Health scrap "disastrous" £750k pay review

Tuesday 11 December 2018

It's been revealed that the Health Department are scrapping a £750k pay review after discovering that the senior managers who approved it acted with “poor judgement” – it will affect more than 120 health workers whose pay will now drop back down to their previous levels.

The 126 health workers including, amongst others, some physiotherapists, occupational health staff and social workers had their roles upgraded as part of a pay review done last November, at a total cost of £746,000. But those changes will be reversed from next April onwards, after it was found that the pay increases were “not appropriate” and that “job descriptions… had been ‘inflated’."

The States say that the senior staff responsible for the costly blunder are no longer employed by them. 

A fresh report into the failed pay rises, conducted by external consultants, has now been published revealing the key decisions which led to the expensive mistakes. The news shines fresh light on the current unrest around public sector pay, saying that the episode set colleague against colleague, was thought by some to be a "secret deal" that was "disastrous for industrial relations and staff engagement" and resulted in team members being paid more than their managers. 

Pictured: Health are reversing £750k worth of salary uplifts which they approved just over a year ago.

It seems that the Health Corporate Directors Team insisted on the 36 roles being re-evaluated ahead of the implementation of the controversial ‘Workforce Modernisation’ project despite being advised to wait until after the project had been completed. This was due to “considerable concerns” amongst the directors regarding the “costs and impacts” of Workforce Modernisation for the department. 

It was alluded to in the report that one of the reasons for these particular roles being put forward for review was the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry’s finding that social workers in Children’s and Community services were being “undervalued”. However, aside from this, the independent investigators wrote in their report that they “can see no evidence why these posts/grades were chosen and not others.” 

Pictured: Social workers and health professionals are amongst the 126 staff members whose recent salary uplifts will be reversed next year.

Although the senior managers were advised to wait until Workforce Modernisation had been implemented as these roles could already be eligible for an uplift as part of this three-year project, which was weeks away from completion, the management team “would not accept this as a good enough solution and threatened to withdraw their support for Workforce Modernisation."

It was said in the report that the Workforce Modernisation team felt they were “put under pressure” by the directors to re-evaluate the roles “as soon as possible.” 

The roles were therefore re-assessed by an external civil service job evaluation mechanism called HAY and the following results regarding their pay grades came back:

• five grade 10 posts were uplifted to grade 11;
• 25 grade 11 posts were uplifted to grade 12;
• one grade 11 post was uplifted to grade 13;
• four grade seven posts were uplifted to grade eight;
• one grade nine post was uplifted to grade 10.

At the time, there were 109 employees who received uplifts as a result of this review, but since then, the total number of people impacted has increased to 126. 

The increases were agreed on the proviso that they would be funded by Workforce Modernisation, but as this project was scrapped by the States when it was rejected by unions, the cost fell to the department.

Pictured: The scrapped 'Workforce Modernisation' programme paved the way for further public sector disputes over pay.

These employees have now been contacted and informed of the reversal of this pay increase from 1 April 2019. 

Summing up their findings, the independent investigators concluded: “It goes without saying that the outcome of this has been disastrous for industrial relations and staff engagement in the Health and Social Services Department… 

“It has set colleague against colleague… staff suspicious of ‘secret deals being done at the eleventh hour’, Health and Social Services Department managers against the Workforce Modernisation team and… union members against their representatives as they thought they were ‘in on it’, unions against management and staff against management.”