Author: Ruth Davies, Director of Workforce & OD; Peta Beynon, Assistant
Director of Workforce; Claire Barley, Head of Professional Organisational
Development.
Date: 9 January 2014 Version: 1
Publication/ Distribution (on completion):
 Public Health Wales Executive Team
 Public Health Wales Board
 Senior Management Forum
 Public Health Wales Intranet
Purpose and Summary of Document:
The purpose of the paper is to provide the Public Health Wales Board,
Executive Team and Senior Management Forum with a report and update on key issues from the Director of Workforce and Organisational Development.
Date of Executive Team Meeting: 20 January 2014
This paper is for:
Discussion
Decision
Information X

Public Health Wales Director of Workforce and OD Report- January 2014
The key messages from an analysis of workforce metrics for the current year to date are as follows:
1.1
Staff in Post
As at 02 January 2014, Public Health Wales had 1465 directly employed staff, which equates to 1248.40 Full Time Equivalents (Contracted) in 1489 posts.
1.2
Turnover
The staff turnover rate for the period 01 December 2012 to 30 November 2013 is 8.46% which is within an acceptable range and compares with a peak of just under 10% last year.
1.3
Sickness Absence
The sickness absence rate for the period 01 December 2012 to 30 November
2013 is 3.43%, an increase from the comparable period last year (which had an annual rate of 3.30%). The annual sickness target set by the Welsh
Government is 3.25%.
We are currently working on an improvement plan to reverse the current trend and the expectation is that this work will enable us to reduce our sickness absence levels below 3% during 2014/15.
2.1
Partnership Forum
The next meetings of the Partnership Forum and the Joint Negotiating
Committee are due to take place on 3 February and 13 January 2014 respectively. A partnership working workshop is currently being organised to consider effective engagement and who we need to engage with, partners and their expectations and examples of good practice.
2.2
Joint Medical and Dental Negotiating Group
The next meeting of the JMDNC is due to take place on 25 February 2014.
A number of strategic workforce modernisation initiatives are continuing, which are being supported by the HR Team meaning that the team continue to be under considerable pressure:
Public Health Development Directorate 3.1
3.1.1
Observatory Evidence Service
The new management posts within the structure were offered to the current pool of staff to express interest. The resulting assessment centre took place
Date: 09 January 2014 Version: 1 Page: 2 of 8

Public Health Wales Director of Workforce and OD Report- January 2014 on 11 December 2013. No appointment was made to the Head of the
Observatory Evidence Service and further action to fill the post will be taken forward. Announcements of the Team Lead appointments will be made soon.
3.1.2
Stop Smoking Wales
The HR team continues to provide additional support to Stop Smoking Wales service in employee relations and in areas of service improvement. These include: evaluating the pilots which have taken place for delivering sessions on
Saturdays and assessing the need to deliver these in targeted areas; different ways of recruiting to an area by offering annualised hours contracts; and asking for expressions of interest from Assistant Health Life style Advisers, the wider Public Health Wales workforce and externally to create a pool of bank staff to cover sickness absence and annual leave.
3.1.3
1000 lives Improvement Service (Ex NLIAH Staff)
The improvement service will need significant HR support over the next year.
An internal recruitment process is currently being organised to appoint a
Director for the service. Dr Alan Willson will continue in the role of interim
Director until the post has been filled on a permanent basis. Once the new director has been appointed, a full and thorough consultation, using the
Organisational Change Policy, will be conducted. This will ensure a transparent and fair process in creating a new structure for the service. There is currently a recruitment freeze within the service until the full consultation is completed.
3.2
Public Health Services
3.2.1
Microbiology
Within the laboratory service, there are a number of projects/initiatives in progress.
North Wales: As all three North Wales microbiology laboratories are now managed by Public Health Wales, it is intended to establish a North Wales
Microbiology Service bringing together the laboratories at Bangor, Rhyl and
Wrexham, under a single management structure. A North Wales Service Lead
(clinical) and a Service Manager will be appointed at the earliest opportunity.
South West Wales: The recommendation from the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg
(ABMU) Microbiology Services Review was for a single site service for the
South West Wales area. Options are to be discussed with the Local Health
Board and an action plan to be drafted.
