Workforce Strategy

2. About Our Workforce Strategy

Our Workforce Strategy supports the Council’s vision and defines how we will build the capability, skills, and culture we need for our workforce. It not only meets our present needs but also the needs of our future workforce. This will involve strategies for employee development, succession planning, recruitment, and retention that consider long-term sustainability and the impact on future generations.

The Strategy describes five key objectives for action, to support and develop our workforce, strengthen our capabilities as an organisation and transform how we do things. By aligning our Workforce Strategy to the council’s corporate priorities, we will ensure that this Strategy focusses on embedding the Council’s purpose, vision, and values across our work.

2.1. Our Cabinet Vision Statement (2022 – 2027)

Our Cabinet Vision Statement recognises the important role  our workforce plays in delivering its five-year ambition. It has very clear expectations in terms of our workforce, and these have been used to shape our Workforce Strategy actions (see Appendix 1).

2.2. Our Corporate Strategy (2022 - 2027)

Our Corporate Strategy is clear about the need to further modernise and develop as a resilient and efficient Council following the pandemic, and key to this is our workforce. It recognises the benefits of having a more flexible, dynamic, empowered workforce to support our transformation programme, to help us achieve our wider aims and objectives.

2.3. Our Core Values

Our values are integral to our Workforce Strategy and are influenced by the Seven Principles of Conduct in Public Service (Nolan Principles). Our people, senior officers and elected members were involved in the development of our Core Values, which now reflect the type of organisation we want to be:

• Working as One Team
• Putting our Customers First
• Listening to Improve
• Striving for Excellence
• Acting with Integrity
• Taking Responsibility

These values underpin and guide the way we work, the way we improve, the way we work with partners and the way we make decisions to support the community that we serve.

2.4. Our Transformation Strategy (2022 – 2027)

Our Transformation Strategy has our workforce at the heart of its ambitions. It recognises that our employees are our most important asset and account for over 60% of the Council’s total expenditure. ‘The future recruitment, retention, development, and well-being of our workforce will be key to the delivery of a successful Transformation Programme and to the Council’s wider strategic objectives’ (see Appendix 2).

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3. Our Ambition as an Employer

Our ambition is to be an ‘employer of choice’, creating a workplace that fosters growth, achievement, and satisfaction. We are one of the largest employers in the region, with people working in a range of front line, technical, back office, and professional roles.

We will work to make sure our people feel valued, inspired, and empowered to achieve our objectives and provide the best possible services to our residents. We will also work to be a high performing organisation that works as one team, is inclusive, and innovative, and an employer that encourages talent to flourish and builds workforce capability to meet our ambitions. A place where everyone can speak up, speak out and have a voice - where fairness and equality feel real, and where bullying, harassment, and discrimination are not tolerated. We will communicate our brand values clearly so that the people who want to work for us are the ones who naturally align to our values.

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4. Our Role in Delivering Bilingual Services

We understand that the Welsh language is key to the identity of many of our residents and that people are often able to better express their opinions and needs in their first language. It is therefore our duty to ensure our residents and customers can access our services through their language of choice and to make sure our employees have the required skills.

Working alongside our Welsh Language Advisory Panel, we are refocussing support to promote and develop the Welsh Language in the context of ensuring we are able to recruit to key and critical roles.

The latest Census data for 2021 tells us that Carmarthenshire is home to 72,838 Welsh speakers. This translates to 39.9% of the county’s total population. This figure has decreased by 5,210 since the last Census in 2011, which translates to a percentage point decrease of 4.0. This is the largest percentage point decrease of all local authorities in Wales.

In 2001 and 2011, Carmarthenshire had the highest number of Welsh speakers of all local authorities in Wales, with 84,196 and 78,048 Welsh speakers respectively. These new figures mean that the county now has the second highest number of Welsh speakers of all local authorities in Wales. Carmarthenshire remains the fourth highest in terms of the percentage of the population that can speak Welsh.

In line with Council’s Welsh Language Promotion Strategy and the commitments set out in the Welsh Language Standards, Welsh Language Skills Strategy, and the Equalities and Diversity Policy this Strategy echoes what Carmarthenshire County Council will do to facilitate the delivery of bilingual services.

