Unauthorised pay rises

7

WQ.9/2019

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE STATES EMPLOYMENT BOARD

BY DEPUTY M.R. HIGGINS OF ST. HELIER

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 15th JANUARY 2019

Question

Further to the announcement that 126 members of the Health and Community Services Department had seen their grades and pay wrongly increased, will the Chairman –

1. provide a detailed chronology of how these grade and pay increases came to be made;
2. set out the procedures and processes that should have been followed in these circumstances;
3. state the titles of who was responsible for the increases being made outside of recognised procedures;
4. advise what action, if any, has been taken against those responsible, when, and by whom any such action was taken;
5. state whether any consideration was given to dismissing those responsible for gross misconduct or incompetence and, if so, why such action was not pursued;
6. state which civil servants were informed of the actions of the Department, when, what action they took and when;
7. state which Ministers and Assistant Ministers were informed of the actions of the Department, when, what action they took and when; and
8. state when the States Employment Board was informed of the actions of the Department?

Answer

At the request of unions, the Health and Community Services Department commissioned an independent HR consultant to investigate how this matter. The report has been published, and the relevant details are

covered in the report. https://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Government%20and%20administration/20181210%20Root %20Cause%20Analysis%20Health%20and%20Community%20Services.pdf

1. The Report outlines the relevant dates.
2. The appropriate Business as usual (BAU) Job Evaluation procedures were followed i.e. the relevant department raised a request to have a range of jobs evaluated. The HSSD job evaluations were undertaken externally by Hay (the agreed job evaluation mechanism for Civil Servants). The error occurred as a result of the then leadership team asking for evaluations and submitting job information which was subsequently found to be not representative of the jobs being undertaken.
3. The request was made by the HSSD leadership team in line with the BAU process.
4. The leadership team which made the evaluation request no longer work in Health and Community services.
5. The report has identified the factual basis behind the decisions. As that leadership team is no longer in situ, no action can be pursued.
6. As the requests were dealt with under BAU process, the concerns did not become fully apparent until after the WFM pay offer had been rejected by Trade unions in February 2018 and the offer taken off the table in March 2018. Trade Union representatives made HSSD and HR managers aware during February /March of their members concerns.
7. The previous Health Minister and Chair of SEB was aware of the concerns in February /March and asked officers to investigate the background of the complaints and concerns.
8. The current SEB was made aware of the concerns when they took office, by which time the Root Cause Analysis report had been commissioned.