Transcript

Good evening members of the committee. Welcome to this meeting of the employment committee. The time is now 7 30 p.m. The meeting has commenced and is being broadcast live on the council's website. My name is Katrina Marchant. I'm a democratic services officer and I'm clerking the meeting this evening. The first item on the agenda is the election of the chair for the 2024 2025 municipal year. In accordance with procedural rule four of the council's constitution I'm the representative of the managing director and will conduct the election of the chair. Therefore members of the committee please can I call for any nominations for the position of chair. Councillor would you like to press your microphone? Thank you I'd like to nominate Councillor King for the position. Thank you um Councillor Newton has nominated Councillor King. Are there any other nominations? Oh sorry we need a second calendar. Hi I'm happy to be seconder for Councillor King. Thank you. Thank you Councillor Nash. Are there any other nominations? No other nominations. Thank you councillors um so um so the chair for the next municipal year elected chair of the municipal year is councillor James King. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Are we online now yeah? Yes. Cool thank you. Good evening members of the committee welcome to this meeting of the employment committee. My name is Councillor King and I am the new chair of the employment committee. The time is now 7 33 and the meeting I will continue with the rest of the agenda. I'd like to remind everyone that this meeting is being recorded and webcast live. Anyone present therefore accepts that they may be filmed or recorded. Please ensure all mobile phones are silenced and please can members also not use their mobile phones for social media whilst the meeting is in progress. All your microphones are currently muted. When called to speak members should turn on their microphone and address the committee by speaking clearly. To assist in the smooth running of the meeting members are asked to remember to turn off their microphones when they have finished speaking. As you are aware we are now in the pre election period for the general election taking place on Thursday the 4th of July. Guidance has been issued by the monitoring officer to members and officers. Please be mindful of this when taking part in council meetings during this period of heightened sensitivity. It will be important to ensure that Councillor conduct during council meetings is not perceived by the public as election campaigning and that the political impartiality of officers is maintained. I'd like to remind members when presenting reports or asking questions to please refrain from endorsing or referencing any candidates or political parties standing in the elections and any controversial political campaigns or policies related to the election. Senior officers are also attending the meeting this evening. In the chamber this evening is the head of organisational development and HR Kate Brown and joining us online is the strategic head of legal and the monitoring officer Joyce Hamilton and also the strategic head of organisation and transformation Laura McCartney. Agenda item 2 is the election of chair. The second item on the agenda this evening election of vice chair for the 2024/25 municipal year. Therefore members of the committee please can I call for any nominations for the position of vice chair. Councillor Ritter. I'd like to nominate Councillor Paul Chandler please. Thank you. Do we have a seconder for that nomination? I'm happy to second Councillor Chandler. Thank you. Are there any other nominations? As there are no other nominations I put the motion to elect Councillor Chandler as the vice chairman of the employment committee to the meeting. Is it agreed? Thank you Councillors. Councillor Chandler has been elected as vice chair of the employment committee for the municipal year 24/25. Item 3 is apologies for absence. Have any apologies been received? Apologies for absence have been received from Councillor Pagani and she is substituted by Councillor Ritter this evening. The next item of business is the approval of the minutes. Do I have permission of the committee to sign the minutes of the meeting held on the 30th January 2024? Thank you. I will do that at the end. Don't let me forget. Thank you. Okay. Agenda item 6, terms of reference for the employment committee. The report and annexes set out the terms of reference and the procedure rule relating to officer employment that are in the council's constitution. The annexes set out in the agenda pack set out the responsibility for council functions employment committee set out in part 3A of the constitution annex 1 and procedure rule 9, officer employment set out in part 4 of the constitution annex 2. The report was published as an addendum today online and printed copies are available in the chamber. Are there any questions from the members of the committee on those? Councillor Chandler. Thank you chairman. My question would be has anything changed? Are these just for information? No, nothing has changed. It was just, yeah, it is as it was. Cool. Any other questions from the floor? Okay. The committee is asked to note the responsibility for functions for the employment committee set out in part 3A of the constitution and procedure rule 9, officer employment set out in part 4 of the constitution. Are we happy to note that? Thank you. The next item on the agenda is an update on employment committee member training. I would like to welcome Kate Brown, head of organisational development and HR to the meeting to introduce this item. Thank you chair. So the committee