Molly 1974

People Strategy

Introduction

Over the next 3 years and beyond our workforce will change and develop to meet the needs our community, its residents and businesses, and the organisation. We will plan for these changes with people at the centre of making this a great place to work.

The 2019/22 Organisational Strategy provided an ambitious target to improve 5 key people focused areas of the Council – Leadership & Management, Recruiting the Best People, Wellbeing & Resilience, Learning and Development, Enhancing Our Flexible Working Offer. Our 2023/26 People Strategy will continue this good work with Evolve 2026 at its heart and a targeted approach to supporting the Service Transformation, Digital and Customer Engagement strategies.

Supporting latest ideas, technologies and changes will inevitably impact what we do and how we do it. This will require us to adapt and develop new skills and ways of working. The People Strategy will support this approach by ensuring we have a future focused workforce underpinned by a comprehensive Strategic Workforce Plan.

Objectives

This is one of the four pillars under Evolve 2026, closely aligned to our Customer Engagement, Service Transformation and Digital strategies. The strategy aims to deliver the following objectives:

Core Skills at the Heart 

There are several overarching core skills and principles that enable us to deliver services effectively and ensure that, as an organisation, we continue to meet the requirements of our residents, businesses and wider MVDC communities. Identifying core skills and embedding these within all role requirements aims to support our people to meet the challenges and changes ahead and the overall aims and objectives of the Council.

Learn to Evolve – Developing a Learning Culture 

Understanding the power of the collective conversation, learning better ways of doing things together, and continuously evolving. In our dynamically changing working environment, we will continue to develop and learn new ways of working, thinking, and behaving. We must be able to keep up with customer demand, modern technologies and latest ideas. We will be supporting our people to take every opportunity to learn new skills, share ideas and encourage curiosity to identify more effective ways of working.

As Evolve 2026 develops, what we need to improve and embed in terms of skills and behaviours will emerge. Where future skills requirements cannot be met within the existing service requirements, we will look to support our people to identify and meet those needs, where ‘skill and will’ can be identified. We may also create new roles to support the needs of the future focused organisation we will become.

Identifying opportunities for collaborative working, both internally and externally to MVDC, can provide opportunities to strengthen our skills and knowledge base and maximise service capacity. Local government is facing a recruitment challenge, with some expert and service delivery roles becoming more difficult to fill and retain. MVDC currently has areas of strength, particularly in relation to technical expertise and knowledge of MVDC’s community and business needs. To ensure we can plan ahead, we will look to identify expertise and how we can utilise these effectively, increasing expertise in key areas (hard to recruit/identified skills enhancement benefit) to support future workforce aims. Our forecast recruitment needs then become easier to define and achieve, enabling us to deliver modernised services against strategic workforce aims.

To support these aims we would also take a structured approach to collaborative working with our council partners, central government departments, and professional networks, defining MVDC’s partnership principles by identifying:

  • The basis on which MVDC supports a specific partnership arrangement i.e., local delivery needs or skills that are not tied to locality but may be scarce/hold low resilience.
  • How a partnership arrangement can support MVDCs Evolve 2026 objectives
  • MVDCs areas of talent and strong expertise that, through investment, provide opportunities for growth, trade, or resilience.
  • How MVDC can become a leading Council in its areas of strength, growing talent through skills and experience development i.e., apprenticeships, acting up opportunities, mentorship etc. to build capacity within identified areas of expertise.
Change Confident

A key part of being change confident is understanding the benefits of being active participants in organisational change, with an understanding of how Evolve 2026 will support the organisation to improve what we do and the way we work.  

By building skills and confidence in effective leadership, support, active communication, and organisational learning, along with tools and techniques to build capability to deliver change, identifying areas of resilience and celebrating successes, we can build a culture of empowerment, curiosity, and courage. This in turn will create service adaptability, and capability to meet organisational aims and objectives.

Fit for the Future

Following a successful review of our recruitment methods under the 2019/20 Organisational Development Strategy and introduction of the MVDC recruitment website, we saw a significant increase in vacancies filled. Dips in the recruitment market during and post Covid pandemic has been offset at MVDC by tailored and targeted recruitment methods which have shown a steady increase in successful applications over 2022/23.

In short, we are more successfully recruiting to our roles than we have been in the past, and while successful recruit continues to require focus it is a positive first step. To support our services to meet their objectives effectively it is important that we have the right people, carrying out the right work at the right time and in the right way. We will focus on successful recruitment to specified roles, and how we retain talent, through:

  • Identifying skills gaps in our workforce to meet current and future service objectives (challenging ‘cut and paste’ recruitment). This will include a clear understanding of the impact our ‘shift left’ approach will have on the roles and skills we will need under this new model (for example more digital experts, data analysts, operational excellence managers), as well as a clear understanding of our professionalised expertise requirements.
  • Streamlining and automating recruitment methods to provide an easy-to-use platform for applicants and managers, reducing lead time, providing time for focused communication to support applicant retention.
  • Using effective recruitment methods (internal and external) and inclusive forms of advertising and utilising social media.
  • Review and development of roles that support the local economy in attracting next generation talent including work experience and apprenticeship offerings.  
  • Using tailored selection methods to draw out specific competencies needed for the roles and selling MVDC as a local authority that has a vision and is future focused.
  • Providing an effective induction programme that meets the needs of the organisations, service, and employee through their first 6 months.
  • Identifying areas for development and further engagement to support staff moving forward.

Design Principles

Digital by Choice – all people strategy objectives will be taken forward with automation and digital solutions considered to ensure the best use of people resources throughout process design. Time is precious and we will look to ensure that new people processes utilise your time in the best way possible, be it during the recruitment, onboarding or employee life cycle. Moving processes to a digital solution where it is suitable and sensible to do so, freeing up time to have effective and meaningful communication when it is best placed.

Future Focused Workforce – we will work to identify the core skills we need to meet our future needs and embed these within our job roles, performance reviews and recruitment processes. We will use targeted and streamlined recruitment, selection and induction processes to attract and retain the best people.

Pathway to Expertise – identifying skills gaps and developing clear and effective learning pathways to meet future service aims and objectives while building leadership skills and change confidence across the Council. Identify and supporting effective internal and external partnerships to maximise skills and capacity. Our people will feel developed, valued, and valuable and consider MVDC a great place to work.

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