Corporate report

UKHSA Advisory Board: People and Culture Committee minutes

Updated 13 December 2023

Date: Thursday 30 November 2023

Sponsor: Sir Gordon Messenger

Recommendation

The Advisory Board is asked to note the minutes of the 11 July 2023 meeting of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) People and Culture Committee. The minutes were agreed on 31 October 2023.

Minutes, UKHSA People and Culture Committee, Tuesday 11 July 2023

Present at the meeting were:

• Sir Gordon Messenger – non-executive Chair
• Jon Friedland – non-executive member
• Jac Gardner – Chief People Officer (CPO)
• Jenny Harries – Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

In attendance were:

• 6 attendees with names and titles redacted
• 1 attendee with name and title redacted (minutes)

Apologies from:

• Mark Lloyd – non-executive member

Welcome, apologies and declarations of interest

23/040 The Chair welcomed participants to the People and Culture Committee with apologies noted above. There were no additional declarations of interest.

Minutes of previous meeting and matters arising

23/041 The minutes from the previous meeting on 20 April 2023 (enclosure PAAC-23-012) were agreed.

23/042 In respect of action 23/021 concerning an update on workforce plans in line with the core budget settlement, a short additional update had been circulated to the People and Culture Committee on 11 July 2023.

23/043 All actions were complete (enclosure PAAC-23-013).

Introduction and Chief People Officer’s Brief

23/044 The CPO provided an update on organisation-wide people-related activities (enclosure PAAC-23-0014)

Workforce

23/045 The core budget had been agreed and could be translated into a workforce plan. There remain challenges in terms of recruitment volumes and attraction. Since April 2022 almost 1000 FTEs had been added to the workforce, highlighting the scale of the activity. There had also been significant turnover with 60% of applicants being from within UKHSA applying for permanent roles, promotions etc. Support for recruitment had recently been extended with outsourced capacity from Reed. Work was underway to look at converting some roles from Fixed Term Contracts (FTC) to permanent, together with implementing some managed moves across Government, both of which will help accelerate recruitment to some vacancies.

23/046 In relation to UKHSA’s use of contingent labour, it had been tasked with reducing contingent labour to below 80FTE by the end May 2023, a target that had been achieved through a blend of permanent recruitment, natural roll-off of some contracts, sourcing temporary roles from NHS Professionals (an agency owned by DHSC), and a small portion of work moving to managed services. Monthly reports were being provided to Ministers to confirm that targets were met.

23/047 The Committee asked whether 80 FTEs was sufficient given the skills areas where UKHSA could not compete effectively. It was explained these were mainly in the technology, data and analytics roles. There were also significant numbers in Science (laboratory support), but NHS Professionals was assisting with this.

23/048 The Committee discussed the attractiveness of UKHSA to external candidates. It was explained that Reed were able to provide data on where applicants were coming from and on dropout rates so that we could gain some insight into our external reach.

23/049 It was agreed the CPO would confirm the percentage of fixed term contracts for a period longer than 2 years. (Jac Gardner)

23/050 The Committee discussed the recruitment volumes to some of the Science roles. It was noted that skills and capabilities of the scientific workforce had also been discussed at the Science and Research Committee.

Pay

23/051 A progress report was given on the transfer of some colleagues carrying out comparable roles to those in the NHS (e.g., laboratory staff) to transfer to NHS Agenda for Change terms and conditions. This required UKHSA to make careful judgements about which roles qualify to be inside the clinical ringfence, and also a decision for the eligible individuals as to whether they would prefer to transfer from their existing Civil Service terms and conditions. The CPO confirmed that this exercise had successfully concluded.

23/052- 23/055 [Information redacted in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000]

People Experience Project update

23/056 The [Title redacted], [Title redacted] and [Title redacted] provided a presentation on the UKHSA People Experience Project (PAAC-23-010).

23/057 The presentation updated the committee on the second phase of the UKHSA People Experience Project, which included defining the UKHSA “People Promise” (Employee Value Proposition) and identifying a range of experience improvements which UKHSA should consider for investment over the next 3 years. The overall aim was to help create an attractive, high performing organisation where colleagues could have happy, successful careers.