has just considered the previous item, the terms of reference of the committee and expectation in terms of matters that are the responsibility of the employment committee members. In order for committee members to discharge their duties as part of the committee, it's important that relevant training is provided to all employment committee members as well as any member who may be called to act as a substitute on the committee. For this year's employment committee training, a date has been set aside for this to take place and that is Monday the 22nd of July at 6.30pm at the town hall. This appointment has been sent to all employment committee members and substitutes. The training will focus on a number of areas and that will include the employment committee responsibilities in detail. So that's referenced before in the previous item but we will go through that with the committee on the evening of the training. And also specific reference around UK employment law. Just to give you a flavour of what that will include, it will be areas such as disciplinaries, dismissals, grievances, senior officer recruitment, equality, diversity and inclusion and data protection. Just to give you a flavour of the kind of topics. The session will be run in person at the town hall and given the positive feedback we received last year, it will be delivered by the same training provider who delivered last year's employment committee training and that's an individual called Catherine Nundee. She's director of an organisation called the HR Branch Limited. So I'm asking members of the committee to note the details of this vital training and I'm asking that substitute members are made aware of the importance of attending this training in order to carry out their duties if they're asked to substitute ever on the employment committee. Thank you. >> Cool. I'll start off with a quick question. Have we been sent an Outlook calendar invite for that? Because that's really helpful for me. >> Notifications have gone out and Outlook invitations have gone out. >> Cool. Thank you. Any other questions from members of the committee? Great. And we have no visiting members. So are you content to note the update on employment committee member training? Thank you, Kate. The next item of business is Workforce Data Summary and Organisational Development Update which was published as an addendum to the Agenda Pack last week. The report and its annexes provide the employment committee with an overview of the Council's workforce for the 2023/24 year. Kate Brown, Head of Organisational Development and HR will introduce this item.

Thank you, Chair. I won't take offence if you want to shorten that OD, by the way. So this item is for the employment committee being asked to note the content of the Workforce Data Summary Report and the annex provided. And it comprises of key equalities workforce information as well as sickness absence and employee turnover data for the financial year 23/24. And apologies for the extra typo in the cover report that was pointed out. We wrote down employee turnover data and sickness absence twice. But one set of data is provided in the report. For the latter two sets of data, so that I'm referring to the sickness and turnover, these form part of the Council's quarterly KPI performance reporting. I do appreciate that a number of members are new on the employment committee. So I am providing some context and history which I hope you'll find useful just in terms of what was outlined in the cover report. So firstly, it was agreed at the employment committee back in July 2019 that workforce statistics would be reported annually. And that would be at the first employment committee meeting of the municipal year. That's with the exception of sickness and turnover data. And those two sets of data would be reported twice a year to the committee. So at year end, so that's the full report which you will see and will go into. And also at quarter two, we will report on sickness and turnover data. The workforce information provided in the annex helps provide an indication of the organization's overall health. And the workforce data in the report has been compiled through excellent teamwork between my team, my ODHR and payroll team, and also the Council's data and insights team. So I would like to thank all of their input and ongoing efforts to improve how we utilize data to inform decisions and specific HR and OD interventions around our workforce. Chair, I wasn't proposing to go through the workforce data summary sort of page by page, but I'm working on the basis that the committee members have read the report and the annex. I'll just point out the report outlines overall a positive picture. In terms of highlights, I'll just pick out a few highlights of particular relevance that I feel are important to make the committee aware of. The Council's head count and full-time equivalent staff figures have remained fairly static for the past year. Last year, there was concern raised around the Council's turnover figures, and this was an area of particular focus for the employment committee given the high level of turnover we experienced post-pandemic. We weren't unlike many other organizations that went through that, but we didn't escape those higher turnover figures as well. I am pleased to confirm that voluntary staff turnover has reduced to under our KPI tolerance of 12 per cent, and that's decreased from a peak of just over 16 per cent at the end of the '22/'23 financial year, and that's come down to 9.3 per cent at the end of the last financial year, '23/'24. We are expecting that voluntary turnover will remain below the threshold at this healthy turnover level. Our