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5. Promoting Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion

We will work to create a workplace where everyone is treated equally, with dignity and has fair access to resources, learning and opportunities. We also want a workplace that has an inclusive culture that provides an innovative, supportive, and interesting place for our people to work as well as allow them to fully engage in our work to help communities to thrive.

We know that employing people who have a range of different backgrounds, experiences and ideas increases creativity and leads to better problem-solving and decision-making. We also know that a workplace that encourages equality, diversity and inclusion can help to attract and retain good people, better serve our diverse range of customers whilst keeping our people engaged and motivated. Put simply, fairer organisations perform better. In line with our commitments, set out in our Strategic Equality Plan, this Strategy echoes what we will do to achieve this.

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6. About Our Workforce

Nationally, we know that around 30% of the UK’s workforce is aged over 50 years, and that this percentage will continue to increase. Locally, since the 2011 Census, Carmarthenshire has seen an increase of almost 19% in the number of people aged 65 years and over and a decrease of 2.5% in people aged 15 to 64 years. Given the socio / economic situation and increase in the cost of living with higher inflation, many people will inevitably be working for longer. However, it is recognised that the pandemic has had an impact on the personal choices some people are taking in relation to early retirement, reduced hours, and the need for a more flexible working environment.

As our population grows older, it is not feasible to simply replace those retiring with younger people. We will therefore need to reflect on how we look after our workforce’s health and wellbeing to help extend their working lives.

We are also one of the largest employers in the County and currently employ:

• 8,665 people (6,566 FTEs) occupying 5,022 posts with just under 100 workers being employed via an employment agency at any given time.
• 45% of our people have more than 10 years’ service.
• 27% are likely to retire in the next ten years.
• 11.77% of our people have a declared disability.
• The median salary in the Council is £27,128
• Voluntary turnover is currently running at 9.11%, which is below the UK average.

Table 1 below provides a detailed age profile breakdown:

Table 1

Age Range	Number	Proportion of   workforce
Under 25	482	5.6%
25-44	3,476	40%
45-54	2,405	28%
55-64	1,957	23%
Over 65	345	4%

 

The following pie charts provide a further breakdown of our current workforce:

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7. Our Workforce Strategy Objectives

The overall aim of this Strategy is to support the delivery of our corporate priorities by ensuring we have the right number of people, with the right skills and attitudes, in place at the right time. We will achieve this via the delivery of our five Workforce Strategy Objectives (WSO).

Workforce Strategic Objectives:

• Attract, Recruit & Retain Talent
• Grow Outstanding Leaders & Managers
• Improve Workforce Engagement
• Develop a High Performance, Innovative & Achievement Culture
• Develop and Maintain a Safe & Healthy Workplace

7.1. WSO 1: Attract, Recruit, and Retain Talent

Like many employers in the UK, Local Government is dealing with a challenging recruitment market due to skill gaps in some key sectors and budget constraints that make it difficult for us to consistently offer competitive salaries.

In order to attract and safely recruit a diverse workforce, that has talented employees and leaders, we will need to ensure effective employer branding and promotion of the Council as an ‘employer of choice’.

Providing opportunities for our people to thrive in a safe working environment, we will support and encourage potential talent by offering high quality learning opportunities, personal development, clear career pathways and a fair total benefits package. Effective workforce planning at all levels will therefore be critical to ensuring we have the right people with the right skills for the right roles at the right time.

In a constantly changing environment, we know that there will continue to be a high demand on services such as social care, housing and protecting our environment. This will also, invariably, affect the back-office support required to deliver those services as well as the type of resilience we need at a leadership level. Continuing skills shortages, changing demographics of the labour market and employee demands for a work-life balance, has created increased competition for talent.

The digital agenda has become increasingly important, we will therefore show our people that we value them by supporting them to develop the skills required for jobs of the future. The skills that will help us transform, modernise, and regenerate services. By redesigning services from a customer perspective and using technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics as an enabler, we will be able to achieve the best outcomes for our residents within the reducing resources available to us, whilst reducing costs and improving efficiency via smarter ways of working.