23/058 The Committee emphasised the importance of investing in and delivering the proposals, or there was a risk that trust would be eroded.

23/059 As regards the Value Case, the Committee discussed the ‘spend to save’ expectation. It was emphasised that this was an investment and would most likely be a net saving over a number of years.

23/060 The Committee recommended that:

• appropriate inductions for new and existing staff should be used to reinforce the culture and value and that commitment from senior leadership was required for induction
• consideration should be given to revising the proposed People Promise “encourage you to be yourself” to “value” or “support you as yourself
• the strategy needed to be supported by outcome measures and performance indicators and noted the measures proposed, suggesting that they could be simplified to ensure focus on the critical issues
• progression pathways were not always clear for each profession and required further work
• development should be about technical skills and progressing as individuals
• as appraisals were key to driving leadership to the heart of the organisation and leadership should be at every level, the end of year appraisal and continuous improvement dialogue through quarterly conversations were also needed, and could be used to address behaviour inconsistent with UKHSA’s values

23/061 The Committee noted the progress made since April 2023 and expressed support for the overall structure, the three elements of the promise and the values and sentiments expressed.

Employee diversity and inclusion dashboard

23/062 The [Title redacted] provided a presentation to share insights from the Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Dashboard and explain how these were being used to inform areas of focus and improvements.

23/063 The vision for D&I was to improve health equity across UKHSA by attracting, maintaining and investing in a talented workforce representing the diversity of the population. D&I was more mature than some other UKHSA HR work but needed to be integrated better with other projects.

23/064 The main conclusions from the data were that:

• UKHSA benchmarked well for disability in the Senior Civil Service (SCS), ethnic minority, LGB+ and gender, when compared against the Civil Service and economically active populator (EP) benchmarks
• exceptions to this were disability representation at delegated grades and ethnic minorities and females in the SCS cadre
• there was a declining trend in the number of ethnic minorities successful during the recruitment process, however the end result was still comparable against the EP benchmark

23/065 The Committee observed that there was a risk focusing on data, representation and metrics and not delving into the underlying experiences of those represented by the statistics. It recommended that both quantitative and qualitative elements should be addressed.

23/066 The Committee were reminded that the health of an organisation through D&I was how the organisation dealt with its workforce regardless of their characteristics and that line managers by instinct should understand what it is like to be in a minority group or have different experiences.

23/067 The Committee discussed the importance of line manager education and appraisals. One example provided was around feedback on recruitment and support - many colleagues didn’t see themselves as disabled but felt that they required an adjustment to succeed in the workplace. A focused inclusion session was being developed for line managers to improve education and awareness.

23/068 The Committee also noted that:

• each Executive Committee member had published D&I objectives which they were required to ensure were met by their teams
• the Internal Health Equity Strategy had recently been published. This was not only concerned with reducing health inequalities externally but also concerned with D&I within teams and whether the right decisions and thought processes were in place for the setting of measures
• the D&I Dashboard had encouraged a great deal of positive conversation, but it was important for the data for be examined carefully before actions were taken

23/069 The Committee noted the data sources and insights and agreed that an additional future update would be provided on D&I data due to its importance for the Employee Value Proposition and overall workforce culture.

Forward look and topics for future meetings

23/070 The Committee noted the suggested agenda items for future meetings (PAAC-23-017) which included Freedom to Speak Up Guardian Update and Senior Civil Service Pay.

23/071 In addition, the Committee agreed that:

• The January 2024 People and Culture Committee should be re-scheduled due to the other commitments of the Chair [Name redacted]
• The Civil Service People Survey Results from October would be scheduled for discussion at the new date for the January 2024 meeting [Name redacted]
• An update on leadership work would be presented to the Advisory Board rather than the People and Culture Committee (Jac Gardner)

Any other business and close

23/072 It was agreed that the People and Culture Committee should include an attendee from the communications team. (Jac Gardner) / [Name redacted]

23/073 The meeting closed at 11:35pm.