data shows that the ethnicity of a workforce is less diverse than the Rygate and Banstead resident population, and that's when we compare the data using the '20/'21 census information, and we're looking at that ratio of staff. Again, last year, concern was shown by the committee around the long, short-term and combined sickness absence figures. I am pleased to confirm that both long and short-term absence has decreased during the '23/'24 year, so we've seen an overall decline from 10.18 average days lost due to sickness absence to 9.79 days lost. Most encouragingly, long-term absences, which we define as absences of 20 days or more, decreased year-on-year from 7.41 average days to 5.87 days, and short-term absence year-on-year fell from 4.23 average days to 3.93 average days lost. And I would like to thank the work and indeed its ongoing work from the HR team and managers, I should say, to address sickness absence issues. My team have worked very hard supporting and advising line managers in managing sickness absence cases, which has had a positive impact in terms of the reduction in average days lost due to absence. The final area to highlight for me is that of the apprenticeships. Financial data with regards to the council's pay bill and levy contributions has been provided in the cover report. I just wanted to make the committee aware that this data has been clarified by colleagues in finance in terms of the salaries budget and the actual pay bill figure for the '23/'24 financial year. The council has remained committed to supporting apprenticeships and utilising the apprenticeship levy, offering both kinds of opportunity when it comes to apprentices. So we offer what you might call full apprenticeships, and also we use the levy as a way of our staff to develop their skills in professional areas of expertise, so it's a career development opportunity using the levy, which benefits not only the individual staff member, but fundamentally the delivery of high level of services to our residents. The previous employment committee appreciated the detail of where in the organisation we have apprenticeships and the professional areas that are being developed, so the report provides this detail along with information around upcoming plans for apprenticeships in the next year. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to address any questions the committee members may have about the workforce data summary item, but before I finish I do also have a verbal update to provide the committee with regards to organisational development, which I can do that now, Chair, or address questions on the report before moving on. Is it a really complex and long update? Let's give it now then. I'll do that now, thank you. So this is a verbal update around the organisational development and human resource strategy. So reminder for the committee members that the terms of reference of the employment committee does include the fact that the committee has oversight and engagement in respect of the development of the council's organisational development strategy, which includes the talent, attraction, development, retention strategy for staff and of the council's management structure. The committee's role also includes establishing a critical friend role in relation to ensuring the council's organisational development strategy is on track and fit for purpose, and this should include consultation around the annual service and financial planning process, which is budget setting and pay related elements, and consideration of the pay policy statement. I wanted to provide an update for the committee that work on drafting the strategy commenced last year. The strategy sets out the priority for the OD and HR matters and aligns these to the corporate plan priorities and commitments, and this is being reviewed and updated accordingly with the revision of the council's corporate plan. During the last financial year, we concluded operational or officer consultation on the OD and HR strategy throughout the organisation, and that included SMT, our senior management team, heads of service, focus groups of staff and managers, trade unions, and indeed the OD and HR team themselves, and the then portfolio holder. The feedback has been taken on board, particularly around how the strategy should be presented in terms of a clear summary and expected outcomes and priorities, and when the priorities will be delivered and how we'll achieve those objectives, and the latter part of that will be particularly key for my team in terms of what needs to be delivered when and by whom. The strategy has also been drafted with consideration of the rich data we've received following the results of the 2024 staff survey, and that concluded in May, and we are in a process of analysing that data right now, but we will, as a result of that, have clear areas of focus and priority that are important to our staff. It's anticipated that the strategy will be presented to the employment committee later this year, and as I say, it's particularly important given the committee's remit and responsibility with regards to the strategy as referenced in the terms of reference of the committee. Thank you. Okay. Any questions from committee members? Councillor Chandler. Who wants to go first? Thank you, chair. The phrase voluntary turnover suggests that there is an involuntary turnover, and I'm interested to know why that might be the case. The other metric in relation to head count is vacancies. Am I missing something in the report that tells us about the vacancy level? Or is it that something that perhaps could be provided that we start with those? Thank you, Councillor Chandler. So your first