Our annual leave year runs from January to December. It is important that all staff have entered and/or corrected all of their annual leave and bank holiday records for 2022 into Fusion by 31 December 2022, to ensure end of year calculations are able to be processed correctly.

If staff do not do this by 31 December 2022, they will be unable to correct their own leave record for 2022. This means their leave record will be incorrect and there will be a delay in their record being corrected until a manual adjustment can be made by HR. Please make sure staff know it is their responsibility to enter their leave correctly so that 2023 leave calculations are correct, as it cannot be guaranteed that HR will prioritise manual adjustments.

Please can you also ensure that all work schedules are kept up to date as these inform the annual leave entitlement.

Further communications will be sent out to all staff in January regarding booking leave, bank holidays and inputting purchased leave into Fusion.  

Please cascade this to your teams and support staff. We will be reminding all staff of this in due course.

Further support and resources:

• more information on annual refresh 
• video guidance on annual leave and fusion 
• written guidance on annual leave and fusion 
• FAQ's on annual leave and absence

In response to what you have told us, we have worked to improve our managers communications this year to help you support and provide information to your staff.

New ways that we are communicating with you include the weekly manager update, All Managers' Live sessions and Monthly Insight.

We want to understand more about what you think about these communications and get your suggestions about how they could be improved. 

Please send a couple of minutes completing the brief survey below on managers communications and help us support you and your staff as effectively as possible.

Complete the manager communication survey

Please provide your feedback by 5pm on Monday 19 December. Thank you for your support.

Thank you to those who have contacted itchangemanagement@portsmouthcc.gov.uk regarding the use of Zoom within their teams and services. To make sure those who are required to use it as part of their role are working with the most up to date and safe version of the software, we will be deleting all current versions from this evening, Friday 9 December.

Zoom will be automatically deleted when staff log in for the first time after this date Should staff need to access Zoom after this date, they can follow the re-installation steps available on the intranet.

Please remember Microsoft Teams is the application staff should be using to collaborate together with colleagues to attend meetings, events and training. Details on how to use MS Teams can be found on the M365 Learning and Support site.

Thank you to everyone who attended our All Managers' Live session this week, presented by James Hill, Director of Housing, Neighbourhood and building services, and David Percival, Libraries and Archive Services Manager.

Copies of the slides are available to view below:

• housing, neighbourhood and building presentation
• records management presentation

If you missed the session, you can find a recording on our All Managers' Live events page. 

The Resource Booking System (RBS) has ensured staff have somewhere to work when coming into the civic offices. We are using the data from this to find out more about the space we need, and this will help inform what accommodation we need in the longer term.

Some staff however are using the workstations without booking them, and up to a quarter of the desks being used on any given day aren't being booked. Staff who are booking workstations are also not checking in meaning they are showing as available incorrectly. Please remind staff of the need to use RBS to book workstations and to check in and out correctly. If staff don't use RBS, it will provide mis-leading data for future decision making against space and need. 

There are more meeting rooms available in the civic offices, but around one in five meetings booked are not taking place and slots are left uncancelled. If this continues, we will look to reintroduce a charging mechanism for no-use and non-cancellation. More information on which meeting rooms are available and how to pick the best one for what you need is available online.

Please contact connectivity@portsmouthcc.gov.uk if you have any questions.