Corporate report

UKHSA Advisory Board: UKHSA people delivery plan

Updated 2 February 2023

Date: Tuesday 24 January 2023

Sponsor: Jac Gardner, Chief People Officer

Presenter: Jac Gardner

Purpose of the paper

At the September Advisory Board meeting, the emerging people strategy was shared for comment, alongside a draft people delivery plan. The people strategy continues to evolve to ensure it is aligned to the longer-term achievement of our UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) Corporate strategy, our Science strategy and more. The people delivery plan has been developed to focus on our short-medium term priorities through to the end of 2023.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on the plan, setting out its alignment to our UKHSA strategy and how this translates into our people priorities and our ‘flagship projects’.

A number of key activities have been progressed since the draft plan was presented to the Advisory Board back in September 2022. As a result, a short update on achievements to date is also presented for the Board to note.

Initial feedback on the plan was that it was comprehensive but ambitious within a challenging backdrop. We were encouraged to consider whether the plan was achievable and whether we had the resources and capability available. Since then, we have restructured the People Group team and have spent time developing the Plan further to ensure there is clear accountability for delivery and that we can track, measure and report progress.

We will continue to deep dive into the people strategy and discuss some of our flagship projects and aspects of the plan at the People and Culture Committee.

Recommendation

The Advisory Board is asked to:

• note some of the progress made in the last 6 months
• comment on the people delivery plan and consider:
  • is the plan focused on delivering the right strategic outcomes for business imperatives?
  • does the Board have any concerns or suggestions around delivery?
    
  • what further opportunities could be explored to maximise the value People Group can bring to our UKHSA strategy deployment?
    

Download the UKHSA people delivery plan PowerPoint slides, presented at the Advisory Board meeting on 24 January 2023.

Background summary

As a reminder, the People Strategy has been developed with six areas of strategic focus that reflect the organisation’s ambition in relation to its people:

Progress has already been made against many of our deliverables and this is captured below for information, alongside our areas of focus for 2023.

A resilient organisation

Strategic objective overview

We have a right-sized organisation that is designed to deliver our core services but with the flexibility to respond to health security incidents. We have clear accountabilities, and we collaborate purposefully with each other, our key stakeholders and our partners.

Flagship projects and their target delivery dates and milestones include:

• achieve ramp-down of COVID-19 funded workforce (reference R4) – target delivery is March 2023
• recruit to core roles (reference R2) – target delivery is March 2023
• blueprint for a core/flex operating model (reference R1) – target delivery is September 2023

Status update

We achieved our workforce ramp down trajectory from 11,100 FTE to 6,700 FTE 4 months earlier than planned.

Our focus is now on building and stabilizing the UKHSA core workforce - our proportion of permanent civil servant workforce has increased to 54% and this will continue to increase over the remainder of the financial year as we recruit to core roles, enabling us to roll off fixed term contracts and contingent labour.

We outsourced our recruitment backlog and new recruitment campaigns in November, enabling us to accelerate our recruitment to core roles significantly.

As part of our Change programme, we completed the redesign of all Groups within UKHSA, clarifying accountabilities, embedding governance and ways of working.

Organisationally, the COVID-19 Vaccine Unit (CVU) was successfully integrated into UKHSA in October.

Our ability to flex and respond as an organisation remains a key requirement – this is being considered as part of the Next Generation Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (NGEPRR) work led by Oliver Munn, Director General Health Protection Operations and Chief Testing Officer.

Attract and retain our talent

Strategic objective overview

Talented people are excited to join us and contribute to our mission. We have an exciting employee value proposition, with the right reward structures, policies and development opportunities in place to ensure a great employee experience.

Flagship projects and their target delivery dates and milestones include:

• address reward priorities (reference A5) – target delivery is January 2023
• launch Employer Value Proposition (EVP) phase 1 (reference A3) – target delivery is January 2023
• develop total reward strategy and business case (reference A4) – target delivery is May 2023
• EVP phase 2: whole employee journey (reference A7) – target delivery is December 2023

Status update

We implemented our pay award for 2022 to 2023 within our agreed budget of 3% in what has been, and continues to be, an extremely challenging environment for pay and reward generally.