Public Health Wales agreed to cover the clinical service (from April 2013) in
Withybush and are now in talks with Hywel Dda Health Board to TUPE transfer laboratory services and staff. A target date of April 2014 has been suggested for the transfer to take place.
South East Wales Microbiology Modernisation Project: Cwm Taf (Royal
Glamorgan) and Aneurin Bevan (Royal Gwent) are likely to be the only laboratories outside of Public Health Wales following completion of the other
Date: 09 January 2014 Version: 1 Page: 3 of 8

Public Health Wales Director of Workforce and OD Report- January 2014 service reviews. A number of options have been considered with both Health
Boards and agreement reached that the preferred option would be a single site. No decision has been made to date as to where this would be.
3.2.2
Modernising Scientific Careers
A Public Health Wales implementation group was set up in 2012 but progress has been slow. The national project has scoped the future shape of the Health
Care Scientific workforce, the Consultant Scientist workforce, an implementation action plan and an impact assessment of the changes to work based training. Staff from the Screening Divisions and Microbiology will form part of the Trust wide group taking this forward.
3.2.3
Health Technologies Fund
Public Health Wales has been granted £1.19 million capital monies for the development of automation in Microbiology services in north Wales. A project is being developed to progress requirements and this will become part of the
North Wales service re-design workstream.
3.2.4
Harmonisation of On-Call/Out of Hours services provision
Following the agreement reached in 2103, Communication, a review meeting is being scheduled to take place with staff and trade union colleagues to the sustainability of current arrangements. There will be ongoing discussions with trade unions and staff regarding changing working arrangements to streamline out of hours services in line with the NHS Terms and Conditions of Service
Handbook and the jointly negotiated All Wales On-call agreement.
3.2.5
Re-design of Microbiology Programme
Given the number of projects and initiatives already underway as set out above and the recent WAO Report into the management of Microbiology, a programme will be set up to look at the reconfiguration and modernisation of
Microbiology which will subsume some of the items listed above. The purpose of this programme is to detail the process for taking forward all aspects of scoping, planning and implementing the modernisation and reconfiguration of
Microbiology Services in Wales.
3.2.6
Screening
Within the Screening Division, there are a number of projects/initiatives in progress. These include: i.
CSW Modernisation
The Project Team met on 1 November 2013 and a meeting of the HPV
Procurement sub group took place on 15 October. The Workforce subgroup has met on three occasions with latest meeting on 29 November 2013. ii.
Transfer of Diabetic Retinopathy Services from Cardiff and Vale
The finalised External Quality Assurance report was considered by the Project
Board on 16 December 2013. The Board also received an update on the baseline report which is exploring the detail around processes needed to
Date: 09 January 2014 Version: 1 Page: 4 of 8

Public Health Wales Director of Workforce and OD Report- January 2014 inform the recommendation. Should the transfer go ahead, there will be an impact on the HR team in terms of setting up staff on ESR and ensuring the smooth transfer of staff across organisations, together with ongoing support for an additional 104 staff. iii.
Review of Nursing Services
Preliminary work has commenced in relation to scoping out the review and identifying key stakeholders in relation to any changes that may be identified.
Several additional issues have now been identified that could further impact on the delivery of nursing services and therefore require additional HR input.
3.3
Other Projects
3.3.1
Our Space
Both OD and HR support are required for this enabling programme. Currently scoping workshops are being held with a wide range of staff to gauge the issues that matter to them and capture the opportunities and threats as seen by staff associated with a potential move.
4.1
HR Team
Following the departure of two members of staff, we are currently recruiting to two vacant administrative positions.
4.2
Recruitment, Payroll and Pension
Services are provided by the NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership
(NWSSP). An issues log continues to be maintained of problems/complaints received within HR from Public Health Wales managers about the recruitment service.
4.3
Implementation of Electronic Staff Record (ESR) and Oracle
Learning Management (OLM) in Public Health Wales
Recent progress with roll out of Employee Self Service continues but is slow as some teams have yet to provide the organisational hierarchies which are required to establish access levels. Further roll out of MSS training is dependent on submission of hierarchies by teams.
A comprehensive assessment is being undertaken in December and January to identify the extent to which self service is being used within the organisation and to produce a project plan for the residual elements of the roll out. A full report will be presented in late January 2014 which will be used to develop an implementation plan.
