Employee wellbeing

We have a health and wellbeing strategy which aims to take a proactive and engaging approach to enhancing the health and wellbeing of our employees.

The objectives of this strategy are:

• To promote healthier lifestyles, provide prevention, intervention and rehabilitation
• To support employees to assess and take personal responsibility for their own health and wellbeing
• Providing managers with the knowledge and skills to support their staff, manage attendance and reduce stressors in the workplace
• To reduce the levels of sickness absence

We are committed to improving the quality of working life for all our employees. This includes a recognition that balancing work and home life is a key consideration for all employees. We, therefore, has a range of provisions for employees, such as:

• Flexible working arrangements
• Holiday purchase scheme
• Carer leave - time off when an employee has an unexpected and urgent domestic problem
• Compassionate leave - time off at the time of a bereavement
• Paternity leave - time off for the father, partner or carer of an expectant mum when she has her baby
• Parental leave - Unpaid time off to care for children
• Adoption support leave - time off when employees wish to adopt a child

Employee pensions

All our employees are eligible to join the The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) is a statutory, funded pension scheme. As such it is very secure because its benefits are defined and set out in law.

Highlights of the benefits provided by the LGPS are:

• A tax-free lump sum when you retire
• A pension based on your contributions
• The ability to increase your pension by paying extra contributions
• Voluntary retirement from age 60
• Retirement from age 55 with your employer’s consent
• An ill health pension from any age
• Redundancy cover from age 55
• A death in service lump sum
• A widow’s, widower’s or civil partner’s pension
• Children’s pensions
• The index-linking of benefits to ensure that they keep pace with inflation

Employee training and development

The development of the skills of our employees and elected members is something we believe is paramount to bettering our community.

Our strategy defines that our main goals are:

• Creating a developing and learning culture
• Developing managers for the future
• Performance management
• Delivering development on the main aims and core values
• Developing the future workforce
• Responding to the national targets for education and training and to national vocational qualifications
• Partnership working
• Developing employees to meet the needs of best value and CPA
• Supporting the development of skills to achieve e-government targets
• Supporting employees to meet basic skills levels

Lifelong Learning Agreement

The Lifelong Learning Agreement made between Unions and we also have the stated aim of building and maintaining a culture where learning is seen as an integral part of the lifestyle of our employees.

Our flexible working scheme

We support flexibility in managing working time. As well as a flexi-time scheme, which allows flexibility of start and finish times and length of breaks within the normal working week, there are a number of flexible working alternatives, which can be considered, such as part time work, job sharing, compressed hours, term time only or annualised hours. All flexible working arrangements must meet the needs of the service, but aim to also support the individual employee to obtain a better work life balance.

The Flexible Working Policy has five key objectives:

• To enable the council to meet business needs and provide a quality-driven, added-value service to customers
• To enable the council to attract and retain the best people
• To enable individuals to achieve work-life balance
• To ensure fair treatment for individuals who wish to work more flexibly
• To ensure that people are making effective use of their working time