Management Board | Development Committee | Audit Committee | Human Resources Committee


Human Resources Committee - Minutes of meeting held on 14 February 2007

Membership | Terms of Reference | Minutes of Meetings

HRC members:
Sue Owen
Jane Clark
Liz Davis
Jim Drummond
Dave Fish
Pauline Hayes (representing Martin Dinham)
Joy Hutcheon
Richard Montgomery
James Price (representing Charlotte Seymour-Smith)
Amanda Rowlatt
Sam Sharpe
Kevin Sparkhall (representing Richard Calvert),
Ellen Wratten
NED: Ann Rennie
HRC Secretariat: Ed South

Observers:
Abercombie House – Ian Ballantyne; Angela Bevan; Nustran Bryce; Claire Cowling; Paula Hallam; Jim Higgins; Dorothea Lee; Christine Paterson; Pauline Perry; Richard Plumb; Grace Robertson; Liz Scott; Jane Shute; Alex Wilson; Diane Howell.

Palace Street – Arthur Fagan; Ann Freckleton; Mandeep Kaur Grewel; Edmund Knollys; Geoff Leader; Catherine Masterman; Alessandro Moscuzza; David Reid;

Overseas – Alison Batt, DFID Nigeria; Penny Thorpe, DFID Ethiopia

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Minutes of 6 December 2006

Approved.

Welcome to observers

Sue welcomed all observers and asked them to provide feedback to Ed South.

Matters arising

New membership agreed and will take effect from the April 2007 meeting. HRC will comprise Director-General Corporate Performance, Non-Executive Director, HR Director, 1 Africa Director, South Asia Director, EMAAD Director, 1 Director from Policy and International, 1 Director from Communications/FCPD/ISD and 2 Heads of Profession.

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HR Transformation – next steps

Liz Davis reported that on 6 and 7 February 2007 HR held a meeting with 50 senior people from across DFID. Outputs of this meeting were summarised in a Powerpoint presentationmicrosoft powerpoint(130 kb). Whilst the Catalyst Board and HR Transformation Board would be dealing with the technical aspects of the transformation, the HRC should agree the strategic policy questions. It asked whether HRC agreed with.

  • Question 1: The vision for Resourcing?
  • Question 2: The six principles for the Strategic Workforce Plan?
  • Question 3: The need for greater flexibility with some corporate control (over postings)?
  • Question 4: The shift in favour of corporate requirements?
  • Question 5: The shift towards Line Managers leading?

The committee gave initial views, not having seen the presentation in advance of the meeting:

  • Question 1: The Committee agreed at this level of generality, but noted a potential conflict between divisional and corporate needs.
  • Question 2: Agreed and gave a strong steer that the Strategic Workforce Plan needed to be a living document, regularly updated.
  • Question 3 and 4: Agreed in principle but concerned that corporate control may result in Divisions having to carry staffing gaps. These were areas difficult to conceptualise without a view on the directiveness of the workforce plan. The nature of any exceptions policy would also be critical
  • Question 5: Raised relatively most concerns and the Committee wanted more explanation of how line manager preferences would guarantee the best corporate outcome. It was vital that Line Managers had the right tools and HR did not simply transfer transactional work from HRD to other divisions;

Sue Owen noted that whilst the ultimate objectives of HR transformation were clear, the design of new processes required more clarity on processed currently not delivering – for example while in the past there were problems filling posts in fragile states, current information from HRD suggested that the cluster system was meeting most needs. However, while workforce planning would determine the ultimate corporate needs, this need not delay the design of the HR transformation programme.

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Action Points

A paper on HR Transformation to go round Directors;

HRC Secretariat to schedule an ad-hoc HRC in March 2007 to discuss proposals;

Data recruitment expected for the next 18 to 24 months to be presented to the April 2007 HRC;

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Update on difficult to fill overseas posts and SAIC projects

Jane Clark updated the HRC:

  • Significant additional flexibility had been introduced to improve the overseas package for UK based staff working overseas;
  • Results from the Autumn cluster showed a higher success rate at filling jobs in fragile states or ‘hard to fill’ posts;
  • A light touch profiling of candidates applying for jobs in Afghanistan and Iraq had been agreed;
  • Consultancy work, just completed, suggested that the monetarisation of benefits was unlikely to be a prime motivation in fragile states
  • Marcus Manuel and his team were well ahead with their work on optimising use of SAIC;

In discussion, the HRC:

  • Congratulated the postings team for filling posts advertised in recent clusters;
  • Welcomed the improved flexibility;
  • Looked forward to reading the report on monetisation of benefits;
  • Noted the Corporate Plan would set out the shape of DFID in 2013, the constituent Strategic Workforce Plan would offer parallel workforce options and a strategy to achieve them. The Strategic Workforce Plan would need to address the issue of the right balance between SAIC and UK based posts including the degree of third country posting we might anticipate being able to offer SAIC.
  • The Plan would then also need to cover development of SAIC; experience in DFID India would be relevant here.

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Annual Diversity Report

Liz Davis noted that the Annual Diversity Report was considered by both the HRC and the Management Board. She invited all members of the Committee to pass their written comments to the Diversity team in particular on chart 7.4 (Disability statistics).

Ann Rennie noted that “disability” unlike gender is hidden, so chart 7.4 could be misleading.

On behalf of the General Advisory Group on Diversity, Graham Teskey asked for the first sentence to be toned down or removed.

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Working Families Bill

Introducing her paper, Diane Howell noted the Bill aims to:

  • Allow mothers to have a longer period of paid maternity leave;
  • Extend Statutory Maternity Pay to 39 weeks;
  • Give carers the right to request Flexible Working;
  • Remove the length of service qualifying period;
  • Provide for a further extension of SMP in 2009 to 52 weeks, increase paternity leave allow transfers of leave between parents.

HRD proposed:

  • Following the steer from the Cabinet Office, for HQ and UK based staff working overseas, to pay the statutory minimum for weeks 27 to 39;
  • Although there is no legal entitlement, pay a pro rata allowance to SAIC for weeks 27 to 39 – if local offices want to pay more this has to be costed in the SAIC paydeal;
  • Following legal advice, pay UK based staff working overseas their contractual benefits for up to 39 weeks then review

The Committee:

  • Thanked Diane and her team for their work;
  • Speculated on how the private sector might be handling this;
  • Endorsed the paper;

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Any other business

None

Ed South
20 February 2007