Agenda item

(To receive a report from Sophie Reeve (Chief Commercial Officer) which provides an update of Serco's performance against contractual Key Performance Indicators for November and December 2016.  Performance for January 2017 remained under review at the time the agenda was published)

Consideration was given to a report from the Chief Commercial Officer which provided an update of Serco's performance against contractual Key Performance Indicators for November and December 2016.

Sophie Reeve (Chief Commercial Officer) introduced the report and confirmed that the verified performance figures for January 2017 had been circulated to the Committee via email but remained the same as those reported for December.  Since the start of the contract, much fewer KPIs were not performing and the Committee was also asked to note that reporting against some KPIs had not been possible previously due to data being unavailable.  It was reported that all KPIs could now be measured.

Members were referred to the following areas within the agenda pack for consideration:-

·       Table 2 on page 14 highlighted three KPI failures within the People Management service area and the reasons for these failures;

·       Page 15 referred to the Employee Life Cycle Project which would improve processes within the People Management service;

·       It was noted that all payroll contacts received before April 2016 had now been resolved;

·       Table 5 on page 17 was highlighted as a cause for concern as the current abandoned call levels and wait times remained high.  It was recognised that the bulk of this was due to the implementation of Mosaic and largely out of the control of the Customer Service Centre (CSC) but it was an area targeted for improvement.  CSC KPI04 showed that this area had been stable until December 2016 where it was placed in to mitigation when Mosaic training commenced.  Additional staff had been recruited and once their training had been delivered performance was expected to improve;

·       Table 7 on page 18 indicated that finance KPI01 had improved moved from red to amber.  Scrutiny of that indicator had helped find improvements that could be made;

·       December was expected to be a key month for performance following the change in some of the KPIs.  Serco were hopeful that each indicator would be met by the end of March/early April 2017.

Members were invited to ask questions, during which the following points were noted:-

·       Despite assurances, some Members remained concerned at the performance of Serco in delivery of the contract and expressed disappointment that the negative press in relation to school payroll and the report that a member of staff was nearly paid £1m had not been addressed.  Paul Briddock, Partnership Director for Serco, advised that this had been addressed in the media at the time.  He explained that the verification of payments for wages was a three stage process.  In this case, the issues would have been found by Serco at the first check but, prior to this and at the schools request, the payment information was sent to schools so they had longer to carry out their checks.  Following this incident, Serco now carried out their first check before the payment information to schools was sent.  Paul Briddock assured Members that the second and third checks of the verification process would have made it impossible for anyone to be paid that amount of money.  Serco was disappointed that the school had chosen to contact the press rather than raise this directly with them;

·       Members stressed the need for openness when issues of this type occurred in order to sufficiently scrutinise the progress;

·       Mitigation had been given to the KPIs noted due to the transition process for implementation of the Mosaic.  This was common practice and would be relevant to other significant system updates;

·       It was confirmed that the system was ready for use and that staff had been sufficiently trained.  However, suggestions had been made by staff for improvement following 'live' usage of the system which again was to be expected and was welcomed;

·       The Committee acknowledged that the abandoned call performance figures was adversely impacted by the new system implementation within Adult Social Care;

·       Reputational damage remained a key concern of the Committee especially with the recent negative headlines in relation to payroll;

·       A request was made for the exact number of schools and council staff who had referred to the Agresso/Serco issues as a factor for leaving employment within exit interviews since the start of the contract.  The Committee requested a comparison with the same figures prior to the start of the contract;

·       Although the decision of the Executive, the Committee suggested that the Recovery Board should continue into the new Council term as some Members would prefer this level of scrutiny to continue until the performance improved further.

RESOLVED

1.    That the report and comments be noted; and

2.    That information from Exit Interviews to which reference was made to issues regarding Serco/Agresso be provided if available.