Agenda and draft minutes

Venue: Committee Room 1 - Wallasey Town Hall. View directions

Contact: Polly Price  Email:  pollyprice@wirral.gov.uk Telephone: 0151 666 3336

Media

Items
No. Item

19.

Welcome and Introduction

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed attendees and viewers to the meeting and reminded everyone that the meeting was webcast and retained on the Council’s website for two years.

 

20.

Apologies

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Minutes:

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Pat Cleary.

 

21.

Members' Code of Conduct - Declarations of Interest

Members are asked to consider whether they have any disclosable pecuniary interests and/or any other relevant interest in connection with any item(s) on this agenda and, if so, to declare them and state the nature of the interest.

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Minutes:

Members of the Sub Committee were asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary and non-pecuniary interests, in connection with any item on the agenda and state the nature of the interest. No such declarations were made.

 

22.

Minutes pdf icon PDF 191 KB

To approve the accuracy of the minutes of the meeting held on 5 October 2022.

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Minutes:

Resolved – That the minutes of the meeting held on 5 October 2022 be approved and adopted as a correct record.

 

23.

Public and Members Questions

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Minutes:

No public questions, statements or petitions had been received.

24.

Annual Workforce Monitoring Report pdf icon PDF 273 KB

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Minutes:

The Assistant Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development introduced the report of the Director of Resources which provided the Senior Officer Appointments and Staffing Sub-Committee with the annual Workforce Equality Report for 2021/22. Additionally, it provided the Sub-Committee with an update in relation to actions outlined in the action plan in terms of progress made since the previous year for information

 

In response to a Member query on how the Council was attracting young people to join the workforce due to under representation in ages 16-25, the Assistant Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development outlined that apprenticeships and graduate programmes were used and that the hybrid working policy was an opportunity to attract more young people to jobs in Local Government either as an alternative to University or as a career afterwards and acknowledged that the challenge was to be creative in recruitment.

 

Members noted that although hybrid working was attractive to some staff, others may prefer the office environment and this was echoed by the Assistant Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development who reported that the approach that had been taken was for managers to outline the requirements and regularity for staff to be in the workplace and that this was something that teams used to keep in touch and work collaboratively. The importance of support for new staff was emphasised as joining a working environment that was completely virtual could be challenging as well as the onus on managers to develop new skill sets to keep in touch with staff and be aware of any personal or professional matters that they were faced with. The Assistant Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development informed Members of a suite of policies and arrangements that could be made to support staff with caring and other responsibilities such as carers support, work life balance and reasonable adjustments.

 

 

Resolved – That

 

(1)  publication of the annual Workforce Equality report to meet the legal requirements under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) 2011 be approved.

(2)  the position in relation to workforce equality performance and the progress made by the Council in relation to producing, analysing and publishing workforce data be noted.

 

 

 

 

25.

Gender Pay Gap Report 2022 pdf icon PDF 288 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The Assistant Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development introduced the report of the Director of Resources which, in line with the Equality Act 2010, provided transparency with regard to the average difference between earnings of women and men. The report must be published by 31 March each year, reflecting the gender pay gap as of March the previous year. This report reflected the position as of March 2022.

 

Members sought clarity on the Council's median gender pay gap for 2022 which was 5.01%, this had decreased from 7.7% the previous year. The mean gender pay gap also decreased from 5.9% to 4.4%, reversing the increase seen in the 2021 report. The Assistant Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development outlined that this wasn’t about men being paid more than women for the same role it was about the nature of the roles men and women undertook and this was subject to the ebbs and flows of the workforce. It was reported that the report for 2022/23 was likely to show the effect of transferring Wirral Evolutions back into the Council as this was a predominantly female workforce. The Assistant Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development emphasised that the key focus was to remove barriers for females to progress into senior roles and be a progressive employer on issues such as childcare and maternity which traditionally may have had an impact.

 

 

Resolved – That the publication of the Gender Pay Gap report be noted and endorsed.