Musrat Zaman, Director of Workforce, OD & Business Support and Pat Chen, Head of HR introduced the report that provided an update on the level and management of employee relations casework within the Council, highlighting progress made for the period July 2022 – September 2022.

Further to questions from the Committee, Musrat and Pat provided additional information on:

·         The main categories of grievances.

·         How data is monitored and work to identify patterns.

·         The training of staff and introduction this year of a mediation service and how the service focussed on re-building relationships to reduce the number of formal grievance processes.

The Committee indicated it would welcome greater detail in statistics relating to ER casework as it felt the current level of detail was not sufficient to allow meaningful conclusions to be reached. Such additional detail ideally to include feedback or similar data on levels of complainant’s satisfaction with the ER process; performance against policy timescales; and categorisation of individual complaints/ grievances. The Committee noted the risk of identifying staff involved may place limits on the level of additional detail that could be provided.

RESOLVED that:

1.    The report be noted, subject to the comments above.