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On Tuesday I spent an excellent and interesting hour at a Workplace Health workshop led by Paul Collyer, Head of Occupational Health and Safety with around 30 other managers. Like the other 400 managers who will attend this session, I heard some interesting facts and figures which should make us all stop and think. For example, did you know that if all the sickness absence from 2016 was taken by just one employee then the last day that person would have been at work would have been sometime in 1873!
I also learned that 1 in 7 of people in employment are likely to experience a period of mental ill-health in any given year. What particularly surprised me though was that throughout these workshops the managers attending have, through a secret ballot voting exercise, consistently indicated that there is a clear difference in the approach we take to disclosing mental health issues as opposed to poor physical health. Over half of those attending said that they had personally experienced periods of poor mental health affecting their attendance or performance at work; yet about three quarters also expressed a view that they would have reservations about disclosing that to their own manager for fear of it being viewed negatively. We need to work towards creating a workplace culture where the apparent stigma being attached to poor mental health is eliminated. It will after all affect one in seven of us and no-one is immune.
I for one would never view negatively anybody asking for our support and help with mental health issues. This is a commitment that we should all make to one another throughout the organisation.
Today, we are hosting a visit from Melanie Dawes, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG). We will be briefing and exploring topics such as health and social care integration, our Military Civilian Integration programme, local government reorganisation as well as local government financing. I am also keen to offer and understand how the department might use us to shape and develop draft legislation before it is enacted. After all, you (we) have the experience of what works and what probably won’t in our county.
Speak again soon. For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
When I meet with staff from different services we usually recognise that we are responsible for services such as waste collection, highways, social care, safeguarding, planning and education in the county. What most of us don’t recognise is that we are also responsible for developing and growing our economy. This means more jobs, higher value jobs and areas for business to grow. This is a vital part of our role as a council as it is the prevention agenda for many of the social care and welfare aspects of the county.
So as we come toward the end of the 2013-17 council, I share will you some of the achievements of our economic development and planning team so that we can start to understand their role.
Overall unemployment in Wiltshire is 3.4% compared to the South West at 4.1% and Great Britain at 4.9%. The percentage of working age people on job seekers allowance is only 0.6% (GB is 1.2%) and has steadily fallen to this level from 4% in 2012.
Workforce jobs in Wiltshire have increased by 27,900 or 15%.
The Business Location Index 2015 shows our area (Swindon and Wiltshire) to be amongst the top 5 business locations in England.
We have directly worked with business to create over a third (10,000) of these jobs, safeguarded tens of thousands more and established a pipeline of 11,000 potential new jobs as a result of ongoing work with businesses and investors.
We provide support to over 2,500 businesses a year ranging from the very biggest employers through our Wiltshire 100 programme through to new start-ups and incubation through The Enterprise Network (TEN).
This has resulted in major investment by companies such as TJ Morris, Dyson, Hermann Miller, Apetito, Babcock, Hitachi Capital, Welton Bibby Baron and DTRVMS as well as representing the successful growth and expansion of great local companies like Anthony Best Dynamics, Bath ASU, Hill Brush Company, Good Energy and Haydens Bakery.
Last year we worked with business to bring in £173 million of foreign direct investment into the County with companies including Lockheed Martin, Ball Corporation, Wavin BV and Dynamic Air Engineering.
Recently we have worked with QuinetiQ to secure Boeing’s investment in the south of county which will create 1,500 new high value jobs.
Alongside direct business support we have secured funding to develop the infrastructure to enable and encourage economic growth including over £70 million of Local Growth Funding from Central Government and £40 million of European Programme Funding.
We are delivering major improvements to the A350 at Chippenham and at Junction 17 on the M4. We have improved the A429 enabling significant expansion at Dyson.
We supported the successful transformation of RAF Lyneham into the national Defence College of Technical Training.
We have worked with the Army to deliver the Army Basing Programme, delivering over £1billion of infrastructure to enable the return of troops from Germany to Wiltshire by 2020, with nearly of quarter of the British Army being based here by then.
We have secured £16 million funding for redevelopment of Chippenham Station and are working with Network Rail and GWR to deliver this scheme.
Also in Chippenham we have supported the redevelopment of Langley Park (including development of a new hotel for the town), major investment and growth by key employers – Wavin, Rotaval, Woods Group amongst others, successful regeneration of the former Hygrade meat factory site, creation of Chippenham Business Improvement District – generating £250,000 every year to support the promotion and vitality of the town centre.
Wiltshire Council’s direct intervention has helped retain a major employer (Good Energy) in the town - at no expense to the tax payer while they develop plans for the next stage of their growth.
