To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account.
A revolutionary public-private partnership set up between Liverpool City Council and BT may change the way HR in local government works, reports Ben Willmott
The role of HR in local government could be revolutionised if a £300m partner- ship between Liverpool City Council and BT, set up to provide better services at lower cost, proves successful.
Liverpool Direct was formed to enable the council to benefit from a cutting-edge IT infrastructure, which it could not afford to fund itself and will see the first large-scale secondment of employees from the public sector to the private sector.
Up to 1,200 Liverpool City Council employees are to be seconded to the new joint venture company by the end of this year. As part of the deal the council's HR department is being streamlined and its role transformed.
Martin House, an HR consultant who is advising the council on Liverpool Direct, says all council IT services and the council's call centre - the largest in the country - are now run by the joint venture company and will be joined by revenues and benefits, HR and payroll later in the year.
Staff from these departments are being seconded to the new joint venture company but remain Liverpool City Council employees, with unchanged terms and benefits.
The HR department will be run from a new service centre within Liverpool Direct with a single contact number. Line managers will have more responsibility for HR issues and the intranet will play a much bigger role in day-to-day administrative issues such as annual leave and expenses claims.
House explains that line managers will provide the personal contact with staff and they can discuss more complex issues with the council's specialist HR officers in the service centre.
HR staff have been cut by half and overall council staffing levels cut by 1,500 as part of the changes which involved negotiation with Unison and the GMB unions but House stresses that the council had to make no compulsory redundancies.
"This could be the blueprint for the future of local government," said House who believes Liverpool Direct's service centre could be used to handle the HR requirements of a number of local authorities, drastically cutting costs.
