Council / Recruitment ‘one of our biggest challenges’, SIC leader says
“OUR workforce is our biggest asset, but our inability to recruit is one of our biggest challenges.”
That is the view of Shetland Islands Council (SIC) leader Emma Macdonald, who was responding to a new report from the Accounts Commission which said the “strain is clear” across Scotland’s local government workforce.
With increasing demand on services, the Accounts Commission said councils “need to prioritise workforce planning and development to address existing and future challenges”.
Macdonald said the SIC has been “looking at how we can ensure we have a workforce that is right for the future needs of our services”.
“With an ageing population and more people in our communities needing care support, for example, this is an area we have been focused on,” she said.
The Shetland North councillor pointed to recent work on “value-based” recruitment for social care, which focused more on personal qualities rather than qualifications.
Care pilot scheme could recruit people without qualifications to fill vacant roles
Macdonald said this has “allowed us to look at doing things differently to help us grow such an important workforce with people who have the core values that we need”.
“As a council, we have spoken a lot about the need to redesign our services to meet the workforce we have,” she added.
“The issue with trying to do the same with fewer people simply means you end up with increasing pressure on the staff you do have, and we need to find another way.
“Local government continues to face a number of pressures with increasing demands and reducing budgets, but we are very lucky to have a workforce who are dedicated to improving the lives of people in our communities and they often go above and beyond to achieve this.”
The Accounts Commission report highlights the SIC twice.
It said that Shetland, as well as Glasgow and South Ayrshire, noted that flexible working arrangements have had a positive impact on the workforce’s wellbeing and work-life balance.
However, only Glasgow has measured impact on productivity.
The report said the SIC has “successfully used its home working policy to widen the pool of potential employees for previously hard-to-fill roles”.
The most recent staffing figures submitted by the council to the Scottish Government said there was a headcount of 3,553, with around 2,390 full-time equivalent posts.
Meanwhile the Accounts Commission report said the employment costs of local authority staff in Scotland had risen 26 per cent since 2014, to £10.3 billion.
The local government watchdog said that councils will need “strong leadership to develop the innovative approaches required to deal with increasing workforce pressures and challenges”.
Jennifer Henderson, member of the Accounts Commission, said: “Councils need to align their existing workforce plans with their priorities so they can ensure their workforces are the right size and shape, and their staff have the skills they will need.
“In particular, they need to ensure workers have the digital skills necessary for the scale of changes ahead.
“We have seen many councils already responding to this challenge, and there are valuable opportunities for local bodies to learn from each other.”
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