There are continuing significant resource constraints within the Learning and
Development team which will affect further development and benefits realisation of the OLM module of the ESR system.
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Public Health Wales Director of Workforce and OD Report- January 2014
4.4
Equality and Diversity
It is envisaged that the roll out of Employee Self Service will assist with the organisation’s recording of equality and diversity statistics, as set out in the
Equality Plan. As part of the series of tasks associated with the roll out, staff are being asked to access the equality field and to complete the confidential records attached.
4.5
National update
4.5.1
“Working Differently Working Together”
Public Health Wales continues to support two project working groups of the All
Wales Workforce and OD Programme “Working Differently Working Together”.
The two projects are the development of an All Wales Health and Wellbeing network for the NHS in Wales (under the Health and Wellbeing work stream) and Improving Performance through Engagement (under the Staff Engagement work stream).
4.6
NHS Staff Survey
The Action Plan was agreed at the Board meeting in December and actions are being integrated into our three year delivery plans (Workforce, Capability and
OD Plans).
5.1
POD team
Lisa Jones has transferred from the Human Resources team to the POD team and will be focusing on statutory and mandatory training for the remainder of the financial year.
5.2
Statutory Training
The Statutory and Mandatory training policy has been completed and will shortly be issued for consultation. In addition, a number of actions to support the required increase in compliance are in progress.
The contract for the provision of health and safety training, manual handling and fire training has commenced and there will be a big drive for the last quarter of the year to further increase compliance.
5.3
Internal Learning and Development
5.3.1
Appraisal Training for Appraisees and Appraisers
Work is about to commence to capture and record compliance figures. Public
Heath Wales has a tier one target of 85% compliance by end March 2014.
Significant work is required to support managers and staff to ensure appraisals are completed appropriately and recorded on the OLM system.
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Public Health Wales Director of Workforce and OD Report- January 2014
5.3.2
Learning and Development opportunities (CPD)
A number of CPD events are planned for the remainder of the financial year, a list of which are in Appendix 1.
5.3.3
Advanced Practitioner
Ian Scale (Locum Consultant in Public Health) will be working with the
Professional Organisation Development team one day a week until the end of the financial year to take forward the work in this area. To date, draft competences for advanced practice for public health practitioners have been completed and work is now required to test these with partners across the UK.
5.3.4
National Leads
The Head of Professional Organisation Development is currently working with the Health Improvement Divisions National Lead for Skills Development to produce a development plan. A role profile has been drafted and approved, together with guidance on communities of practice, an objective setting template and work to develop a reporting template and capture outputs and outcomes is in draft format.
5.3.5
Introduction to Public Health
A tender to scope and map the possible development of an introduction to public health course has been issued. This will update the work previously undertaken in the NPHS (2008) to develop a public health foundation course.
Cardiff Met University won the tender and the work is underway with a reporting date of 31 March 2014.
5.3.6
Learning Opportunities with the OU
A number of individuals have applied and been approved for the opportunities advertised with the OU. Their applications now go to the University for approval and further information will be available shortly.
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Public Health Wales Director of Workforce and OD Report- January 2014
Appendix1.
Learning and Development opportunities (CPD)
The CPD events planned for the r emainder of the financial year include:
Event Date Region
Appraiser & Appraisee
Appraiser & Appraisee
Appraiser & Appraisee
Budget holder Training
Finance Training
Budget holder Training
Finance Training
Planning & Performance
Planning & Performance
Project Management Awareness
Principles of Project Management
Project Management Awareness
Principles of Project Management
Exec Project Management Session
Social Determinants and Health
Inequalities
Results Based Accountability
Speed Reading
Effective Writing
8 January 2014
14 January 2014
29 January 2014
28 January 2014
28 January 2014
17 February 2014
17 February 2014
11 February 2014
18 February 2014
27 January 2014
28 January 2014
29 January 2014
4 February 2014
3 March 2014
13 February
20 February
D etermining interest from N orth Wales
12 February 2014
4 March
In progress
South Wales
West Wales
North Wales
South Wales
South Wales
North Wales
North Wales
North Wales
South Wales
South Wales
South Wales
West Wales
North Wales
South Wales
North Wales
South Wales
Cardiff
North Wales
Date: 09 January 2014 Version: 1 Page: 8 of 8