To succeed in this ever-changing environment and remain competitive in terms of the recruitment market, we will need to improve our employment offer and maximise the benefits of working for us, such as flexible people management policies, staff rewards / discounts and hybrid working, so that we are able to attract and retain the best people.

We will also review our strategies, policies, and practices, along with how we develop, deploy, and retain talent. We will continue to develop our workforce planning to understand the capabilities needed and determine the talents required of our retained workforce.

Ongoing financial pressure will bring into focus the need to make better use of the financial resources we have available to us. Our Pay Policy Advisory Panel recognises this and has expressed its desire to undertake a review that will focus on our senior officer structures, spans of control and salaries to ensure our organisational structure is fit purpose and cost effective moving forward.

In summary, we will attract the best talent by offering an ‘employer of choice’ package, ensuring effective workforce and succession planning, and streamlining our organisational structures. This will allow us to provide high quality services whilst making the best use of the resources we have available to us.

We will achieve this by:

• Whilst ensuring its affordability, we will review our pay model, to support our ambition of being an ‘employer of choice.
• Introducing a revised recruitment strategy that reflects corporate commitment to equalities and diversity, whilst ensuring safe recruitment practices are in place.
• Promote safe employment practices.
• Reviewing and simplifying our existing recruitment processes and embedding consistent standards and practices to support the attraction, selection, and retention of the best available talent.
• Reviewing the recruitment and selection process for senior officers to reflect the changes required of our leaders as we move forward.
• Recruiting and retaining people that reflect our core values via the adoption of an aligned competency framework.
• Developing terms of reference to review our senior officer structures, spans of control and salaries to ensure they reflect the needs of the organisation and parity.
• Reviewing the end-to-end induction process including the launch of a new corporate induction - a programme that reflects our corporate brand.
• Review the effectiveness of our retention strategies, such as the payment of market supplements, to ensure they achieve the desired outcomes.
• Making sure employees have the skills and tools to respond to new ways of working by developing career pathways and inclusive opportunities for talent to grow.
• Developing a resilient workforce by further strengthening workforce and succession planning.
• Developing a network of champions who can deliver key areas of learning.
• Identifying potential across our diverse workforce, making sure all our people are given the opportunity to fulfil their potential.
• Aim to reduce our reliance on agency workers and external contractors.
• Boosting the use of work experience, secondments, apprenticeships, shadowing, coaching, mentoring and graduate schemes.
• Encouraging everyone to take personal responsibility for their own performance and development.
• Further develop existing reward and recognition frameworks to consistently celebrate success, innovation, and creativity.
• Completing a council wide digital skills audit to identify the current and future knowledge and skills needs of our workforce.
• Enhancing our digital learning and development offers, making sure appropriate learning can be accessed from a range of devices and settings.
• Ensuring all employees are aware of and have completed mandatory, statutory and core skills learning.
• Revising our Welsh Language Skills Strategy and working in partnership with the Welsh Language Commissioner’s Office on a pilot project looking at the internal use of the language.

7.2. WSO 2: Grow Outstanding Leaders and Managers

Innovative and high performing organisations display leadership behaviours at all levels of the organisation. We will work to foster these behaviours to respond to the challenges we face, allowing us to develop our next generation of talented leaders - people that can lead in an honest and authentic way, inspiring and engaging the people they work with by championing public service values and role modelling our Core Values.

We understand that doing more of the same things is not sustainable, so we will grow adaptable, inclusive leaders and managers, who understand what we expect of a Carmarthenshire manager; individuals with leadership skills who can effectively guide the organisation through change, providing leadership, direction, and support to our people.

We will also work to achieving a performance culture, meaning we will need highly developed, collaborative, and effective leaders and managers who are people focussed and can positively contribute to the recognition of and reward employees - coaching and developing them to deliver services to the highest standard.

With an increased focus on partnership and collaborative working, our leaders will also need to be politically aware, whilst having the ability to be innovative. Leaders and managers will need to be continually learning to support new ways of working.

