Workforce Strategy

Andreas Ghosh
Tel: 020 83147519
Email: andreas.ghosh@lewisham.gov.uk

Annual Report 2009

The majority of work on workforce development has continued to ensure that the local government pay and workforce strategy reflects the needs of PPMA members. The strategy was reviewed by the IDeA in this year and PPMA views were incorporated in the review.

As part of the review the PPMA responded to ensure the strategy takes account of the following issues:
• The impact of implementing equal pay/single status at a local level
• The discrepancy between the ambitions in the strategy on pay, particularly the ambitions on assessment based performance and total rewards in the context of the current national pay negotiations
• Ensuring the national action plan has a balance between smaller pump priming initiatives and the promotion of strategic initiatives
• Being explicit on how through the management of people performance improvements can be delivered

Together with colleagues at Learn to Care the PPMA has responded to initiatives on the adult social care workforce and has agreed to work with them on the modernisation of the social care workforce. The PPMA has responded to the consultation on the national workforce strategy to ensure:
• The benefits of creating a workforce strategy which makes explicit links to how social care is delivered
• That the barriers which employment contracts and terms and conditions create for integrated working are recognised
• The need for investment in leadership development
• The need to rationalise learning and development delivery and the complexities of agencies linked to this
• The need for more locally focussed recruitment and retention strategies and resources

The PPMA has been in discussions with the IDeA to develop a national initative on addressing productivity within the local government workforce as part of the national workforce strategy. The IDeA have commissioned work on this, the PPMA input has been to ensure that the tool kit eventually developed from this initiative will be of practical use to its members.

With the greater emphasis on effective workforce planning and the need to undertake a skills audit the PPMA has been in discussions with JobsGoPublic to develop its skills auditing tool tailored to be used by PPMA members to address their particular needs. It is expected that the tool will be available at the time of the conference.


March 2009

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