Heads of Human Resources

As a specialist sub group of the London Heads of HR, to provide members with a trusted professional forum to share knowledge, experiences and practical ideas with regard to pay and employee relations matters and information management to aid delivery of the best possible public service to our customers now and into the future.

To deliver projects as tasked by the London Heads of HR Group by:

• Sharing intelligence on matters of strategic importance to London local government pay, reward and engagement, employment terms and ER professionals.
• Providing space and support to share knowledge, experiences and ideas so members can learn from each other and identify opportunities for mutual benefit.
• Having use of external input that supports new ways of thinking whilst acting as a catalyst for identifying shared solutions, strategies or products etc. that contribute to the continued gains in efficiency and improvements across the pay, reward and engagement, employment terms and ER agenda.
   

Co-Chairs:  Themistoklis Pagoudis (Waltham Forest), Jerry Tosswell (Bexley) and Zoe Hoskin (Camden) 

London Councils provides this network to develop best practice in boroughs’ ability to systematically collect and collate workforce data.

The network was formed in 2005 to provide better data for improved internal decision making and policy development; and to meet the information requirements of The Local Government Pay and Workforce Strategy and the productive time element of the Gershon Review.

Objectives

• To produce practical outputs which will assist the boroughs in improving their people management information.
• To investigate the feasibility of establishing minimum common datasets
• To undertake an audit survey on boroughs data collection focusing on systems, resources, processes, and use of data
• To produce a standardised report/template for people management information
• Working towards increasing the standardisation of definitions, for the different external surveys that exist, and a common basic dataset. The initial project will be the standardisation of occupational classifications/codings.
• To undertake projects on data collection issues such as absence reporting
• To drive best practice in workforce planning.
   

Chair: Brian Parish, LB Havering

Objectives

• To identify the key overall priorities for developing and improving the Education HR service across the London boroughs.
• To work in partnership with the Children’s Services Network with the aim of improving the Children’s Services Workforce across the London boroughs.  This will be underpinned by the Children’s Workforce Strategy and contribute to the delivery of the responsibilities within the Children Act 2004 and the ‘Every Child Matters: Change for Children’ programme.To invite speakers to inform on strategic issues relating to the Education/life long learning agenda.
• To provide the opportunity for boroughs to present their experiences and learn from each other.
• To provide feedback and ideas on the development and implementation of the Education workforce strategies to central government and any other relevant body.
• To initiate joint projects and joint working activities aimed at improving the Education workforce.
• To contribute to the collection of comparative data for monitoring performance and developing strategies/solutions.
   

Chair:  Sarah Fyer, Enfield.

London Councils provides this forum to exchange information and share experiences across the London Boroughs in the field of recruitment practice and retention initiatives.

Objectives

• To meet on a quarterly basis, to facilitate the exchange of information and sharing good practice experience.
• To review common areas of staff shortage and determine strategies to address these
• To initiate joint projects and joint working activities that might contribute to shared solution of recruitment issues.
• To invite speakers to inform debate and share events with other London Councils networks as appropriate
• To contribute to collection of comparative data for sharing on areas of common concern/interest.
   

Co-Chairs:  Jason Wisniewski (Kensington & Chelsea) and Irvin Luchowa (Hillingdon)

London Councils coordinates the London Health and Safety Network for health and safety manager/advisers in the London boroughs and involved in their council’s health and safety management, assessment and government policies.

Objectives

• The objectives of the group are to discuss issues of mutual interest and where possible to unify standards and avoid duplication.  
• Most meetings include presentation of Health and Safety issues including HR/Strategic and occupational health issues.

Our Members

Health and safety representatives from all London boroughs.

Co-Chairs:   Shirley Fantie, Merton and Gino Di Franco, Islington

All London boroughs may nominate an appropriate representative to be a member of this strategic network.  The council’s representative will be employed in the HR/OD field and have the appropriate seniority and authority to make decisions and contribute on behalf of their employer.

Roles and responsibilities of the members:

• To attend network meetings.  If a member cannot attend then they must nominate a suitable colleague to attend in their place.
• To volunteer and take the lead on elements of the network's work programme.
• To contribute to the activities within the network's work programme.
• Obtain appropriate authority to outline their Council's position to contributing to cross-council initiatives.
• Provide data to enable benchmarking analysis to enable efficiency and best practice reviews.
• To cascade recommendations, information and progress against the network's work programme within their organisation.
• Proactivity work with the Heads of HR network.
   

Co-Chairs:  Glyn Drew (Enfield), Kaye Saxton-Lea (City of London) and Diane Lomas (Tower Hamlets)