Competition for talent in our scientific roles and our data, analytics and technology roles continues to be a challenge.

We commenced two specific projects, the first being a review of our application of the Clinical Ringfence (CRF). This is seen as a ‘quick win’ in being able to address competitiveness for some of our scientific roles and is all within current governance. Under proposals we would initially bring 365 qualifying roles under the CRF with potential to bring more in scope. Whilst this is a short-term measure, a longer-term piece of work is underway to develop a science framework for pay and capability.

The second project is the development of a business case for the implementation of the Civil Service Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) framework to UKHSA, which would initially apply to 389 roles and one to review our application of the CF. We aim to proceed to implementation for both of these specific projects in Q4/Q1.

A broader reward strategy will commence in Q4 2022 (which includes the science pay framework mentioned above). We are set to launch our EVP project in January 2023.

Leaders who excel

Strategic objective overview

Our leaders and managers are informed and engaged in our business priorities and feel confident to empower their teams to deliver. They collaborate across the organisation to ensure the best outcomes and hold themselves and each other accountable for success

Flagship projects and their target delivery dates and milestones include:

• Leadership Development Strategy (reference L5) – target delivery is March 2023
• UKHSA Vision Development (reference L6) – target delivery is May 2023
• Leadership Change Programme Cascaded (reference L7) – target delivery is December 2023

Status update

We reviewed the size and shape of our leadership structure, reducing from 350 senior Civil Service (SCS) roles to 188.

Our first leadership away day was held in November, with a follow up event planned for spring 2023. An additional event for our top 40 leaders is also planned for January 2023.

Work on the development of our UKHSA Vision and deployment of our strategy will be a focus for Q4/Q1.

A values-led organisation

Strategic objective overview

We have a culture where we encourage and support everyone to be at their best. We are performance focused and values led – impactful, insightful and inclusive.

The flagship project is Employee Engagement Action Plan and Listening Strategy (reference V3), which has a target delivery of March 2023.

Status update

The Civil Service Employee Survey was undertaken in October 2022 with the results received in December. We have seen a general overall decline in results most notably on pay and benefits and managing change.

The Executive Committee recognise the improvement needed in many areas and are committed to ensuring we have clear and tangible action plans.

A fuller review of the survey results and development of a proposed listening strategy is included on the January People and Culture Committee agenda.

Some headlines for the Advisory Board to note include:

• overall response rate of 66%
• engagement index score of 56%, a reduction of 4% on the previous year
• increase in favourable responses to ‘organisational objectives and purpose’ and ‘learning and development’ but a decrease across other topic areas
• biggest drivers of engagement are around feeling positive about the future, changes made for the better and managing change well
• bullying and harassment and discrimination are areas we want to investigate more deeply as any behaviour or treatment perceived in this light is unacceptable
• a cascade of the results has commenced with local action plans due by the end of March 2023

Building on the launch of UKHSA’s values and behaviours at the start of this financial year, a suite of practical and adaptable tools (Everyday Values) has been launched with our teams and leaders this quarter. These help individuals, teams, meetings and project groups to talk about how they want to work together and behave together to live our values, and to deliver outcomes effectively and collaboratively.

Growing our expertise

Strategic objective overview

The knowledge and skills of each of our colleagues is critical to UKHSA; they help us to be world-leading in what we do. We provide personal and professional development and career paths across all disciplines and accessible to all, and we have active engagement with our external partners to build health science capabilities for the future.

The flagship project focuses on developing a framework for career paths (reference G4), which has a target delivery of December 2023.

Status update

This activity will commence in 2023, bringing together Head of Profession, leaders and People Group to develop career frameworks

Linked to Attract and retain our talent, we will prioritise the implementation of the existing Civil Service DDaT framework for our data and technology roles and develop a science framework for our scientific roles.

Enhancing HR value

Strategic objective overview

Our HR processes and services are efficient, technology enabled and customer focused. We add value through our leadership and advice on key people priorities and support the organisation through effective change.

