13 October (Part 2) - HR STAR Quality
Running side by side with
the Customer Service Experience through recent Finance meetings is
the People Strategy.
Councillor Borella (Labour, Slade Green & Northend) opened the batting with what he termed a “pedantic” complaint that the Strategy did not get unanimous support from
the Cabinet
on 16th April, there was no vote and only Councillor Leaf obviously did so. (Confirmed by the BiB report. The Council minutes will be clarified.)
He said that Council capacity had been reduced dramatically across the board and “if the Community is to get stronger there must be a bit more focus on how
we build capacity in this organisation in the areas where we are going to need it”.
The response confirmed that HR staff numbers have been increased and that staff generally are being celebrated and appreciated more than
was reported last March. Ignored, bullied, harassed etc.
Bexley Council has created a Leadership Academy to endeavour to improve
the occasionally abysmal performance of its senior managers. The current
Corporate Services
Manager, Kate Bonham, has given the impression at this and past meetings that
she knows what needs to be done. There is plenty of scope for improvement. What was
the previous Manager, Nick Hollier doing for
the past 15 years apart from blaming complainants for his failings? (He told me
that complaints about staff who lie to the public were not acceptable.
Fortunately the police took a different view and sent a Misconduct in Public Office file to the CPS.)
The full response reveals that Hollier objected to the single use of the word ‘lie’.
Councillor Chris Ball (Labour, Erith) said he was going to venture carefully into extending the Council’s Obesity Strategy to the Council’s own workforce
and then didn’t actually mention the subject referring instead to the abuse,
sometimes of a racist nature, that the Housing staff in particular suffer from
residents. The latter problem is regarded as a Health & Safety issue. The
recording of which residents might pose a threat to Council staff is not
comprehensive. “In some areas only and not shared.”
There were no more questions.
Note. An earlier version of this blog referred to Lorraine
Barlow, the writer of the People Strategy Report. The meeting speaker was in fact Kate Bonham.