Recommendation 16

HM Government Accepted

The Cabinet Office should report to the Committee on its progress in delivering the ‘A Better Cabinet Office’ programme, in its response to this report. As part of that work, the Cabinet Office should include a thorough evaluation of its success or otherwise in delivering on the recommendations of its earlier Respect and Inclusion Review. Progress with A Better Cabinet Office A Better Cabinet Office (ABCO) is the Department’s people transformation programme, with an overarching focus on improving employee experience and engagement. There are six workstreams, focussed on the areas surfaced by the 2022 People Survey including: Pay; Career Progression; Purpose, Culture and Employee Deal; Leadership, Respect and Inclusion; Learning and Development and Workplace, Estates and Technology. Each workstream has an Executive Committee Sponsor and Task and Finish Group. The first phase of ABCO focussed on establishing a robust programme, resetting communications and engagement channels and delivering as much change on the ground for staff as possible. The programme has a clear set of outcome statements, performance metrics and reports to the Executive Committee monthly on progress. Key achievements to date include: • We developed, engaged and agreed a clear and common Purpose Statement for the Cabinet Office; • We continue to train a network of 70+ fair treatment confidants to listen and offer support on workplace issues; these people are members of staff who voluntarily do this to help colleagues as part of their corporate contribution to the Cabinet Office. • We invested an additional £2.6 million in L&D with 4,400 colleagues attending funded training over the last year; and • We delivered significant improvements to our workplace and tech – including wifi upgrades, AV technology in 93 meeting rooms, 1250 laptops and 900 new desktop monitors; • We delivered the first year of our Pay Strategy that was aimed at targeting lower paid staff (pay of lower grades and pay at the bottom of bands), improving pay competitiveness with OGDs, and making progress on reducing the gender and ethnicity pay gap; • We established a better balance between delivering our Places for Growth targets and maximising internal career progression opportunities for people. The second phase of ABCO will be informed by the results of the 2023 People Survey. The scale and reach will be more ambitious to transform the culture in our organisation - including the delivery of a leadership programme for the c.400 SCS in our organisation. Respect and Inclusion Review: evaluation in delivering on the recommendations Delivery of the Respect and Inclusion Review recommendations are a key part of our wider Better Cabinet Office Programme. Evaluation is currently in progress, with independent assurance being provided by an independent HR Director. To date, 45 recommendations are fully complete, with a further 11 in progress, all with clear delivery dates for this financial year. Of the remaining three recommendations, one is on pause pending recruitment and two are not yet started. Outstanding actions will be embedded into our ongoing programme of work. Some of our successes include: • Speeding up the process and independence and building trust for employee disputes by changing our approach for Decision and Appeal Managers. For example, in July 2022 5% of DM were appointed within 5 days as per the policy. As of February 2023 37% of DM were appointed within 5 days - a 32% increase; • Making it easier and quicker for people to get workplace adjustments; • Changing our intranet platform to one that meets accessibility requirements and changing the navigation to one that is user-led; • Making our most used employment policies easier to navigate and understand for both individuals and their Line Managers. For example, pages have simplified and made more user friendly for the top 85% of user searched topics; and • Piloting an Anonymous Speak Up Portal with 11 Business Units across the department.