Salary: Up to £95,000 (pay award pending)
The Mayor’s Business Plan and Council priorities
The Mayor’s business plan: 2022 to 2026 has five outcomes:
- The council balances its books, listens to residents and delivers good sustainable services.
- Croydon is a place of opportunity for business, earning and learning.
- Children and young people in Croydon have the chance to thrive, learn and fulfil their potential.
- Croydon is a cleaner, safer and healthier place, a borough we’re proud to call home.
- People can lead healthier and independent lives for longer.
Croydon Council’s new ways of working
We will practice sound financial management, being honest about what we’ve spent and what we can afford.
We will focus on what we, uniquely, can do as the local authority as the democratically elected leaders of our borough. This means we will focus on our core services, and a small number of evidence-based outcomes that deliver our priorities. But we will also continue to use our democratic mandate to convene our partners around a common purpose and to make a clear case for a better deal for Croydon.
We will aim to become a much more transparent, open and honest council.
We will involve residents in our decision-making. But we will also need to be clear with residents about what we can do, and what we can’t. When we have to say no, we will do so with compassion and take the time to explain our decisions.
Responsibility for:
Job Purpose:
- As a key member of the HR and OD DMT, you will make a significant contribution to effective leadership to the HR and OD team. You will be responsible for developing and delivering the 3-5 year forward plan aligned to the council’s transformation strategy across your functions and implementing the People Culture Transformation Strategy outcomes.
- To provide strategic direction and leadership to workforce team, driving high standards and continuous improvement to ensure that our services are aligned to the corporate vision and values and with a customer focused approach.
- To work collaboratively with colleagues at every level of the council to develop the culture, behaviours and capabilities required to achieve the priorities and commitments in the council transformation plan
Reports to:
- Chief People Officer
Direct reports:
- Organisational and Learning Business Partners
- Policy and equalities Lead
- Pay and Reward Lead
Responsible for:
- Wider teams including officers under each specialism.
Corporate Accountabilities (all Heads of Service)
- To take a “one Council” approach to deliver more effective outcomes and at all times avoid a siloed, single division or service area approach.
- To actively seek out and learn from external good practice and bring those new ideas and ways of working into service development and delivery.
- To contribute and lead as required as a project owner on the delivery and implementation of specific corporate projects as required.
- To actively role model the council’s priorities and ways of working and the council’s leadership framework and values.
- To lead, manage and develop staff teams and ensure compliance with the councils performance management system and all HR polices and procedures
- Be accountable for associated budget and have affordable plans in place to deliver the annual budget and Medium Term Financial Plan.
- Provide assurance that the services are compliant and performance monitoring is part of the corporate rhythm, and exceptions have robust action plans.
- To operate within the governance, financial and legal frameworks of the Council at all times.
- Ensure equalities is embedded into all aspects of professional and managerial roles, including service delivery and at all times carry out your duties with regard to the Council policy.
- Ensure by robust management that the services and staff you are responsible for adhere to the Council’s Health and Safety Policy and operate within the safety management frameworks.
- To ensure the effective management of data and security of information received and used within the division, to comply with the relevant legislation such as GDPR and the Freedom of Information Act, recognising that the council wishes to operate in the most open and transparent way.
- Participate in cross organisational risk management and emergency planning activities as required
Service Accountabilities:
- To promote and shape the People Culture Transformation Strategy, Target Operating Model, Transformation Plan and Mayors business plan to mitigate people risks and position the council as an employer of choice, driving positive employee engagement and creating high performing teams.
- To work with individual departmental leadership teams to understand their priorities and requirements and ensure that your team are able to respond accordingly to the business needs, delivering services such as organisational development and learning requirements, receiving feedback on policies and wellbeing activities and in understanding pay and reward priorities.
- To lead the development of learning approaches as required by the Council to support business priorities, ensuring oversight of commissioning and delivery of programmes.