question around the voluntary turnover, you're right that there is a difference between voluntary and we do also have involuntary levers. Involuntary we class as if we look at dismissal of a member of staff, and that is recorded as involuntary. Voluntary includes resignations. I assume there was not a significant level of dismissal. I haven't got that data to hand. If it's something that the committee are interested in, we can look to -- It feels like there may be a bit of the whole picture missing, but I don't think it will be a significant gap. Overall, voluntary turnover is the larger proportion of turnover, for sure. And vacancies? Yes, so in terms of vacancies, absolutely. I can appreciate that that's a piece of data that the committee would be interested in. It's not covered in the report, other than we reference recruitment activity within the year, which has occurred as a result of vacancies. But I can appreciate that we can give you a figure in terms of what that vacancy level is looking like throughout the year. Thank you. Another question, in relation to the age distribution of employees, you were saying it's fairly evenly distributed across the age groups, but it looks to me like there are many fewer younger people and that we tend to be employing in the middle to upper ranges of age, would that be accurate? Does that mirror the age distribution in the area or maybe in the country? I'm not sure. Again, I can provide some more exact data for the committee around that, but just knowing the demographics, even, of the borough and also nationally in terms of an ageing workforce, we are seeing fewer younger workers. I can provide that data to compare. Thank you. I'd also point out that younger age category in the report is age 24 and under, so we might expect only six years worth as an age group, whereas all the other groups are ten years. Not just that one, but also the one that should be 34, not 24. Yeah, I've chosen to overlook that. There's a slight typo there. That is a bit lower, but yeah, certainly that very youngest one is a smaller cohort of people, isn't it, with an ageing population that the country has as well. I'm going to ask about the missing data we have on ethnicity and on religion, where the two numbers or proportion of our staff where our declaration has not been made are not the same, but they're 19.42 per cent and 19.66 per cent, so I would be surprised if there wasn't a big overlap in who those people are who are not telling us their ethnicity and their religion and/or their religion. Do we have any idea why that might be, or can we do a staff survey that could update that? Obviously not a compulsory one, but... Yes, I'm very happy to answer that. In terms of those numbers being similar, yes, that is noted. It is referenced in the report that it's predominantly those longer serving members of staff that have been employed for quite some time, potentially before we were capturing that data, is picked up as part of the work plan for my team within the next year to work through a number of improvements when it comes to employee data, and one of them will touch upon, I guess, a drive to fill these data gaps, and even, you know, if someone isn't comfortable in terms of declaring their religion, ethnicity or any other protected characteristic, like you say, they can't force someone to do it, but we can actually then say chose not to respond or chose not to declare, and we have that then recorded as their submission. So in answer to your question, yes, we can and will be running a survey, or I suppose survey, not necessarily the right word, a data, a process to fill the data gaps. Cool. Thank you. I'll go to Councillor Ritter because she's desperate to ask her question. Thank you, James. Chair, I was on the same page as you, actually, so thank you for that, but I was just going to ask what's being done to increase the proportion of Rykken Banstead staff to a similar level of percentage of those from the ethnic minority groups that are represented in our borough. I live in Red Hill, and every day I walk cycle to work, and pass an awful lot of Asian families, so I'm quite sure that actually that census is fairly low percentage for where I live, and I'm sure there are definitely people who we could encourage to work for the council. My second question, if it's okay to roll it in, I was on page 10 or 16, depending on which one that is. I'd just be interested to know about the wellbeing group that is mentioned there, how much of an uptake there is of that, and how that's encouraged as a positive action for the council employees to get involved with. Thank you. Can I just quickly, well, come back or add a question to the question about the ethnicities and the comparison to the census. So I'm thinking on the fly a little bit here, because I haven't done the maths beforehand, and normally I would. There's like a 3% difference in our largest cohort of people, which is a white ethnic group compared to the borough census, which across 550 people, right, is that right, somewhere around there, is like 15 people, 15 more white people that we've employed compared to what the averages would say. Have we done any statistical analysis on whether it's a significant deviation from what's on the census, or is this a comparison of the raw numbers? But that's an additional, or we have an additional question to Councillor Ritters. And then it sounds like Councillor, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Chair, thanks. So it's just on the ethnicity case, it's, you know, although we're slightly down, it's also important that you get the right people for the right jobs, right? So I'm not, you know, there's always a