Agenda item

Report of the Cabinet Member Corporate Services

The committee considered a report of the Cabinet Member Corporate Services regarding the outcome of a HAY review of senior salaries.The HAY review process was designed to ensure that salary levels remained appropriate and continued to fairly reflect levels of responsibility, and that the senior management grading structure continued to serve the Council effectively. The review encompassed the senior management roles within the Council only (not service managers or below) and the outcomes of the review were set out in the report.

The chair introduced Paul Hancock from HayGroup who had produced the report for the council on Job Evaluation and Pay Benchmarking.  In a short presentation he gave Members an overview of the main elements of the Hay method for job evaluation. He explained that it provided a logical and fair system for determining the relative importance of jobs in an organisation.  He explained that the results set out in the report had been checked with regard to their relative ranking within the council and against Hay points awarded to other similar posts in local government for consistency. The starting point had been the Chief Executive's post to ensure that it was comparable with other similar posts across the industry in terms of job evaluation and pay. He went on to explain in more detail the assessment of Know How, Problem-solving and Accountability which were evaluated separately and then through a series of lookup tables combined to give a total score for that job.

The Head of Human Resources confirmed that each individual post holder in the review had had an interview with the consultant as part of the process. The results would be communicated to each individual in a formal letter and a one-to-one meeting and the individual would have the right of appeal and could request an explanation of how their grading had been arrived at. The consultant advised that individuals would normally need some guidance in interpreting the scores.

A member suggested that the responsibility of a post holder seemed to be the biggest factor in determining the job evaluation with the size of their department and the size of population they were servicing being important factors. The consultant advised that the responsibility for employees would be assessed among other factors. The size of population would not be directly included but this would be reflected in the size of the budget that the individual was responsible for which was assessed, and the impact of the role. The most important factor in the overall assessment was the context in which the job was operating and the level of change and challenge in the role. These were important factors in a commissioning council.

The chair invited members to discuss the report which had been circulated with the agenda. The Head of Human Resources provided some context to Members and emphasised the change in the senior management structure over the last 8 years. The senior management team had reduced from 19 to the current 4 and although the number of employees in the organisation had reduced with the advent of commissioning, the responsibilities of the senior management team remained considerable. 

Members were able to ask questions of the consultant and the Head of Human Resources before considering the recommendations in the report.

Upon a vote of the recommendations in the report were resolved unanimously.

Resolved that

1. The findings of the Hay review be approved and changes be implemented from 1 November 2014

2. A further report be received by the committee should there be any further significant changes as a result of organisational change.