Praise for City Council’s investment in staff

(Date of issue: Monday, 16 March 2009)

Carlisle City Council’s commitment and investment in its staff will be singled out at a national award’s presentation this Wednesday (18 March).

The City Council will be presented with an Excellence Award at the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government’s GO Awards, for their successful ‘Skills for Life’ initiative.

They are also shortlisted for a special national award for both the ‘Whole Organisation Approach’ category and have been jointly nominated with System Training Group, in the GO Learning Provider category.

This run of awards could also be continued on Thursday (19 March) when the City Council is also shortlisted within the Workforce Training Category at the National Government Business Awards.

The Leader of Carlisle City Council, Cllr Mike Mitchelson, said:

“Our employees are part of our on-going success and we are leading by example as a role model for our community in the field of learning and development. This year, more than 45 staff gained qualifications ranging from literacy and numeracy through to post-graduate diplomas. Some of these achievers will be new to learning and in some cases it can change lives.”

Maggie Mooney, Carlisle City Council’s Town Clerk & Chief Executive added:

“The awards show our absolute commitment to learning and I’d like to praise the work of all our staff. High performance is at the top of our agenda and we have put in place systems that are all designed to make complex organisations like the City Council, work more effectively, in addition to promoting the skill development of all our staff.”

A Skills for Life Strategy has been produced by the City Council and sets out how it will achieve the Government’s recommendation for all adults to achieve a Level 2 qualification by 2010. It also highlights the benefits of pursuing the Strategy. These include improved corporate services; improved staff retention; reduced absenteeism; and confident and adaptable employees who feel valued.

Skills for Life’ supports staff who need to develop or improve basic ‘life skills, such as literacy, numeracy and basic IT. It is estimated that 230,000 local government workers (11% of the workforce) are below level 1 in literacy (GCSE English Grade G) and 780,000 (40% of the workforce) are below 1 in numeracy (GCSE Maths Grade G).

In the annual Carlisle City Council Employee Opinion Survey (November 2008) it was found that 77% of staff had engaged in learning during the year, 19% were studying for a qualification, and around 90% had an appraisal. This may explain why the survey also found that 88% of employees believed the Council to be a good employer.

The City Council is on target to hit their 2010 goal of having all employees with at least a level 2 qualification. This is despite the fact that we continue to take on new employees from the community without any qualifications. Although this clearly makes the task of hitting our targets harder, we believe that it is entirely in keeping with our community leadership role and is yet another example of us serving as a role model.