In addition, as part of our approach to developing skills and capacity across the whole workforce, we will ensure that people at all levels in our organisation can develop and demonstrate the necessary qualities of leadership.

We will achieve this by:

• Implementing the new Competency Framework aligned to our values, to support recruitment, appraisals, and development.
• Building a ‘coaching for performance’ leadership and management approach.
• Developing a new 360-degree assessment tool for leaders based on the new competencies.
• Designing and piloting a programme that will equip our leaders and managers with the core skills needed for effective people management and change management.
• Developing politically and democratically aware leaders.
• Developing skills and confidence to manage diversity as well as accountability for employee engagement and inclusion.
• Ensuring we lead services that reflect the bilingual nature of our County by providing a range of development opportunities for new and existing employees to improve their Welsh language skills.
• Creating and delivering a “future leaders” offer for employees that have ambitions of moving into leadership roles.
• Fully implementing the new Learning Management System to support the provision of targeted Learning & Development interventions that support the strategic aims of the organisation while streamlining processes.

7.3. WSO 3: Improve Workforce Engagement

Organisations who are providing the best customer experiences are those that have highly engaged workers. Organisations with engaged employees are 21% more productive (Gallup). We understand that the four enablers to an engaged workforce are a strong strategic narrative, engaging managers, employee voice and organisational integrity.

We will work to provide a strong strategic narrative about Carmarthenshire County Council, that is authentic, provided by leaders who are empowering and visible. Our Corporate Strategy outlines a shared purpose that our people can align to, which acts as the corner stone to people understanding the bigger picture, and our managers will own corporate messages with authenticity.

Recruiting and developing engaging managers is critical, managers who focus their people, treating them as individuals while coaching and stretching them. We want our people to feel part of an organisation that values equality and diversity and key to this will be managers that make everyone feel part of the team, prioritise the wellbeing of their people whilst being discreet and trustworthy.

We will give our workforce a voice. Employee voice is vital in helping us make real and positive changes. We will work to create a culture where our people are seen as central to the solution, to be involved, listened to, and invited to contribute their experience, expertise, and ideas. We will build on our existing mechanisms and put in place a framework that makes sure we have ongoing two-way conversations with our people in different ways, to make sure every voice is heard.

Organisational integrity exists when our agreed core values are reflected in day-to-day behaviours. There is no ‘say–do’ gap. Promises made and promises kept, or an explanation given as to why not. Trust is fundamental to high performance in a team, and high engagement in an organisation. Organisational integrity builds trust and will be role modelled not just by senior leaders, but managers throughout the organisation.

We will achieve this by:

• Ensuring our managers are equipped to lead and manage change effectively, acting with integrity and being honest, creating a positive, trusting environment for their people.
• Ensuring our managers agree clear objectives with their people and show them how their work contributes to the organisation’s objectives.
• Ensuring our managers bring out the best in their people by giving regular, thoughtful, honest, and constructive feedback on performance.
• Making sure managers discuss the professional and career development of their people at regular points during the year and provide support to achieve agreed goals.
• Actively involving our people in our Transformation Programme via the introduction of a talent management programme.
• Develop and share learning resources to support digital inclusion.
• Further improving internal communications.
• Improving the opportunities for people to have a say.
• Conducting an annual employee engagement survey and acting on the feedback we receive both corporately and departmentally.
• Conducting regular “temperature check” surveys to make sure the employee voice is heard and listened to.
• Developing a recognition framework, based on feedback from our staff, that encourages our managers to, not only thank their people for the work they do, but to put effort into making sure innovation, creativity, success and achievements of individuals and teams are acknowledged, valued, and celebrated.
• Developing an employee relations strategy embracing the principles of social partnership to ensure we build positive relationships with our recognised trade unions.

7.4. WSO 4: Develop a High Performance, Innovative, and Achievement Culture

The best organisations are always looking for opportunities to improve, and so are the best employees. Creating a culture that values innovation and creativity and developing our entire workforce, in a no blame culture, is critical to the performance of our organisation – it’s the difference between an organisation that just gets the basics right and an organisation that successfully innovates by being willing to try new things, using mistakes as learning opportunities where everyone shares accountability.

