Agenda item

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance will give a short presentation on the latest position around new ways of working.

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance gave a presentation overview of the New Ways of Working programme.

The item was introduced by the City Mayor who observed that due to the Covid 19 pandemic new opportunities had arisen to accelerate changes positively that perhaps would have taken more time to do so before the pandemic.

During the presentation attention was drawn to the following points:

·         The organisation was keen to achieve an agile work culture and environment and to improve its use of resources. Modern ways of working should also achieve financial savings too.

·         Building on the lessons learnt during the Covid 19 pandemic one important point was around staff health and wellbeing, especially in how the council supported staff and their approach to deliver work. The pandemic had shown how quickly the organisation and workforce could adapt and make changes and there was more that could be done to leverage technology etc.

·         The key aims of the programme were based around 3 strands: people and culture; technology and IT; and activity based workspaces.

·         Surveys had been conducted with staff at three stages of the programme, this had helped determine role profiles, site specific activities, activities while in the office space and individuals’ requirements such as special equipment or personal circumstances.

·         Stage 1 had focused on the workforce profile and data showed that 15% of roles would always be office based, 37% were mostly out of office, 32% were always out of office and 16% were in and out of office. The survey data supported a 30% reduction in office desk space taking pre-Covid desk number of 2915 down to 2040 and the aim through a phased approach was to refine the workforce desk allocations and to realise efficiencies across 3 buildings: Phoenix House, Bosworth House and 10 York Road.

·         The timeline for potential savings was set out noting that during the pandemic operational estate costs had dropped dramatically, most notably Bosworth House which was leased until 2023 and it was anticipated the closure of Bosworth House, 10 York Road and Phoenix House would save £0.95m by 2023 with York Road and Phoenix House then providing potential revenue income.

·         In relation to workplace reoccupation, detailed work had been undertaken to map out allocation of space to key people and service areas whilst looking to maintain stability although a third of staff would have to move much of this was service specific requests bringing teams closer and staff required to move would relocate from one city centre building to another so little or no impact on their commute. Building plans had been drawn up and were being overlayed with IT configurations needed.

·         Work was also ongoing investigating changes to face to face customer activity in buildings, e.g. Youth offending; social care and coroner services.

Members welcomed the report and noted the next steps as set out in the presentation. During discussion, the following points were made:

In relation to providing appropriate IT support to those working from home or within an office it was noted at the beginning of pandemic as an organisation the council were able to move very quickly to sustain over 3000 people working from home and have invested in the resilience of the network and continued IT improvements.

There was concern at the loss of customer face to face services e.g. amalgamated housing offices, restricted opening times at the Customer Service Centre and some members noted that one of the most regular complaints from constituents was about not being able to see someone as well as concern around phone call response times.

The City Mayor thanked members for their comments and responded in relation to face to face customer services. The City Mayor was aware of comments regarding customer service and agreed that call times needed significant improvement and measures were being looked at to enable that to be improved. There had also been discussion around opening times of the Customer Service Centre but there had to be some balance as that would require reallocation of customer service staff who were answering calls. At the moment it was felt to be more beneficial to keep opening face to face on restricted hours and utilising staff to try and get call waiting times back down. It was noted that the volume of calls had increased dramatically causing the increased answering/wait times.

The Director of Delivery, Communications and Political Governance commented that the pandemic had presented opportunities to learn some positive things, and there was not just an assumption of reverting to old ways, however it was very much learning from everything and recognising some people still need face to face service. It was recognised that some discrete services such as Health Services, are necessary face to face but there were areas where we should have been offering online services sooner.

Reference was made to a national report that had come out today in which it was suggested around 80% of people were not happy about returning to work in an office and Members were reassured that there was mindfulness of people’s situations being taken into account in relation to returning to the office to work.

In terms of savings it was queried whether the Bosworth House lease could be renegotiated and/or terminated earlier to achieve a long term saving and officers agreed to investigate this. It was also suggested that any savings from buildings could be used towards achieving carbon neutrality and it was agreed there should be consideration of how some of the savings could be reinvested.

It was noted that as well as IT support, behaviours and people culture were also being considered and it was suggested that there should be more imaginative use of council buildings and that the flexibility of access would provide benefits for others too. Officers replied that they were seeing

demand for more flexible work environments and workspaces to drop in and out of and officers were working on plans to develop the programme whilst taking manageable steps

Regarding “working from home” and environments which are not always conducive to working efficiently, where needed arrangements had been put in place to enable individuals to return to offices and staff had been supported to do that. In relation to handling staff return to work it was acknowledged that some were nervous and so autonomy was being given to teams to find solutions that work best for them. A lot of work had also been conducted around staff productivity; making sure staff have defined tasks, targets and quality performance conversations as well as manager and leader qualities to stop the view that staff could only be managed by presenteeism.

It was suggested that individuals working from home faced increased bills and queried how that might be met or balanced. In reply it was commented that some increased costs were offset by savings such as commuting.

The Chair enquired whether there was a piece of work to look at the impact on the local economy of new ways of working and was advised that officers were economy conscious and even before the pandemic there had been large parts of workspace unoccupied or underutilised. The programme was looking at demand for flexible workspaces and people still coming into City. Also, as staff had not seen each other for long periods it was noted more were making efforts to go out for lunch etc which would benefit the local economy.

The Chair thanked officers for the presentation and asked that a full update report be provided within 6 months to include full detail of equality impact as there may be some unforeseen circumstances of these changes.

AGREED:

That an update report on the New Ways of Working Programme be provided to a future meeting within 6 months including full details around equality impact.

18.36 Ivan Browne joins the meeting