Here are some of the key things we’ve been doing this past year to address feedback raised through our 2024 employee survey:
I am rewarded fairly
You will have seen recent communications in Our Derbyshire about the proposal of a new working group of councillors to look at our pay scales and terms and conditions and how these might align to our new target operating model.
The Appointments and Conditions of Service (ACOS) committee have since agreed to the proposal and we are now working on providing the information the working party will need, including factoring in your feedback and comments around pay and reward. Any recommendations that are proposed to ACOS committee in June 2025, need to be affordable and balanced against the work we’re doing on budget savings and support our new target operating model.
We’ve continued to use additional payments to support the salaries paid for critical roles which are hard to recruit to and retain in some areas.
I am valued and recognised
Inspiring Leaders (our leadership development programme) was launched in April 2023 and remains a priority as we continue to support, develop, and inspire high performance at all levels.
The programme gives our leaders the opportunity to explore good leadership behaviours and apply these to their teams such as setting an inspiring vision, providing authority to deliver, encouraging innovation, recognising contributions and celebrating success. It also helps develop better self-awareness and acquire skills in adapting their leadership style.
More than 640 leaders from grade 11, up to and including our Executive Directors and Managing Director have now completed the programme. Our grade 10 leaders are currently on programme while grade 9 leaders have received their schedule.
I am involved in decisions that affect me and my work
- Our Managing Director Emma Alexander, supported by our Executive Directors hosted a series of roadshows, both in-person and through Teams, to share our new draft vision for the future and to seek colleagues’ input to shape how we'll achieve it. During the roadshows colleagues were asked for ideas to help develop our new employee values that describe the way we'll all work, and some customer commitments that set out what customers can expect from us. The roadshows were a huge success and marked the start of a new way of communicating and engaging with colleagues across the council as we look to the future.
- The communications team have developed a new system for launching and embedding internal rolling ‘key messages’ that can be owned and shared by Executive Directors and also allows for more localised departmental specific messages to support it. The key messages approach will provide a more formalised system of sharing important council-wide messages in a consistent way and can be used by your leadership teams to keep you informed.
- The communications team have also sought feedback on a refreshed and simplified Leadership Communication and Visibility Framework. Following its principles will ensure consistency in our leaders’ approach to communication and visibility across the council. We’ll share the final version with you once amendments have been made following the feedback received.
I believe my wellbeing is important to the organisation
- We continue to work with colleagues from Joined Up Care Derbyshire and Live Life Better Derbyshire to offer a programme of wellbeing activities for employees across a wide range of areas including physical, emotional, and social wellbeing. This includes access to a range of support videos on a range of wellbeing topics from previous sessions. The offer is revised quarterly and in September we committed to providing this for another year. The programme continues to see a high level of uptake and usage at the end of December had seen 3614 individual wellbeing timetable bookings and 2855 individual views of the video content with 1143 employees registered to access the videos.
- A further development of our wellbeing support has been the introduction of dedicated Health Improvement Adviser support from Joined Up Care Derbyshire which is available to individuals, teams or settings. This has seen 123 sessions delivered reaching 511 employees. This is broken down as 65 individual Peer Psychological appointments, 19 planned workshops reaching 297 people and 27 support meetings to 76 leaders and 59 outreach sessions. For further details, please visit free wellbeing support from Joined Up Care Derbyshire. This is only part of our support – access our wider wellbeing offer.
Local team engagement action plans
Following the result sharing of the 2024 Employee Survey, you will have been involved in developing a local team action plan, outlining how you will work together to address any possible issues or improve the things that already work well in your team.
Whilst we’ve shared what we’ve done at an organisational level to address key themes, we want to hear what you have done in your local teams.
Please share your success stories with us, where your team have progressed and completed actions around some of the key issues raised – along with a team photo where possible.
Email employee.engagement@derbyshire.gov.uk with your stories so we can share what you’ve been doing.