Surrey 2018/19

Overall, Surrey Fire and Rescue Service requires improvement at looking after its people.

The service requires improvement in promoting the right values and culture. It has the facilities to support staff wellbeing. But it needs to assure itself that managers know how to support staff as needed. Staff understand their role in keeping each other safe. They consider the processes for raising safety concerns effective. A staff survey conducted by the service in 2017 told it that leaders need to do more to model service values. The service is working on this. It launched a new set of values and behaviour in 2017 and involved staff in this. But staff do not show great awareness of the new values in their use of language at work. The service needs to assure itself that staff adopt the new values and forms of behaviour. Staff are proud of their work but find the increasing workloads hard to bear.

The service requires improvement at getting the right people with the right skills. Its 2017 people strategy describes its future workforce needs and possible performance difficulties. But it is not clear how this strategy relates to the savings planned in the service’s medium-term financial plan. The service relies heavily on overtime. But it does not have enough controls to manage staff working hours. It recently removed overtime limits. This could have an impact on staff welfare.

The service has a system for recording staff training. Only managers can access it. The competency recording system can make it difficult for managers to check whether standby moves and staff working overtime on a watch need training. The service’s dedicated training team maintains core competencies and manages staff development. The learning opportunities are good for frontline staff, but less so for support and control staff. The service offers some courses via an e-learning system. Not all learners complete the assigned activities when they are told to. The service should monitor e-learning completion rates.

The service requires improvement at ensuring fairness and promoting diversity. It surveys staff each year, but the response rates are falling. We asked staff about this and they told us that the service did not explain, or act on, the outcomes of previous surveys. Staff know how to use the service’s grievance policy. But we found that many grievances get resolved locally with little or no documentation. This is not the service’s policy. The service engages with the largest union, but not with all the other representative bodies. Engagement with all unions should give the workforce a voice and help the service to achieve the level of engagement it aspires to.

The service recognises that the diversity of its workforce does not reflect that of the community it serves. It has an inclusion strategy and intends to improve this. It could do more to engage people from underrepresented groups in its workforce.

The service requires improvement at managing performance and developing leaders. Staff use the service’s appraisal process to access development opportunities. But we couldn’t see how the service uses the process to manage performance. We could see no evidence that the service has trained managers in the appraisal process. This may result in missed opportunities to manage underperformance or nurture talent. The service has processes for promotion, but needs to explain these better to staff. Frontline staff have a formalised development process, but this is not so much the case for support staff. The service acknowledges that it has no formal process for managing talent.