It was noted that Councillor Mann had permanently replaced Councillor Rackett as a member of this Committee.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Martins.

There were no disclosures of interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 28th March 2007 were submitted and signed.

The report of the Head of Human Resources introduced the background of stress management and asked the Committee to agree the stress management guidelines. She said that stress was the second biggest cause for absence within the Council which included both work related stress and stress due to personal circumstances.

One Member asked in there was anyone in Occupational Health with the skills to deal with stress. The Head of Human Resources said they had an Occupational Health Adviser who worked two days per week who was a trained counsellor. She said the Council also had a contract with Care First which offered both a telephone helpline and one to one confidential counselling for employees and their families but as yet the service had not been very well used by staff. This contract was to be changed to BUPA in November. They would also be introducing stress awareness sessions and publicity for staff in managing stress and had already introduced Well Man and Well Woman days.

Members asked about training for managers and staff. The Head of Human Resources said training on Managing Challenging Situations was provided last year as part of training on new HR policies although a third of managers did not attend. She said further training sessions on these topics would be run again this year and specific training for managers on identifying employee stress and managing stress which all managers would be heavily encouraged to attend. The Senior Management team would be asked to encourage all their managers to attend these sessions.

A Member asked how staff would be helped to recognise that they were suffering from stress. The Head of Human Resources said there would be a lot of publicity connected with this which would advise staff of the common symptoms of stress. Another Member thought this should be done carefully as it should not come across that it was an HR policy designed to cover the Council's back with which the Head of Human Resources agreed.

A Member asked how practical it would be for managers to consider the stress involved in any job on interviewing a candidate for that job. The Head of Human Resources said a new test had been devised called ‘mental robustness' which tested candidates on resilience which would be used selectively to assess whether candidates possessed the appropriate level of resilience to cope with the pressures of the role they were applying for. The Council was considering buying this test to use on interviews for relevant jobs. Appropriate selection interviewing techniques could also assist in ensuring candidates could cope with the pressures of the job they were applying for.

One Member said that on page eight of the report, bullet point 3 read employees should "write" to the next level manager if they could not resolve issues with their immediate manager. She said it could be amended to read "approach" to be less formal, with which other Members agreed.