- To develop relationships with external providers such as Oracle, Learning Pool and other suppliers to ensure that the council can access and report on training and development opportunities provided for its staff measuring the return on investment and the link to workforce planning.
- To ensure all statutory returns are completed and published within the appropriate timescales.
- To lead a team of people management experts to develop the required people capabilities and competencies to deliver a modern council, developing internal skills and ensuring the creation of a robust and broad skill set.
- To work with colleagues to identify and determine the best models for service delivery, which deliver high quality outcomes and performance and a high-quality customer experience.
- To ensure that policies, procedures and all people related information is up to date and streamlined offering accessible options for the workforce, aligning developments with those from Oracle and other technological advances as well as best practice.
- To lead on the design, development and implementation of the People Culture Transformation strategy and priorities.
- To oversee the development of equalities initiatives within the HR and OD function working in collaboration with the Policy and Performance teams to align priorities and deliverables.
- To lead on cultural change across the council through a range of different methods including implementing action plans following staff surveys, enabling line managers to manage more effectively.
- To develop and implement effective and innovative talent strategies to ensure that the workforce has the required skills and abilities to meet current and future business needs in line with council strategies and priority.
- To develop and implement workforce engagement and communication strategies to ensure all employees have a positive working experience throughout the employee lifecycle to support the development of our employer brand.
- To strategically lead on enabling the council to become a change agent through engaging, encouraging, coaching, supporting, developing and delivering appropriate interventions that are conducive to support a hybrid workforce identifying and resolving organisational development barriers to enable a positive organisational culture that is customer focused and performance is managed by outcomes.
- To develop a pay and reward strategy for the council, ensuring best practice and benchmarking the councils offer amongst other services. Implementing the strategy to enable the council to be an employer of choice.
- To work in partnership with the other Heads of Service within HR and OD to ensure a smooth and efficient service is provided, aligning service needs and requirements e.g. commissioning training and development, managing the employee lifecycle etc.
- To develop innovative approaches to ensure learning outcomes are in place and measure KPIs to ensure statutory training is completed.
- To provide strong professional and managerial leadership across the Workforce Team, including setting clear objectives and measures, allocating resources, assessing impacting and ensuring that targets are monitoring and underperformance/capability issues are addressed in order to significantly contribute to the delivery of the HR and OD Service.
- To challenge and influence business decision making and planning, leading on service plans for your area, to ensure all people implications are well managed.
- To support team leads in the effective use of people management data and insight information to support the councils delivery of its priorities.
- To strategically lead people management projects taking a commercial, innovative, evidence based approach that is fit for the future and minimises risk to the council adhering to all relevant legislation and internal governance arrangements.
- To manage contracts within your service area ensuring procurement and financial regulations are adhered to.
- To have a key role in developing and coaching HR and OD colleagues and employees within the directorate to share best practice and expertise to lead a performance led approach.
- To represent the council at external events as a speaker, facilitator, presenter providing professional direction and expertise in the specialism.
- To be responsible for the delegated budget lines within your business area and manage these as directed by the Chief People Officer and in line with the Councils scheme of delegations.
- Maintain an awareness of current and emerging features of the council’s technology platform (oracle) relevant to your role to ensure the system supports the council’s people related activities.
The list of duties in the role profile should not be regarded as exclusive or exhaustive. There will be other duties and requirements associated with your job and, in addition, as a term of your employment you may be required to undertake various other duties as may reasonably be required.
Your duties will be as set out in the above role profile but please note that the Council reserves the right to update your role profile, from time to time, to reflect changes in, or to, your job.
You will be consulted about any proposed changes.
Key Partner Relationships:
Internal:
Members; Chief Officers; Directors; Heads of Service; other teams and senior directorate colleagues across the whole council; trade unions.
External:
Local, regional and national government bodies, agencies and NGOs; professional bodies; other local authorities; partner organisations; statutory bodies; members of the public and community groups; trade unions, Oracle, Learning Pool.
