DFID Human Resources Committee
Human Resources Committee - Record of meeting 6 December 2006
Present:
Sue Owen (Chair) |
Observers: |
Jane Clark |
|
Liz Davis |
|
Martin Dinham |
|
Jim Drummond |
|
Andrew Felton (representing Amanda Rowlatt) |
|
Mark Mallalieu (representing Dave Fish) |
|
Mike Green (representing Joy Hutcheon) |
|
Charlotte Seymour Smith |
|
Ellen Wratten (representing Sam Sharpe) |
|
Richard Montgomery |
|
Ann Rennie |
|
Presenting Papers: Jane Clark, Richard Plumb, Lynette Carrington |
|
Guests: Richard Northern, FCO; Capability Review Team |
|
Ed South (HRC Secretariat) |
Minutes of last meeting
- Agreed;
- Liz reported that work is progressing on reducing the size of the Crisis Response Pool;
Membership of the HRC
Sue Owen said she was gathering the Committee’s views on rationalising membership of the Committee and did not expect the Committee to make a decision today. After discussion, the Committee proposed the following membership:
Chair;
1 Non Executive Director;
Director HR;
1 Director from Africa;
1 Director from Asia;
1 Director from EMAD;
2 Heads of Profession (including 1 from Governance),
1 from Policy and Research Division;
1 from Communications/Finance/ISD.
The Committee also agreed that there should be no substitutes at future meetings. Alternatively the committee might retain the current membership (all Directors, chair, NED) but with alternates not allowed.
Action Point: Sue to reflect upon debate and to decide future membership
Diversity Update
Sue Owen updated the Committee on the Management Board discussions:
- Gender targets met one year earlier than anticipated;
- Work on the Diversity Equality Scheme had been warmly welcomed;
- Proposal for a Disability Champion
- On equality impact assessments we need to do more work around filtering
- Relative to other areas of diversity, DFID was performing badly on sexual orientation. The paper presented to the Management Board identified five steps to improve performance.
Difficult to fill overseas posts
Introducing this paper, Jane Clarke invited the Committee to comment on four areas identified from the recent investigations as strategic long term work:
- Resourcing;
- Making the best use of our staff (SAIC);
- Monetarising Benefits;
- Motivational and suitability Profiling and assessment
Richard Northern said the FCO had similar issues in getting its employees to work in difficult posts but not on the same scale as DFID. FCO have a mobility clause in its contracts and have revamped their employment package (COLA, Hardship and leave) to make difficult Posts more attractive in financial terms. FCO offered to work with DFID on comparison of benefits and TACOS.
Ann Rennie said the proposals in the paper were pragmatic, sensible and practical. It was important to have a Champion for this work at a senior level to co-ordinate.
The Committee:
- Congratulated Jane for her work and level of engagement with the business;
- Acknowledged this was not just an issue for HRD but for the whole organisation. Recruiting departments and HOPS need to consider with care how they make these posts attractive.
- Suggested it must be clear in all our processes what the emerging career deal is for staff; time spent in priority countries/posts is unlikely to be optional in the future.
Committee members accepted that our internal recruitment provides flexibility in filling difficult to fill jobs. The redesign of business processes under HR Transformation should ensure they do more to support/incentivise fragile states and difficult to fill posts.
The Committee welcomed work on:
- Monetarising benefits and any learning from private sector. Lump sum payments might prove less transactional than cafeteria style benefits, and Revenue & Customs tax implications should be considered.
- On profiling and assessing staff, views were mixed. More clarification is needed on what the benefits will be for DFID.
Action Points
- HRD will continue to respond to short term easy to change TACOS which make posts more attractive. HR continue to welcome feedback from staff ;
- HR committee endorsed the three areas of work and asked HR Strategy and Change to take forward plans to take the work forward. Resourcing with special reference to difficult to fill posts will be taken forward under the HR Transformation. Project plan in place;
- Work on resourcing SAIC and monetarising benefit should proceed rapidly. HRSC to provide a timetable.
- HR to collect more information about profiling.
New Performance Management System
Richard Plumb presented the 8 month report on performance management; and asked the HRC to consider
- Whether we need to strengthen the guidance to managers for challenging poor performance;
- Linking the Performance Management System with pay as part of the next pay deal;
The Committee:
- Welcomed the paper;
- Agreed that more guidance and support needs to be provided on challenging poor performance but cautioned that poor performance could derive from a lack of skills, problems outside work or poor attitude, and that the actions needed differed substantially;
- Performance management was as much to do with managing good performance as unsatisfactory;
- Endorsed the principal of having discussions with the DTUS on linking performance with pay;
- Asked Richard to consider the possibility of releasing overall percentage box marking to Directors on a Divisional basis;
Sue congratulated Job Holders and Line Managers for completing 92% of Mid Year Reviews on time. This is a much better performance than in the past.
Integration of Professional Skills for Government into DFID processes
Lynnette Carrington asked the Committee to endorse the set of actions planned to integrate Professional Skills for Government into our existing people management processes.
The HRC:
- Warmly welcomed the paper;
- Endorsed a light touch approach;
- Agreed on the need to demystify PSG integration;
- Recommended that Lynnette and Richard Plumb work together to hub the PSG and performance framework.
