Corporate report

Staff survey action plans (agenda item 10)

Published 22 December 2023

Applies to England

• Publication for Northern Ireland
• Publication for Scotland
• Publication for Wales

Purpose

1). To update the EB on action plans across the Forestry Commission.

2). To confirm the next staff engagement survey will launch in October 2023.

Background

3). The results from the Big Conversation staff survey were provided in April 2022. Following a workshop with DJS, the EB agreed 4 key priorities for action. These priorities were cascaded down to FS/FE/FR, where more detailed actions could be put in place:

• Performance discussions: ensure managers hold regular, high quality, constructive performance, and development discussions
• Pay and Benefits: the pay action sits at the EB level under Your Offer. In addition, a cascaded action was to improve awareness of FC employee benefits
• Workloads and wellbeing: identify roles with excessive workloads and ways to balance these workloads, to increase wellbeing.
• Inspiring leadership: an action for the senior leadership teams in FE/FS/FR.

4). Action plans have been written and are included as appendices:

• Forestry England: appendix 1
• Forest Research: appendix 2
• Forest Services: appendix 3

Discussion

5). The EB is asked to discuss:

a) Are there examples of good practice, or actions where FE/FS/FR would like to work together to ensure a more consistent approach? For example, FE are planning to introduce an annual Chair’s award to celebrate individual and team achievements.

b) Are CEO’s/Directors of FE/FS/FR/CO confident that actions are cascaded and teams are working to achieve their action plans? What mechanisms have they in place to assure themselves this is happening?

c)Is the EB confident that FE/FS/FR actions are focusing on the issues identified by staff in the survey? Action plans should not be about general business planning but should concentrate on resolving 3-4 key areas that staff have told us need fixing.

6). The proposal is that another staff survey is run in October 2023. FC has previously run surveys every two years in October. It was only due to issues with the tender process that the previous survey was run in January 2022. It should have taken place in October 2021.

7). The questions will be reviewed but the plan is to try to use the same questions in 2023 as in the 2022 survey. This will enable direct comparison between the 2023 survey, the 2022 survey and the Civil Service survey. Resource implications (if needed)

8). Funding for two staff surveys was approved in 2021. DJS was appointed, following a tender exercise, to provide two staff surveys. Their first survey was in January 2022, the second will be in October 2023. A further survey will take place in October 2025 following another tender exercise.

Risk Assessment

9). A risk register has not been written as action planning is delegated to FS/FE/FR. The key risk is likely to be that staff do not have confidence that change will happen following the staff survey. The ‘You said, we did’ news story should give staff some confidence that change will/is happening.

Equality Impact Assessment

10).An equality impact assessment has not been written, as the action planning is delegated to FE/FS/FR. Business areas should consider the impact of any action plans on equality.

Communications

11).The ‘You said, we did’ news story, explaining the action plans from across FC was uploaded on 18 January 2022.

12).The communication plans for the 2023 survey will be provided to the EB in summer 2023. It is anticipated that communications will be similar to the ‘Big conversation’ news stories from 2022.

Recommendations

13). To run the next staff engagement survey in October 2023.

OD project manager 24 January 2023.