balance here, there's sensibility, but at the same time is, you know, you've just got to pick the right person for the right job, and although we try and be balanced, I'm sure, I think we need to take that into account. And can I just ask on the resignations, there's voluntary where somebody resigns, involuntary somebody, I think you're saying, gets five, for whatever reason, but what about if somebody, somebody's role just gets legitimately made redundant? So what's that classed as? And the last point, I'll just get one more in if that's okay. The since COVID, obviously a lot of people, staff are working from home. What's the policy now as we've come out of COVID, because you see a lot of organisations, certainly the civil service, where they're all still working from home, which I find a little bit strange. And I just wonder what the policy was from a HR point of view for working from home in RIGA and Bansley. Thank you. Thanks. I know we were kind of overloading your questions now, but I'm going to add to Councillor, no, no, no, not your fault, I came to you. But I'm going to add to what you said as well, or just clarify, I think. I'm sure we're always picking the right, when we get to the interview stage and we've got a bunch of people in front of us picking the right person for the job, right out of those people who we've got at that stage. But some of this statistical stuff is about whether there's any sort of systematic bias in what we're doing in our recruitment process. But I'll let Kate give a fuller answer on that. Thank you. And I will do endeavour to answer every single question, but please do jump in if I've missed something. I have been scribbling away, but it's possible that I have missed a point or a question. So in terms of what we're doing around ethnic representation, when we're looking to fill our roles at the council, what's been said is absolutely right. We do look for the right people for the jobs. In terms of our processes, we have a process where not just ethnicity data, but any sensitive data isn't disclosed to those line managers short-listing. So it's what's called in the profession blind recruitment, to try and mitigate that risk of bias coming into that process. What we are looking at, again, as part of the 2024-25 HR work plan for the team, is actually looking at our recruitment processes in their widest sense. And that will include alternative approaches to recruitment when it comes to potentially targeting particular groups, where we might want to increase our, I guess, sort of market ourselves, if you like, as an employer for certain groups. Again, not just when considering those from ethnic minority groups, but again, for other areas in terms of increasing representation. So yeah, there are plans in terms of looking at our recruitment policy and processes overall, and that will include areas for equality representation and diversity and inclusion. Has that answered that question? Thank you. I realised that Lauren McCartney's hand is up because she badgered me on Teams to say that it's up. So I'm going to go to her quickly. Not only that, Kate's got a WhatsApp, so my hand's up. So thank you, chair. Hello, everybody. There was just a couple of things that I wanted to jump in on, to supplement what I'm sure Kate's about to say from an OD and HR perspective. But organizationally, these things are just not just an OD and HR kind of thing. So part of my brief is around transformation. And part of the world that I look after includes our data and insight team. Councillor Chandler on the vacancies, I was wondering whether or not it would be helpful to understand, or if the committee would find it helpful to understand how long the vacancies have been open for, because obviously, if we give you a data cut at a point in time or a rolling average or something like that, it tells a story, but possibly not the entire story. So just something for the committee to consider. And to the questions around kind of attracting more young people and on the wellbeing point as well, and on attracting a broad range of candidates that reflect the population. And I think that's what we're looking for, to attract a broad range of candidates that reflect the population. Absolutely right person for the job. But are we getting that broad range of candidates? And the answer is possibly not. On young people, we're looking to establish a number of networks, including a young professionals group. That isn't just for people that are young in age, it's for people that are young in their local government career, that have come to us from other industries, which often adds fresh insight. Under the age of 30, in particular, is not a destination job nationally, for that demographic. But one of the things that we have done as an authority is we are part of the National Graduate Development Scheme, which is a phenomenal grad scheme. It's essentially a scheme that provides future chief execs. And I'll let Kate give a bit more information on that. But, you know, we're very proud to be involved in that again this year. And also, on the wellbeing side of things, there is a new workability network that's being established. These networks are to help support our existing staff, but also to help attract our future staff. And their workability network is for individuals that identify as having a disability, neurodiversity, long term kind of chronic health condition. And that's going to be a network that will help to support that group, which is separate to our wellbeing group, which is incredibly well attended. And the other kind of networks that we've got, so we've just set up an LGBTQI plus I say just, it's been going for a year network, gender