Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Room 5 - Tŷ Hywel. View directions

Contact: Liz Jardine 

Items
No. Item

1.

Introductions, apologies and declarations of interest

Minutes:

Apologies were received from Non Gwilym (Head of Communications), Nia Morgan (Head of Financial Services), Matthew Richards (Head of Legal Services) and Chris Warner (Head of Policy and Legislation Committee Service).

There were no declarations of interest.

Manon Antoniazzi thanked everyone for their efforts to keep working during the extreme weather conditions; staff arrived on site to prepare for Committees before the closure of the estate, and many worked productively from home. Special mention was made of the Security staff, many of whom went the extra mile to keep the building safe and operational. 

 

2.

Communication note to staff - Kathryn Potter

Minutes:

Kathryn Potter would draft a note of the Management Board discussion for the staff news page.

 

3.

Minutes of the Previous Meeting and action log

Minutes:

The minutes of the 8 February Management Board meeting were agreed as a correct record. 

Progress on actions arising from the previous meeting were given. Three staff meetings had been arranged in the first week of March to discuss the second phase of the capacity review and enable staff to feedback. They would also feed into the work on values and engagement, to be discussed further on 16 April.

 

4.

Finance and budget update

Minutes:

Catharine Bray presented an updated financial management report for the year to 31 January taking into account spend decisions of the Investment and Resourcing Board (IRB). A contingency for costs, such as maternity leave, had been ring-fenced to be paid centrally. The Board were advised that although allocations for the new financial year were being finalised, it might be necessary to ask for more savings on budgets in-year.

Dave Tosh outlined the MoSCoW prioritisation process that IRB were using to assist in identifying a project’s priority based on scoring against sets of criteria, to help determine the investment programme for the coming year. It was a tool to help in thinking and applying a formality to the process. The ‘could do’ items would need more discussion and would depend on funds available.

ACTION: Dave Tosh to circulate the MoSCoW tool to Board members.

 

5.

Review of KPIs

Minutes:

Dave Tosh presented a discussion document on proposed new indicators and modifications to existing indicators, with a view to identifying whether they adequately met performance measure needs. In many cases, the KPIs remained unchanged as they were appropriate measures that could not be significantly improved. The ideal was to move from volume based to outcome based measures that would reflect levels of improvement, better engagement and greater awareness, for example. This was not always easy to achieve, as was also the experience of the Scottish Parliament and NI Assembly, who had been consulted during the review. Areas that were more difficult to measure included, for example, the effectiveness of engagement.

It was agreed that more time would be taken to assess priorities before making substantive changes to the KPIs. It was also agreed they should be rationalised downwards. In the meantime, any changes would be minimal. The KPIs would be reported annually in the Annual Report and Accounts, published in July.

ACTIONS:

in advance of next year’s Annual Report and Accounts, a number of focused outcome-based indicators would be developed, and Non Gwilym and Natalie Drury-Styles to work particularly on rationalising the engagement KPIs.

6.

Capability Review

Minutes:

Hayley Rees presented an update on the interim review of capability provided to Management Board on 19 October, making further recommendations on building organisational capacity based on the Learning Needs Analysis conducted from May to December 2017.

The current budget challenges and themes established from the Capacity Review had influenced the review in highlighting the need for greater alignment of capability planning to business priorities. The review considered the current offering and a learning needs analysis consultation had been undertaken to identify gaps in current skills and knowledge, based on organisational priorities.

As a result, a framework of learning had been developed, with five key learning pathways, aimed at building employee capability and improving organisational performance. To enable this to be taken forward the Board agreed the following recommendations:

·                capability planning, through learning and development forecasts, to take place annually;

·                learning and allocation of resources would be aligned with the framework;

·                a restructure of budgets to:

·            provide a contingency budget to service heads to support learning that could not be forecasted, initially administered by HR;

·            capture all corporate licences and awards administered by HR to better reflect L&D expenditure

·            devolve administration of memberships and subscriptions to service areas.

·                annual authorisation by the Head of HR on all individual learning of £3,000 or more, with a claw back arrangement to recoup if staff leave within a time period;

·                improve evaluation and measurement of performance, with increased line management accountability;

·                an L&D champion in each service area to coordinate and advocate learning.

The Board also asked HR to look at possible alignment between staff and AMSS induction and other training, to review the secondment budget, and to ensure that distribution of budget across services took account of where training in certain skills cost more. (ACTION)

The Board welcomed the recommendations and thanked Hayley and the L&D team for all their work on the review.

 

7.

Capacity Review Phase II

Discussion

Minutes:

Dave Tosh led an interactive session to discuss the main themes to come out of the report, which the Phase II Steering Group were focussing on. The Steering Group were undertaking a ‘deep dive’ into each theme to develop proposals for change or action and identify how this would be done.

The Board were asked to contribute their thoughts to help shape the deeper thinking on each theme. The Steering Group would be meeting again on 14 March.

 

8.

IRB Update

Oral

Minutes:

The Board were advised that the expectation was to meet the budget target for the end of the financial year and delegations would be issued to Heads of Service before the end of the month. It was noted that the Emergency Bill might affect budgets in relation to additional translation, late sittings, security and other resources.

It had been agreed to fund the Chwarae Teg – Fair Play Employer Benchmark for the initial 12-month period following consideration of the benefits to be gained, but would look at it again ahead of renewal, as there were concerns that there was not a long-term need for the service when compared to other areas that required equalities resources.

Following a meeting with the Commissioners, the location of the National Museum Diplodocus installation had been resolved.

 

9.

Media grid

Oral/presentation

10.

Forward work programmes - MB and Commission

Papers to note

11.

Executive Board and Leadership Group Terms of Reference

Minutes:

Following a consultation on the change of structure and responsibilities of the senior boards, a note from the Chief Executive had been circulated to Heads responding to the feedback. The changes would take effect after Easter and Board members were invited to let Manon Antoniazzi or the Directors know if they had any further queries.