The Challenge
• The Local Authority was facing significant fiscal pressures and the need to manage, deploy and reward resources more effectively to meet the changing needs of their customers.
• Political uncertainty through a hung Council, only served to add to the complexity of the context for the changes required.
• Accipio were asked to lead the changes to pay, grading and associated terms and conditions, steering the Executive leadership, elected Members and HR Team through a complete revision of arrangements from design to implementation.
What we did
• We worked with sponsorship from the Corporate Executive and Head of HR to project manage a ‘Total Reward’ review.
• This included analysing the existing arrangement for pay, grades, allowances, benefits and – including a full costing.
• The project spanned the total review journey from diagnosis to design to full implementation and was conducted in collaborations with other partners including the Councils’ press agency, legal team and communications consultant.
• We provided reward expertise and advice, project planning activity and wider input from our extensive HR experience of implementing large change projects in complex, unionised environments.
The results
Working with the Head of HR and internal reward team, we were able to support the development of a new reward strategy. The results have been:
• The development of a new pay and grading system for all employees (total 4,500)
• A system that minimises those negatively impacted by the changes financially, but which delivers savings to the Council and improved resource management capability
• The first ever “recommended terms and conditions review” by a national union in the North West of England
• Smooth implementation with limited grievances and no requirement to enforce the changes through legal means
• Streamlining of allowances, reducing complexity and cost
• Major changes to working arrangements in the care sector leading to improved performance and reduction in cost