We have supported the £21 million redevelopment of Chippenham College, including the development of a specialised 3D design and printing centre. In addition, Wiltshire College Lackham has been prioritised by the S&WLEP (a partnership between Wiltshire and Swindon Councils and the business community) for an £8.2 million grant from the Government’s Local Growth Deal and we should hear the outcome later this month.
Trowbridge has seen the large scale regeneration of the Castle Place and Cradle Bridge sites with new cinema, restaurants, hotel, shops and high quality public realm. We are working in partnership with the NHS on the redevelopment of the East Wing site.
We have secured £6 million towards improvements to the A350 at Yarnbrook,
In the Salisbury area we are building a £10 million high tech science park at Porton, working with Boeing to bring 1,500 aerospace jobs to Boscombe,
We helped establish the Salisbury Business Improvement District.
Salisbury College and the redevelopment of Maltings/Central Car Park have been prioritised by the S&WLEP for an £20 million grant from the Government’s Local Growth Deal of which we should hear the outcome later this month.
We have worked extensively with the military on developing routes to employment for army leavers through the MCI Partnership, a number of successful transition and job fairs, through our Higher Futures programme and through the Enterprise Network.
We have invested £16 million in digital inclusion and access to super-fast broadband to support homes and business throughout the county. We have secured £2 million from to working on a programme extending ultra-fast broadband (100 Mbps) to facilitate further business growth. We are developing the ‘Digital Mansion’ in Corsham to nuture and incubate IT start-up companies.
Just so you know…
Speak again soon. For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
A busy week this one – two visits to Monkton Park, one to London and still a day to go. Good to see so many staff out and about though. This week we published the budget papers detailing plans to balance a difficult budget in ’17-18. This has been the toughest budget so far but of course setting it is the easier part; delivering it is always the real challenge. Even with a recommended council tax rise of 1.99% plus the social care levy of 3%, it leaves us with a gap of £13.3m to fill. We plan to do this through a combination of changes to policy, service delivery, general efficiency, procurement savings (totalling around £10m) and reducing the number of staff posts (£3m). For the latter we will target reductions in vacant posts and agency spend first as we always do.
Last week I got together with the mangers in the services I lead. We spoke about the priorities for this year, agreed the expectations from us all and then I spoke about staff engagement. I had been reading a lot about this over the Christmas period. I read that up to 70% of staff in organisations are disengaged. I am pleased that we don’t have those levels as will be evidenced in the staff survey results that will come out in a couple of weeks. I researched the impact that managers can have on staff engagement and shared what I found with those attending. Here’s what I found:
Some research & data
• 70% of employees say they are disengaged at work (Gallup, 2016)
• Engaged, motivated employees improve bottom line performance
– 31% more productive, 3 times more creative
– 87% less likely to leave
• Most organisations fail to hold managers to account for this
• 70% of motivation is influenced by an employees line manager
• Employees don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Scary!
Making things worse – the 7 negative or demotivating behaviours
• Making a lot of stupid rules (we need to challenge ourselves here as we have some of these I think; grateful for your feedback)
• Letting accomplishments go unrecognised
• Hiring and promoting the wrong people
• Treating everybody equally
• Tolerating poor performance
• Going back on their commitments
• Being apathetic
Making things better – the 7 positive behaviours
• Follow the Platinum rule (not the golden rule). The golden rule is to treat people as you would want to be treated. The problem here is that we are all different and need to be treated differently! So the platinum rule is to treat people as they wish to be treated.
• Be strong without being harsh
• Remember that communication is a two way street
• Be a role model, not a preacher
• Be transparent
• Be humble
• Take a genuine interest in employees work life balance
Bringing it all together
• If you cultivate the characteristics above and avoid the demotivators, you’ll become the kind of boss that people remember for the rest of their lives. Oh god please let us achieve this in 2017.
Speak again soon. For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
Can you believe it is already the end of the year? As we approach Christmas and 2016 draws to a close, I want to take the opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your continued hard work, commitment and support this year. Whilst we have faced a few challenges we have achieved so much together.
Thank you for contributing towards the recent staff survey, your views and feedback is very important to us an organisation going forward.
Have an enjoyable break and I wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas. For those of you on call and working over the Christmas period, thank you.
Carlton
Just a very quick blog to remind you please to take part in
the staff survey which closes this coming Friday evening. Your views and
feedback is very important to us so that we can learn and develop the
organisation going forward.
At the moment, we have the following returns which is good
but we’re keen to get even more feedback:
(Please click image to enlarge)
Speak again soon. For daily updates, discussion, personal
opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on
Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Carlton
