Dear all.

I’m temporarily assisting in the management of an integrated service containing NHS staff and seconded council staff. I am employed by the NHS. This service contains one group of staff that is required to collect equipment from base in the mornings and spend the day fitting it in the homes of those recently released from hospital.

Our own staff are meeting what are considered to be very reasonable targets; seconded staff however are comparably working to 1/3 efficiency.

We’ve therefore decided to put in place a job card system for the whole staff group on which arrival time, parts used and leaving time of jobs will be recorded. We have said that this is to ensure sufficient time is allocated to each task – including travelling – to make targets achievable.

We have been told by the union rep. of the seconded staff that we are infringing their human rights and they have refused point blank.

We have sought support from the council HR but they have declined, saying that it is unworkable. Anecdotal evidence has it that this one individual has caused them untold problems in the past and they don’t wish to get involved but with this issue I feel we are on firm ground.

Refusal of a reasonable adjustment especially where only a minority object could invoke disciplinary action in my organisation. But we don’t have that option for seconded staff. Or do we? My understanding is that we don’t without the support of the council’s HR department. I’m aware that this therefore sounds in part like I’m going up against another HR department but I am rather at my wits’ end.

We’ve looked into terminating the secondments (politically unacceptable at a high level) and replacing the council vehicles with ours and fitting trackers (prohibitively expensive – we have our own sizeable fleet to manage/ replace and therefore only a long-term option).

Any ideas? Many thanks

Jim
Jim Thomas