Contact arrangements for HR Consultancy Service Autumn 2008

The work of the Modern Reward Strategy has now reached a point at which the level of involvement needed from Children's Services HR Consultancy (CSHR) Team is increasing significantly and is likely to remain at that increased level over the next three months during MRS consultation and implementation.

There will be a particular peak over the 4 weeks from 20 October to Friday 14 November during which all members of the Team will be required to help staff the MRS Helpdesk facility on a daily basis. You will appreciate that, given more than fifty per cent of staff in the County Council covered by MRS are employed in schools a substantial proportion of calls to the help desk will be from your staff. It is important that we are available to support those staff with any queries or concerns they have.

We therefore need to take some exceptional measures to ensure that, while MRS work demands are met, some HR Consultant capacity is retained to support Headteachers with urgent and high priority non-MRS related casework.

From Monday 20 October and until further notice, all contacts with HR Consultancy will need to be routed through a managed contact, or triage.

The key features of this service will be:

	All MRS related telephone queries should be routed through the MRS Helpdesk by phoning:
	- for employees with surnames starting with A-F 01603 638303
	- for employees with surnames starting with G-O 01603 228844
	- for employees with surnames starting with P-Z 01603 495850

	For all non-MRS-related queries, we can be contacted only by:
	- emailing the query or request to the CSHR mailbox
	- phoning the following telephone number: 01603 222250 (4 lines)

All of the Consultancy Team's normal phone lines, including those of our Admin Office, will be forwarded to the above numbers and emails sent to the personal email addresses of individual Consultants will receive an Out of Office autoreply only. During this period, you will also not be able to contact individual consultants on their mobile numbers.

We would ask, please, that before contacting us at all, you look on the Schools HR Handbook site to see if the comprehensive information and guidance available there on the full range of HR issues will answer your query.

The Schools HR Handbook includes procedures for dealing with the whole range of people management issues you are likely to encounter.

Other sources of information and advice available to you on specific matters are as follows:

The Employee Services Centre (who will also be supporting the MRS Helpdesk and will be somewhat more difficult to contact):

Recruitment	01603 222345
Pre-employment checking (CRB, Ofsted, etc)	01603 223152
Sickness and other authorised absence	01603 495818
Overtime and Blue Claims	01603 495934
Travel Claims	01603 495939
Health and Safety	01603 223470
Teacher Recruitment Strategy	01603 222901

The arrangements we are putting in place have been subject to consultation with your representations on the School MRS Steering Group. The following priority ratings to any potential queries which would normally be raised with CSHR Consultancy:

1	- immediate Headteacher/Chair of Governors managerial action required on potential gross misconduct allegation, collective dispute, etc or any such matter where there is an immediate child safety issue or serious disruption to a front line service.
2	- Headteacher/Chair of Governors action required on a formal grievance, bullying and harassment complaint, disclosure made under whistleblowing procedure (if not covered by priority 1 above).
3	- Headteacher action required after 10 working days or more because query relates to a known future event, eg dismissal process for ending of a fixed-term contract, occupational health referrals.
4	- developmental task or process requiring HR Consultancy input but which can be held back until sufficient HR capacity available, eg organisational restructuring, review of working conditions/pay.
5	- task or process does not require HR Consultancy input and can be dealt with effectively by Headteachers with info from Schools HR Handbook if necessary, eg performance management, queries re conditions of service/contracts of employment, flexible working/working beyond 65 requests, etc.

All calls and emails will be logged for prioritisation and, with the appropriate priority rating, forwarded to a team member for follow-up.

As far as possible, we will ask for priority queries to be followed up by the designated Consultant for the relevant school. However, it may be necessary on occasions for a colleague to contact a Headteacher if the designated team member cannot be available quickly enough.

We will try and acknowledge all calls/emails. Realistically, though the likelihood is that at peak times many category 4 or 5 queries or requests received through the above contact points will not be answered and should not be referred to CSHR at all.

While these arrangements will be kept under constant review, and flexed accordingly, it is entirely possible that at peak times, we may only be able to respond to Priority 1 issues only.

We would ask for your patience with and understanding of these arrangements, which we will only keep in place for as long as is necessary.

Unison, GMB, Unite, and the teaching unions have been sent a copy of this communication, and are aware of the reasons why we are putting these arrangements in place.