Para 21	Intern­al recruit­ment oppor­tun­it­ies not being cir­cu­lated to be raised with SEPΑ / NatureScot