COUNCIL managers and their staff share periodic “shared conversations” to discuss their performance and wellbeing, councillors heard.

Jackie Addison, Calderdale Council’s Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development, reported to the Strategy and Performance Scrutiny Board on the introduction of Shared Conversations, which is now the council’s approach to performance appraisals.

She told members the performance and wellbeing of staff was paramount and was being actively managed to improve productivity and deliver the council’s services within the available budgets.

Her department would work with all the council’s Directorates to ensure that performance and wellbeing continued to be managed proactively.

Ms Addison said she would like to see an improvement in the quality of the Shared Conversations and further monitoring would be carried out in the next quarter to assess how this might be done.

Her own directorate worked with organisations which made up part of the Calderdale Leaders Forum alongside Huddersfield Foundation Trust, Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, Covea, West Yorkshire Police, Lloyds Banking Group, the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, groups in Calderdale’s voluntary sector, the Dean Clough complex and Together Housing.

HR was ready and willing to make improvements to the system when they were needed, she said.

Members asked if the “shared conversations” had replaced the review process and in any case what were the outcomes.

Officers said they formed part of the review process and utilised templates for employees and managers to input their views ahead of discussion.

They were also asked if work had been undertaken to understand reasons why staff might have left the council’s service.

Officers replied it was difficult to know what these might be before they left and were more usually obtained at an exit interview.

But a recent change in process had made available opportunity for issues to be addressed and managed, again in the form of an automated form.