Achieving high performance at all levels of the organisation is also fundamental to our future success. It begins with our leaders demonstrating the values and behaviours we want others to emulate and establishing clear performance measures that are aligned to these values and behaviours. From this, we will embed fair and consistent recruitment practices that reflect our community and focus on bringing in and retaining the best available talent. These performance measures underpin a standardised appraisal and performance management framework, and, when applied will allow us to identify high performers and high achievers. They will also help us to properly address underperformance via honest and constructive conversations and, by providing our leaders and managers with the necessary tools, will support them to effectively address underperformance.

Establishing clear career pathways for key roles and offering growth opportunities for everyone, we will support our workforce to flourish and succeed, while also promoting a culture of creativity and innovation and boosting employee engagement, retention, and loyalty.

Introducing a short-term experiential programme will provide our people with the opportunity to develop as they contribute to transformation projects whilst adding real value to our organisation.

Data currently shows that 21% of people across the UK lack the full basic digital skills, and the level of digital exclusion across Wales is higher still . It is therefore vital that, as an organisation, we are digitally inclusive by ensuring our workforce is digitally confident and that our digital content adheres to accessibility guidelines.

A digitally confident workforce is essential for a modern, innovative, and efficient public sector. A digitally confident workforce is a workforce that has the skills, knowledge, and mindset to use digital technologies effectively and efficiently in their work. A workforce that can adapt to changing digital demands, collaborate online, and create value through digital innovation. A digitally confident workforce is not only digitally competent, but also digitally curious and creative.

We will support our people in becoming digitally confident and adapting to new technologies, artificial intelligence, and robotics, so that we make the most of the opportunities that are presented.

We will achieve this by:

• Developing fair and consistent recruitment practices that reflect our community and focus on bringing in, and keeping, the best available talent.
• Establishing clear leadership behaviours and expected management competencies.
  Working together to embed behaviours that reflect our values and let us show how proud we are to work for Carmarthenshire.
• Focusing on retaining our high performers and managing underperformance through periods of change and implementing succession plans in critical roles.
• Improving user experience with our new Learning Management System (LMS) and develop capability to extract appropriate management information.
• Using our transformation programme to listen to staff about improvement ideas and further explore the opportunities for smarter ways of working.
• Introduced a Short-Term Experience Programme (STEP) providing staff with an opportunity to develop whilst supporting Transformation Projects.
  Further developing knowledge and skills to support the adoption of a more commercial approach to the delivery of Council services with the aim of generating additional income and mitigate the impact of on-going budget challenges.
• Provide the organisation with relevant, accurate people-related data, to help effective evidence-based decision-making via the development of a people data dashboard.
  Developing and implementing a new qualifications and skills framework.
• Supporting our services to make better use of technology, so that we reduce waste and costs and free up our people to do better things.
• Implementing our new Digital Skills Framework.
• Reviewing our new appraisal process, from a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

7.5. WSO 5: Develop and Maintain a Safe and Healthy Workplace

Our aim is to support our people to be safer, healthier, and happier in work. The integration of health, safety, and wellbeing into the way we work, whilst promoting a positive, safe, and healthy environment, is key to ensuring our people can thrive at work. To achieve this, we will continue to create opportunities that focus on our people’s health, safety, and wellbeing, while supporting initiatives that provide education and advice on a wide range of health, safety, and wellbeing topics.

Working with our managers and their people we will develop, implement, review, and monitor risk assessments, policies, procedures, and safe systems of work that reduce risks and provide a safe and healthy workplace. Our people will actively be involved during these processes to ensure the outcomes are appropriate, making their workplace as safe as reasonably practicable.

Working closely with our people, we will actively encourage them to lead a healthy lifestyle. This includes providing access to information, resources and support necessary to make positive healthy and safe decisions, as well as running regular learning and development events, activities, and initiatives to promote positive health and wellbeing.

We will also work hard to reduce any aspects of the working environment, which may negatively impact upon an employee’s health, safety, or wellbeing, ensuring all processes and procedures give due consideration to the mental and physical health of our people.

