Greater Glasgow NHS Board

Agenda for Change Project Steering Group

Minutes of a Meeting of the Agenda for Change Project Steering Group held on

Friday 18th February 2005 at 12 noon in Room B, Dalian House

PRESENT:

Janice Whitelaw, Terms and Conditions Project Lead

Juli McQueen, KSF Project Lead

Caroline Fee, Area Partnership Forum Representative

Rosslyn Crocket, Nurse Director to Greater Glasgow Health Board

Paul Watt, Job Evaluation Project Lead

Andy Carter, Acting Director of Human Resources, Primary Care Division

Ian Reid, Pay Modernisation Director

Ross McCulloch, Area Partnership Forum Representative

Stewart MacLennan, Area Partnership Forum Representative (part)

Rona Agnew, Project Manager, Staff Partner

Susan Russell, Staff Side Co-ordinator

Anne MacPherson, HR Director, North Glasgow Division

Les Jacobs, Corporate Analyst, GGHB

Donald Sime, Area Partnership Forum Representative

1.Apologies: Elizabeth Stow, Joint Chair, Full Time Officer, Society of Radiographers

Jim Whyteside, Public Affairs Manager, GGHB

Jim Cameron, Director of Human Resources, South Glasgow Division

Gordon Anderson, Area Partnership Forum Representative

Frances Lyall, Communications co chair, staff partner

Jonathan Best, Joint Chair, Chief Executive, Yorkhill Division

Irene Shields, Project Manager, Management Partner

2.Minutes of Meeting held on 14th January 2005:

Juli McQueen requested that point 4.1.01 is clarified to reflect that the recommendations for implementation of the KSF were fully endorsed by the PSG and these can now be taken forward for communication and action. Otherwise the minutes were accepted as a true record.

3.Matters Arising:

Ian advised the group that a meeting was scheduled to discuss the on call and facility agreement. Both Donald Sime and Rona Agnew confirmed this.

4.Update on SPRIG and partnership issues:

Ian Reid advised that SPRIG met on Wednesday and discussion took place around senior manager’s assimiliation onto AFC and the level of senior managers who would automatically move on to the new terms and conditions. He advised that there was no national clarification as yet. It had been suggested that although discussions around pay arrangements were underway, the application of annual leave and public holidays could be applied with pay being sorted out later. These points have been made to Alex Killoch and a decision around this is likely to be made by the end of March. Ian suggested that senior managers should be encouraged to to update their job descriptions. It was highlighted that some nursing and midwifery posts were senior managers’ posts and not nursing grades but were under nursing and midwifery job family. Rosslyn Crocket advised that his was being addressed.

Ian further advised the group that some trade unions had been successful in their equal pay for equal value claims. Unison and GMB had been successful in claiming £340,000 back pay under these claims. Discussions are continuing to take place at UK level. The Scottish Executive has suggested that this is a matter for the trade unions and employers. UNISON is challenging this and has lodged employee claims with the employer and scottish executive. There is also a National claim being lodged with NHS staff council. RCM are reputed to be making claims against doctors.

David Renshaw tabled a paper around the National consistency checking group. He has requested nominations for 4 staff and 4 manager representation across Scotland to be part of this group.

SPRIG is also looking at a Scottish Wide assimilation process where all boards in Scotland will assimilate whole families at the same time. The assimilation process has the potential for creating capacity issues within payroll. It has been recognised that engagement with the job matching process has be very slow with 1,400 jobs being matched across the whole of Scotland to date. Various reasons have been given for this slow uptake and ways to manage this. There has been no change however in the timetable yet. Paul Watt commented that you could wait a long time before assimilation could happen if we were to wait for whole job families. He further commented that there continues to be fundamental difficulties in getting panel members released and various options have been considered including releasing people in a block to attend panels. Donald Simes however commented that one of the draw backs from this approach was the potential for people to become fatigued in doing panels every day for a period of up to a month. Anne McPherson stated that the logistics of releasing people for two days was creating challenges for the systems and it maybe easier to release staff for longer but more structured periods. The length of training is adding to the logistical difficulties however people are becoming more confident on the system following the training.

