A report by the Director of Law, HR and Asset Management outlined the key areas for consideration in developing the culture of Wirral Council.

The report outlined the significant amount of work already carried out in key areas relating to the development of culture and activity that would contribute to the Wirral Improvement Board’s agreed Improvement Priorities.  The report also set out progress made with values and behaviours and informed on Leadership development and embedding culture change.

Councillor J Green thanked the Head of HR and Organisational Development and those who had worked with her on the report for producing a really good document.  He also thanked those Members of the previous Administration for their contributions.

Councillor J Green informed that it was necessary to involve and engage all staff in the values and that it was essential to have regular staff attitude surveys and engage with staff were problems had been identified.

Councillor T Harney reported that he had evidence of an inconsistency of management approaches across the authority and this must be addressed.  He also proposed that Members should be fully informed about what was being done with all the information being collected, a dialogue be built up with the workforce and feedback be provided.

Councillor S Clarke informed the Cabinet that this was an excellent piece of work and that this was an area that had been under developed in the Council.  Councillor S Clarke was aware that a lot of money had been spent on Leadership Programmes and she asked the Head of HR and Organisational Development to undertake a piece of work on them, numbers and the resulting impact.

The Head of HR and Organisational Development reported that she would pick Councillor S Clarke’s request up through the Working Group.  There had been a number of programmes and they had proved very effective for those who had been on them.  There was an expectation that management would attend training events and a modular approach was being adopted.  She was looking at what could programmes deliver for Wirral Council and help take the organisation forward.

Councillor J Green considered that the way forward was to focus on challenge and effective challenge.  The Council needed to be capable of challenging behaviour.  Both Members and officers must be encouraged to challenge when people were not demonstrating values and expectations that had been laid down.  He stressed the importance of performance appraisal and that it must take place.  He also wanted to make sure that the staff were equipped with the skills needed to do their jobs; they were the Council’s biggest resource and were very important.

RESOLVED:

That, subject to the endorsement of the Improvement Board, Cabinet –

(1)  approves the outlined approach to culture development at Wirral Council;

(2)  recommends the Performance Appraisal process to The Employment and Appointments Committee; and

(3)  agrees to a cross party working group to develop organisational Values to underpin the culture programme.