We will ensure sufficient capacity within our in-house Occupational Heath Centre to support our people and will provide expert medical advice, to effectively manage attendance and employee’s fitness to work. We will also continue to carry out statutory medical screening to measure the impact of work, for identified occupational groups.

We are committed to the development and implementation of policies relevant to the health and wellbeing of our employees and will continue to review and update such policies to ensure they support this Strategy.

Furthermore, it is important that we look at ways to build and support resilience and capacity to thrive in a climate of ongoing change. That means providing the tools, techniques, policies, and processes to support our people through difficult periods.

We will encourage personal responsibility to access the support available and continue to advocate our employee health and wellbeing networks and the fantastic work that they do, and the strong voice that they have across the organisation.

Our flexible working approach already provides great benefits for managing work-life balance. We want to do more to make sure that this mind-set is consistent across the organisation, whilst enabling managers to be creative and innovative to meet changing business needs.

We will achieve this by:

• Creating a culture where health, safety & wellbeing is integrated into employee behaviour, as well as relevant policies, processes and activities that have an influence on employees' overall health, safety, and wellbeing.
• Establishing and promoting positive leadership culture for health, safety and wellbeing that demonstrates commitment from Senior Management.
• Developing and implementing relevant management arrangements for health, safety, and wellbeing.
• Developing and implementing a health and wellbeing plan and programme.
• Ensuring we have the ongoing organisational commitment to the health and wellbeing of our people.
• Ensuring sufficient corporate focus in employee health and wellbeing support.
• Encouragement and support for employees to make positive lifestyle changes and take responsibility for their own health, safety & wellbeing, through provision of advice, support, events, and activities.
• Providing a positive working environment that promotes and enables improvements to employees’ health, safety, and wellbeing.
• Consolidate Health & Safety learning in the new Learning Management System, to improve compliance and monitoring.

 

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8. Appendices

8.1. Appendix 1: Cabinet Vision – Summary of Workforce Expectations

• Ensuring that Carmarthenshire County Council is a diverse and inclusive organisation.
• To work with relevant groups to promote the council as an employer across all communities including within the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community.
• Work with the Public Services Board to drive community engagement and good practice in relation to recruitment from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.
• To work with relevant external groups, to improve representation and signposting for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities on the Council’s website.
• To look at ways of improving the quality of our workforce equality data and continuously improve the quality of information gathered to improve workforce planning and management.
• Work to position our recruitment competitively and work towards continuously improving recruitment levels across the organisation. Seeking to understand the steps needed in order to become the ‘employer of choice’ in West Wales.
• Work to market Carmarthenshire County Council as an attractive employer for apprentices, school leavers and graduates. Focusing on reducing the migration of young people out of Carmarthenshire and from rural areas.
• Work with stakeholders to increase the proportion of Welsh-medium apprenticeships.
• Consider the short and long-term capacity of our workforce to deliver the current administration’s vision.
• Continue to embrace and promote agile working, hybrid meetings and new ways of working across the organisation.
• Work with Welsh Government, Public Service partners and Trade Unions in further progressing the Real Living Wage agenda.
• Further increase our use of the latest digital technology to further transform the services delivered by the Council.
• To develop a Council Transformation Strategy which will provide the strategic framework to support the implementation of a programme of transformation and change across the organisation. 

8.2. Appendix 2: Transformation Strategy – Workforce Priorities

• Further develop and strengthen the Authority’s strategic workforce management framework to support the Council in becoming an ‘employer of choice’.
• Further develop the Councils approach to Workforce Planning to provide the capacity and resilience to deliver its strategic objectives and anticipate and meet future needs.
• Ensure that the Council is able to make effective use of data to strengthen the performance and strategic management of its workforce.
• Make effective use of technology to help modernise key workforce processes and procedures.
• Strengthen the Council’s approach to the recruitment, retention, and flexibility of its workforce.
• Ensure that the Council staff are equipped with the necessary skills and behaviours to support the effective implementation of the modernisation and transformation agenda to enable the Council to deliver on its wider aims and objectives.
• Continue to strive to improve the health and wellbeing of our workforce.

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