Ian Reid stated that policies are now being developed around annual leave and recruitment and retention premia. Any policies will be proposed to the T&C guidance group then to the T&C sub group of the HR forum to be signed off. Annual leave is now being sent formally to the management and staff side sub group of the HR Forum.

5.Reports from the 3 Key strands:

5.1Job matching and evaluation

Paul Watt reported that the JE working group has now reviewed the learning outcomes of the matching panels and alterations are being made to the process. PW tabled a paper called ‘ Job matchers guide’ for ratification with the changes from the learning outcomes. Changes such as staggering the start times of the panels has helped with the initial setting up and running the panels. Other problems such as the post holder and/or manger not being available when further information is required have added to some of the difficulties. PW highlighted that the main concern is around the standby for the panels. This has resulted in some panels running with 3 staff partners and 1 management partner and vice versa. The JE group was looking for the PSG’s explicit approval with the adoption of this process as and when required. The PSG agreed this process. PW advised that the training minimises any likelihood to bias on either side and reassured the PSG that this would only happen as a last option. PW advised that a number of measures were in place including local and national consistency checking to ensure the process was robust, fair and consistent. Donald Sime requested that these occurrences are monitored and reported back to the PSG. He further requested that the reasons to why panel members are not turning up be investigated. Susan Russell advised that this process was already in place and that she was monitoring the staff issues and Irene shields was monitoring from a management perspective. This was agreed as a reasonable way to progress and ensure that the disruption to the running of panels is minimised.

CF provided some feedback from the network event which demonstrated that Glasgow appeared to be ahead in comparison with other Health Boards.

5.1.2Site Administration Role

There is now a National Network for this role providing structure and support. Both Michelle and Marjorie are trained in site administration however the initial training was felt to be inadequate. Additional training is being looked at and with the JE core consistency panel members and working with David Renshaw in order to provide a day or at least ½ day for site administrators training.

5.1.3Job Descriptions

Susan Russell raised the issue of several job descriptions arriving at GJNH with the exact same contents. She requested that if possible could these be filtered and only one job description turning up if this corresponds with several people. Donald Sime however stated that this maybe the case but it demonstrates best practice and in this case could avoid appeals.

5.2Terms and Conditions

5.2.1Janice Whitelaw reported that the T&C group was now in the process of looking in more depth at the assimilation process. Discussion had taken place with the payroll around the potential for a mail merge to provide a letter with the relevant information pertaining to the staff employee. The sub group has developed a one pay letter which would be sent out to the employee and discussion have taken place to ascertain whether this needs to be signed of by the staff and returned prior to assimilation. Irene shield was in the process of checking this with the Central Legal office to ensure that this approach was satisfactory as it was different from the suggested position taken by SPRIG. The sense however that the approach suggested by SPRIG would be too complex for Glasgow’s 33,000 plus staff. Ian Reid informed the group that the assimilation process was now on the agenda for SPRIG to deal with and they were now looking at a national assimilation timetable. Janice Whitelaw asked if the milestone for finishing assimilation was still the 30th September 2005. Ian replied that this would be the case until further guidance came from SPRIG.

5.2.2Janice Whitelaw advised the group that the T&C group were in the process of developing a train the trainers’ days in line with the other strands to provide training to the Divisional leads, HR, Staff partners and Payroll colleagues to ensure that a consistent message and interpretation is provided for T&Cs. Janice tabled the draft proposal for the training and asked for comments or suggestions to be returned to her within two weeks. Susan Russell advised that some of the nominations received have identified the willingness to be involved with the T&C and that it maybe useful for Janice to check these before finalising the attendees at the training.