Flagship projects and their target delivery dates and milestones include:

• People Strategy and Plan (reference E5) – target delivery is March 2023
• Resource People Group (reference E1) – target delivery is March 2023
• strategic workforce planning (reference E7) – target delivery is October 2023

Status update

The People Strategy and Delivery Plan have been developed; the focus for Q4 is to build awareness and engagement on delivery and progress.

Following a consultation exercise, a new structure was implemented for People Group, effective 1 December 2022. A summary of the new structure is included in Appendix A. Similar to the rest of UKHSA, we continue to recruit to our core roles and reduce our reliance on fixed term contracts and contingent labour. The aim is to have the People team fully resourced by the end of March 2023 and focus on enhancing our processes and capability.

Assisting our customer journey, a Line Manager Hub was launched in summer, providing a route for quick and easy access to people related policies and information.

We have learned a lot as an organisation over the past year in relation to planning our future workforce. Our workforce data reporting has improved, our operational focus on right-sizing the organisation will continue, but with a shift in focus through the year to planning future skills and capability.

How we are managing the people delivery plan

The plan has been developed with the People leadership team with each flagship project assigned a lead or owner. The lead or owner has empowered accountability for delivery (reflected in the individuals’ objectives for the year). Leads or owners will be expected to update progress to People leadership team and to also ensure relevant stakeholder engagement throughout.

Key dependencies and risks

A full risk register is part of our plan. However, summarised below are a couple of the larger risks in terms of potential impact.

HR operating model and systems

A key dependency for the full move to our operating model is the implementation of UKHSA’s enterprise resource planning system, Money and People Services (MaPS) across Finance, Commercial, People and Technology. The programme is led by Finance Group and the implementation of the HR module commenced in 2021 and will continue through 2023. It will transform the way we store, access and process information about our people. It will also change our ways of working to allow employee and manager self-serve, ensure our people processes are simple, efficient and user friendly, and provide organisation-wide people data to help inform decision making.

Business readiness is critical to the success of the programme and the speed with which the core HR module – including payroll – can be implemented fully, followed by modules that support our strategic ambitions around resourcing, performance, talent, development and analytics.

Our future operating model relies on system and process capability to adopt and embed simple and efficient processes. However, it also relies on people capability. A risk to speed and quality of the people delivery plan is dependent on People Group having a stable workforce that possesses the right capabilities. We are in a similar position to the rest of the organisation in having a large proportion of our team as temporary employees or contractors, but the restructure we implemented from 1 December 2022 has allowed us to commence recruitment to our core roles and identify the future capabilities and skills we need within the team.

We need strong and capable leadership within People Group to lead delivery of the plan. By March 2023, we will have seen a 100% turnover in our People Group leadership team – a risk in relation to loss of corporate knowledge and relationships but also an opportunity to bring new thinking and drive change.

Attract and retain talent

Our inability to attract and retain our current and future workforce is one of UKHSA’s major corporate risks. The EVP project will aim to define the whole employee journey and create a strong offering of a great and unique place to work. However, pay and reward an important component of our offer to employees. There is a significant likelihood that changing our pay and reward offer will require us to seek the relevant approvals to operate outside our pay remit. There is therefore a risk that approvals are not granted given the current reward climate.

Subject to 2023 to 2024 budget approval, our confidence around stabilising our workforce is relatively high, which also enables us to focus on engaging our core workforce. Confidence in delivering our EVP and reward priorities is medium – whilst the project scopes are clear and are priority, they will require resource and capability internally and relevant approvals for reward.

Next steps

Now that the UKHSA strategy is developed and we have been able to deploy it into key people priorities, the People team will be undertaking broader engagement across the organisation on where our areas of focus will be and how we will work with them to deliver against their people priorities. We are keen to ensure that we collaborate and work in multi-functional teams on many of our projects to ensure we achieve the best outcomes for the organisation and our people.

From a governance perspective we will continue to drive proposals through the People Board, and where appropriate, take some items to UKHSA Executive Committee for approval. The People and Culture Committee will also provide an excellent source of challenge, insight and encouragement for our delivery plan.

The people strategy will continue to evolve through this year as we mature as an organisation and as a People team, and our more pressing immediate and operational priorities transition into our longer-term value add activity.

Jac Gardner
Chief People Officer
January 2023