equality, so men's groups and women's groups, and also multicultural inclusion teams. So this is something that will focus on religion or cultural tradition or language or food, anything that the staff kind of are keen to self organise around. And they are the kind of things that those groups will be by the staff for the staff. But if we're looking at where, you know, where's best to advertise jobs so that we are people that wouldn't ordinarily think of working for an authority, we will be looking to make that more part of our agenda. And that will dovetail brilliantly with the fabulous work that Kate and colleagues over in organisational development and HR will be doing as well. I've got some other updates around things like hybrid working and where that's more appropriate, but I'll be treading on Kate's toes. So I'll be quiet, but feel free chair and Kate to bring me in if you need to, or you want any additional detail from a kind of strategic perspective rather than just the organisational side of things. Thank you. Laura, do you want anything more to add Kate? You can say no. Well, I'll just check with the committee in terms of the question around the wellbeing group. Has Laura addressed that? Yeah. Okay, fine. Sure. Sure. Has that covered everything? I've got an extra question, but I can wait till you feel sure about what you've written down here. I think we've got hybrid is the other one that I think it really warrants a good dive. Do you want me to take that? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the question around working from home and all hybrid working, in terms of the council's approach to that, that is one of the priority areas in terms of getting a policy agreed this year for the council. I'll just make the committee where hybrid working as an option doesn't apply to all roles at the council. We do have a number of roles that hybrid working does not work for. Just take it for example, our refuse recycling crews, that's not something that could be delivered in a hybrid way. So I'm very mindful as an organisation, as is indeed our senior management team and management team, that we don't want to sort of create a sort of them and us kind of culture when it comes to hybrid working. It is one form of flexible working. And what we have had in place is advice and guidance from our senior management team what that needs to look like. And what we'll be firming up later this year is a framework around how that needs to apply for each service area. What I will say is that there isn't a one size fits all for hybrid working for this organisation, as you can appreciate. We deliver so many types of different services. At the end of the day, it needs to be considered with our residents at the heart of everything. So where do we need to deliver to deliver the best services for our residents or indeed clients, which I'm very mindful of as being a service that has internal clients or customers. So for my team, it's where do managers and staff need us to work to be effective. Councillor Nash. Sorry, chair. Thanks for that. Just be interested to see on the hybrid side when you come out defining exactly what that should be. You know, is it working from home five days a week or an expectation on the relevant roles of being in the office two, three days a week. There is a lot of evidence where you go into certain council offices, I'm talking generically now, where it's a bit like Mary Celeste. I think that motivationally meeting people, being part of the team can impact on the quality of what you're delivering. So I think there needs to be a sensible balance on that. That's the only point I just really wanted to stress. Sorry, Kate. Laura's got her hand up again. I saw it this time. Thank you, Laura. Mr Councillor Nash's point and thank you, chair. It is that actually at Rygate and Bancid, the feedback from staff has been that the office space, particularly in the middle block of the town hall building, isn't sufficient for the teams to be able to come and sit together because the desks were reconfigured to allow for social distancing, et cetera. The ambition is that people want to be in and there is a project underway at the moment we have needed to be able to reconfigure some of the office space and that's going to take place over the summer so that teams can come in and work together. So the ambition is very much there. As a recent new recruit, just to give you some of my experience, I've been in with the authority for a year and part of the process, I asked around what the expectation was. I think the average for people that take up flexible working is between two and three days a week within the office. But we have some roles where it's mandated, as Kate said, 100 per cent that you need to be in the office 100 per cent of the time. We have a lot of roles where the personal preference is also 100 per cent or we don't have roles where it's 100 per cent out of the office. We are looking also at our other assets within our estate so that we can offer people the opportunity to work closer to communities, so being able to work from community centres, for example, and places like that so that we can have kind of people boots on the ground in those environments. Then finally, this was a question to our staff around in the staff server that Kate has mentioned that's being reviewed at the moment about how important is that balance? Would they like to be in the office more? Would they like to be in the office less? The personal preference doesn't drive the outcome, obviously. We are public servants and we need to make sure that we are doing just that. But that will be one of the considerations in building the