 Front row (from left to right), Chief Executive, Claire Symonds, Leader of the Council, Cllr Jas Athwal, and Operational Director of Human Resources, Pay and Pensions, Lynn Lane.
Back row (from left to right), Redbridge UNISON Schools Convenor, Carlene Rose, UNITE Regional Officer, Michelle Cook, and GMB Branch Secretary, Madeline Daley
Last Thursday, 11 August, our Chief Executive, Claire Symonds, Leader of the Council, Cllr Jas Athwal, and members from GMB Union, UNISON and Unite, signed the Stop Domestic Abuse Charter, demonstrating Redbridge Council’s commitment to supporting staff experiencing domestic abuse.
The Stop Domestic Abuse Charter is led by the GMB trade union and calls on employers to support their staff experiencing domestic abuse by ensuring that they won’t be disadvantaged at work and that they’ll have access to services and information.
The Charter states Redbridge Council will:
- Support staff who are experiencing Domestic Abuse to access support services and information confidentially.
- Ensure that those experiencing Domestic Abuse will not be disadvantaged within the terms and conditions of their employment and will take all reasonable measures to facilitate any needs in the workplace.
- Commit to working/participating with other organisations to facilitate best support for those experiencing Domestic Abuse.
- Provide all staff with access to toolkits, information and our policies on Domestic Abuse, in a format that is easily and discreetly accessible within the workplace.
- Ensure that we have trained staff across our organisation, to provide adequate access to support within the workplace for all colleagues. Trained staff will be representative of our workplace and will include line managers and Trade Union representatives.
In July, the Council launched its new Domestic Abuse Policy – please ensure you read the policy to understand the different types of domestic abuse and recognise the signs. It aims to remove any stigma so that we can talking openly about domestic abuse and confidently support each other, both as managers and as colleagues.
Please visit the intranet for more information and guidance. You may not be experiencing domestic abuse, but you can help others.
If anyone has any questions about the policy, please contact our HR Policy Business Partner, Lyn Downey or your Directorate’s HR Business Partner.
We are looking for first aiders, fire marshals and event stewards to help support our Disability Awareness Festival on Wednesday 24 August.
We will be hosting the Festival at Christchurch Green in Wanstead from 12pm to 5pm. Come along to enjoy live music, a food market, outdoor activities that are accessible to everyone, information sessions and workshops.
The festival, organised by Redbridge Council Day services along with is partners at Vision, Uniting Friends, Redbridge forum and One Place East, has been running since 2012.
It highlights what statutory, private, and voluntary services and equipment are available to enable people with a disability to stay independent. It also provides an opportunity to showcase what people with a disability can do in the fields of Sport, Arts and Entertainment.
If you’re able to help on the day, please contact the Learning & Development team by 12pm tomorrow, Friday 19 August to express your interest.
Find out more about Disability Awareness Festival on the intranet.
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Our relaunched performance management scheme, One Brilliant You, is round the corner.
The One Brilliant You approach provides clarity and focuses on your development and career aspirations through regular conversations with your manager.
We will be holding separate sessions for managers, staff, and front-line teams in September and October to explain the scheme, share resources and answer any questions that you may have.
We encourage all our staff to attend one of the sessions. Please visit the events calendar to add a session to your calendar now.
We look forward to seeing you very soon.
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IT essential maintenance will be taking place this Sunday 21 August to ensure that IT systems continue to operate effectively.
Please see updates detailed below:
- VMWare Remote Desktop Solution (VDI) – 8am to 5pm
- Netloan Service – 8am to 9am
- Always on VPN and DirectAccess for remote working – 12pm to 2pm
- Revenues & Benefits System – 8:30am to 10am
- Housing System – 9am to 10:30am
- Planning – 9:30am to 11am
- Agresso – 10am to 12pm
- Agresso ACSOnline - 1pm to 5pm
- Lachs JCADOnline – 1pm to 5pm
- PowerBI Gateways – 10am to 2pm
- Google Authentication – 1pm to 5pm
There may also be some general disruption to other IT systems during this period (8am to 5pm). To minimise impact, we recommend that you avoid using these systems (and relax instead – it’s the weekend). However, if you have no alternative then please ensure you save your work regularly.
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Every Monday, Claire updates us on things like key events for staff and corporate information in a vlog. In this week’s video, Claire talks about signing the Domestic Abuse Charter and what it means for the Council.
To catch up on previous updates, visit the intranet.
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Staff eNews takes a break during weeks with Bank Holidays. We therefore won’t be sending out Staff eNews on Thursday 1 September.
We'll return on Thursday 8 September, so if you have an event or other information you’d like to share with your colleagues before then, please make sure you send content to the internal comms inbox by 9am on Monday 22 August. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!
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Earn some extra cash this Autumn by collecting completed forms – yep, it’s that easy.
Between Wednesday 21 September to Monday 31 October, the Electoral Services team will designate you an area where occupants have not returned their Electoral Canvass Form. The form enables the Electoral Register held by each local authority to update their records.
You simply knock at these properties and collect the completed form. For every completed form, you will earn £1.50. Pssst…there could be approximately 300 forms!
There’s flexibility in terms of hours – you choose your hours between 9am to 8pm, weekdays or weekends. You will have to visit the office at Ilford Town Hall once a week with the completed forms and stick to the completion deadline.
If you are interested, please call the Electoral Services team on 0208 708 7171 or email our Staffing Elections team by Friday 26 August. Thank you!
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Do you have a worthwhile project that you’d love to get off the ground, but you and your team don’t have capacity? Then apply for one of our fantastic National Graduate Development Programme’s (NGDP) graduate management trainees to work with you for six months.
The NGDP is the Local Government Association’s flagship management trainee programme which offers councils a unique opportunity to grow their own local government leaders through a broad two-year programme that includes four six-month placements at Redbridge Council.
These placements are centrally funded via HR. The graduates, known as National Management Trainees (NMT), work alongside the Placement Coordinator (Gwen Renwick). There are currently only four NMTs looking for a new placement to start in October, so the bidding process is competitive so make sure your bid includes as much development opportunity for the grads as possible!
The bidding process involves interactive sessions for interested managers and leaders across the organisation to meet the NMTs to advertise and discuss their placements. These will be organised by the NMTs.
The next application window is open now. Placements to commence during October 2022. Make your bid by using our online form and sending it to the OD and Strategy Team by 5pm on Friday 9 September.
Find out more on the dedicated intranet page.
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