5.3KSF

5.3.1Training

Ross McCulloch gave the feedback for KSF and advised the group that day the National Team has delivered three of the training events. Further date on 18th February will finish the training for NHSGG. On the 25th February Training the trainers is going out as a pilot. Following this there will be an adjusted role out through Glasgow wide events. Training for facilitators is also being rolled out with date, times and venues arranged. Sessions are being populated on a divisional basis.

5.3.2eKSF tool has been created and initial awareness raising session on capability arranged on national basis for 21st February. Central Team (Scotland) has had to raise issues related to implementation of KSF with National Team (UK) therefore further guidance will be issued on same resulting in further adjustments to the implementation plan. Juli stated that even the 3 star organisations are still not fully operational with the tool and an example of application is that it needs to be individualised. Donald Simes raised the issue of costs and that they need to be met by the organisations.

5.3.4Juli McQueen stated that due to the fact that NHSGG is ahead of other NHS Boards, a lot of the fine detail around the implementation is beginning to emerge. Further guidance has been provided around fully operational gateways and ensuring the process is clear and consistent. The issue of deferment from going through a gateway has also been raised and Juli stated that there are three levels of requirement around the application of deferments. These being organisational, individual and both accountability. The details require to be clarified from a national perspective, which has the potential to slow down the progress made and needed in order to meet NHSGG requirements. Examples that need consideration are part time workers who have less working time to develop. It will be necessary to address how part time workers will develop within the KSF structure. An effective process will need to be produced which would ‘flag up’ people who have the potential to be missed within the system. Gateway reviews and people being off sick around the time of their gateway review and miss the date, are further examples which needs some exploration.

5.3.5Juli table the ‘Complete Guide to KSF’ which she asked that the PSG proof read and provide any final comments. She stated that the document is not intended to be read in its entirety but more as a reference document where a person can dip in and out off as needed. She asked the group to provide comment on the flow charts and whether the group felt that the flow charts were easily understood.

ACTION: ALL

5.3.6It was agreed by all that the present timetable suggested by the KSF group should stand. That being working towards outlines being completed by October 05 and PDP’s in place by 2006. It was noted however that feedback from the national perspective should be available by April or May and the timetable should be able to reflect any changes required based on this.

  1. Communications
  2. Rona advised that there has been a meeting with all the key strands and divisional leads to ensure that any key communications are identified. Anne McPherson highlighted that the North Division had its own individual challenge due to its size. Rona advised that this had been raised and that Primary Care also was also an area for concern due to their fragmented spread. Rona suggested that these were indeed challenges and that the communications group were looking at the specifics and identifying possible solutions. She further advised that all communications identified and required will form the basis of the action plan for 2005-06 which everyone will have an opportunity to comment on. Rona requested that any thoughts the group had around routes to communications would be gratefully received

ACTION: ALL

6.2Posters are now being distributed to the Divisions. ‘All Change’ newsletter will continue as a formal process for communications. At the communications meeting it was identified that some communications need to happen speedily. Rona advised that Jim Whyteside has suggested that a way of dealing with this tactically would be to provide newsflash type communications with specific topic for communication. The group felt that this was a reasonable way to deal with this particular challenge.

6.3Rona advised the group that staff partners had considered the agenda and felt that it would be more beneficial if the agenda provided a framework to provide exceptional reporting rather than complete updates. They further requested that to make the meetings more productive it maybe better if the meetings were themed in order to focus on areas of concern or real progress. The Chair asked that the group consider these proposals and anything they wished on the agenda around themes for the meetings should be feedback to Irene Shield or Rona Agnew.

ACTION: ALL

  1. Date of Next Meeting:

Next meeting date will be the 11th March 2005 at 12 noon in Dalian House. Lunch will be provided.

  1. Meeting closed by the Chair

Agenda for Change Project Steering Group Minutes 12.11.04

Marjorie Mullins, Agenda for Change Project Team, Tel: 0141 951 5840