policy. Anecdotally and from some of the work that's been done by some central government think tanks, the wholesale of going back into the office is one of the things that puts off that younger demographic. So there's a delicate balance and that's why it's absolutely one size does not fit all. What we aren't about as an authority is having a wholly remote workforce. It needs to be absolutely appropriate to meet the needs of the public and if we are not a public facing service to enable those that are to do that. So yes, the overwhelming desire certainly for when I talk to people as part of senior management team is they want to be in and they want to make sure they have got enough seats so they can come in and sit with their team. So that's been really, really positive. Thank you, Laura. Whilst I have got you, can I just quickly ask a question? You mentioned some inclusion networks that we have got. Do we have a military one? The reason I ask is because I know that Councillor Baker as our armed forces champion would I'm sure be quite keen on that. So just curious if we have that. We don't. We have self organised underneath the things that staff have mentioned themselves. However, absolutely always really, really up for anything and everything that people may want to consider and if there is appetite within the staff population, we will absolutely support that. But the groups at the moment that we have got are LGBTQIA+, we will be setting up gender equality, as I said, both men's and women's groups, workability, which is disability long-term conditions and will also be a home for our existing carers network. We already have a carers network. The young professionals network, I think I have forgotten one. Oh, multicultural inclusion teams. So they are the ones that we have kind of organised around provisionally, but absolutely and we are always on the lookout for Councillor sponsors or Councillor kind of mentors for those networks. So if there is anything that is important for our elected body, then absolutely let's hear it. This is about a partnership approach to this kind of thing and if this comes out of the committee, that would be fantastic. Thank you. Did you put your hand up, Kate? No. Okay. Any more questions or have I missed any answers that are yet to be given? I don't think so. I don't think so either. Cool. Any more questions from the committee? Cool. Obviously there is a little bit of feedback there and a couple of questions that are the one I asked in advance and maybe a couple of others to come back on. But other than those, I would be happy to note the content of the workforce data summary for last financial year. Thank you. Thank you. Agenda item 9, we will next consider our future work programme that is on the last page of the agenda pack. Do members have any questions to ask about or comments to make on our work programme? I am going to suggest -- Councillor Chandler. I just wonder, is it the same number of meetings as usual? Or has there been a reduction? I just remember there being quite a few updates relating to the pay award. But some of those were of course to committee rather than at committee. So four meetings a year is what you might call the standard meeting number for the committee. But the committee can be called to convene as and when required outside of these four meetings as well. I will give you an example of that. Important role of the committee that has recently been used has been around the appointment of senior officer recruitment. So we have recently appointed a colleague head of service in our finance area. And the committee had a role to play in that. So that was a separately convened convene meeting. But in answer to your question, four meetings a year is standard. And then called as and when required. Thanks. I understand that last year our meetings were a little earlier than the half seven start time they were tonight. I wonder if given we are on future work programme, talking about future meetings, now might be a good time to suggest that we change that if members are agreeable to either 6pm or 6.30pm. Again, if members can make it earlier, that would be my personal preference. But there's five of us. So we should perhaps have a vote on one or the other. I think everyone should agree because for myself being coming earlier is not a problem. But it depends on people's personal circumstances. Yeah, sorry. Fair. If there's someone who cannot make those earlier times, then we need to figure out, we need to take that into account. Councillor Ritter. Thank you, chair. Obviously I'm a substitute this evening. So I don't know the view of Councillor Bailani in terms of what would suit her. And she's the person who needs to be here for the other meetings. So whether it can be done at a later date, a later point to have that conversation with her, that would be great. If there's general agreement to get it to have an earlier meeting, I can certainly email Councillor Bailani and just confirm that. That's helpful. We might as well take a consensus now. And then as you say, your colleague, you can find out if that's going to be a showstopper for her. So for me, I'd be happy 6 or 6.30, it doesn't bother me. So 6 isn't an issue. Is everyone who is in the room happy with 6pm? Yes. Perfect. Okay. Can we propose that by email and see if we get a good response back? Thank you. Other than that, any other comments on the committee's work programme? We're happy to note that. That's the dates of the meetings. Yeah. Happy. Great. Our final item of business is to take any other urgent business. I've not been informed of any other urgent business and therefore I declare this meeting closed at 8.21pm. Thanks, everyone.