In this issue:
Newsflash from February
Coming up
- Special Council meeting Mull Campus 7 March
- Pavement parking ban comes into effect 3 March (see below for more details)
- Community Services Committee 6 March
- New Hub intranet goes live end of March
Get involved
Councils and communities across Scotland are considering a visitor levy for their area. We want residents, visitors, and businesses in Argyll and Bute to have the same chance to consider one for here.
The Scottish Government’s Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act allows a charge to be introduced on overnight stays in hotels and other short-term accommodations, to raise funds to support and sustain local services and infrastructure for the visitor economy. A visitor levy would be paid by people using hotels and other short-term accommodation. As many services used by visitors are shared with local residents, investment in visitor economy services could also benefit residents.
We’re running a visitor levy consultation until 10 April 2025 and invite staff to find out more about what a visitor levy could mean for you, and the area, and give us your views.
Connect for Success
How the OD team helps lay the groundwork for our internal transformation.
Carolyn Cairns, HROD Manager
“Most people probably don’t fully understand what we do in the Organisational Development team – nearly everyone will have heard of Operational HR but what does ‘Organisational Development’ mean? In a nutshell OD is an arm of the HR profession. We’ve the same professional body but with HR Operations we focus on the here and now, whereas OD is about how we work more broadly as an organisation and support people to achieve the council’s longer-term goals. Basically, OD is in the middle, figuring out how to turn strategic aims into practical plans, policies and procedures that help people.
Everything we do is focused on achieving our internal transformation by bringing the principles of Connect for Success to life. We do this by asking – what are teams trying to achieve? What do people need? And – what is getting in the way? For example, with Employee Empowerment, how can we help empower people across services? With tailored training opportunities, flexible working policies, recognition schemes such as AB Recognition and employee experience survey feedback, to name just a few. Or how do we support people to Maximise Useful Technology? For us it’s about creating Digital Champions, offering learning opportunities through AB365 and exploring and modelling change in our team. We have become more agile in how we plan our own work and are using technology to help us solve complex issues such as managing workloads, reporting, and gathering data to help us make decisions. We now use Planner across the team to share information on what we’re all working on and can tag workstreams such as Improvement Actions or Pipeline projects so that with the click of a button I can see what we’re all doing. As a manager it is invaluable, I can’t recommend it enough. And the team think it’s great because we can share information easily and keep on top of what we’re doing. We are not only facilitating change, but going through transformation ourselves.
With Connect for Success, we’re really taking a holistic look across the whole council and asking – how can we embed all seven principles in how we work to help us deliver what’s needed? Change does not happen in isolation and for the OD team it’s about creating opportunities for people, teams, managers to change in a way that’s right for them.
If anyone would like to find out more about the work that we’re doing and Connect for Success then please get in touch.”
What's new?
Recruiting for a role?
Did you know that on average we recruit about 900 people per year to work with us? That’s a lot of people and a lot of time spent making sure we have the right people for the right jobs. There are various steps to consider when it comes to recruitment and many processes to follow before we can welcome a new colleague to the council.
To help make this whole process as easy as possible for everyone there is a new dedicated section on MyCouncilWorks with all the guidance and resources managers need, from how to recruit through to welcoming a new hire. There is also information about what support is available to create and promote a vacancy, which might be particularly useful for hard to fill roles.
Take a look and if you need more information you can find the contact details for the right people to help you recruit.
Pavement parking ban
On Monday 3 March, the new rules banning parking on pavements, double parking and parking at dropped kerbs will come into effect in Argyll and Bute.
This is to keep vulnerable pedestrians safe and to keep access clears for wheelchair users, anyone with a visual impairment and parents or carers with children.
Please remember to park responsibly when you’re out and about across Argyll and Bute as breaching the new restrictions could result in a £100 Penalty Charge Notice.
Congratulations, achievements and thanks
Long service award
Congratulations to John Rowan. John is a refuse collector who has reached an impressive 40 years with the council.
Well done John, it’s a great achievement. Thanks for all your hard work in providing this vital service for our communities.
Well done to Helen Butler, Website Developer who recently donated £280 to Oban’s RNLI following her art exhibition last year. Her work celebrates Oban’s lifeboat, the Mora Edith MacDonald, her crew and water scenes across Argyll and Bute. You can see Helen’s work on her website www.h2odesigns.co.uk
Training and new resources
Introducing the M365 Skills Hub
A new Skills Hub is now available for Microsoft 365 users. It provides up-to-date resources and tutorials to help you make the most of the tools in your day-to-day work. Here you’ll find learning modules, help and support from fellow users, and live and recorded training sessions to make the most from all the M365 tools.
It is available to us through collaboration with the Digital Office – Scottish Local Government as part of the M365 Cross Organisation Collaboration Programme.
How do I access the M365 Skills Hub?
- You can access the Skills Hub using your work email address.
- If you don’t have it already, you’ll need to install the Microsoft Authenticator app on your mobile phone to verify your identity. This is easy to do and can be installed to either your work or personal mobile.
- You can then request access to the Skills Hub by following our step-by-step guide. The guide also includes help to set up the Microsoft Authenticator app.
If you have any issues, please contact the digital champion for your service area in the first instance or email organisationaldevelopment@argyll-bute.gov.uk
New Hub intranet launching end of March
Over the past year the Web Team have been working on a new, refreshed Hub intranet.
The system powering the current site has become technically outdated so is moving to the same platform that the council website is now built on, Local Gov Drupal. If you use the council website often, you will notice a lot of familiar features from it on the new Hub, as well as new functionality and improvements. The move to the new platform has also been used as an opportunity review and update content.
As part of efforts to ensure networked and non-networked employees have equality of access to council news and information resources, most content has now been moved to My Council Works (MCW) from the Hub. This includes much of the heavily used HR related information. This means all staff can now access this information online from any device. The Hub is now being reserved for content and functions that need to be restricted or protected by additional security, and so cannot be accessed by those who are not on the corporate computer network.
The menus on the new Hub will signpost you to the appropriate content on MCW, so you can easily find HR and other information by going through the Hub. The new Hub will be going live at the end of March, but you can have a view of the site here intranet.argyll-bute.gov.uk .
We are keen to get feedback and hear from anyone who has any queries about moved or missing content. Please get in touch with the Web Team website@argyll-bute.gov.uk .
Feel good feature
Love on the right track…
Here at Cascade, we love to hear how services make a real difference to people across Argyll and Bute. Our Registrars go out of their way to make special days happen for couples planning their big day.
Nicky Sturley one of our Registrars recently conducted a unique ceremony.
“The start of 2025 began with a beautiful intimate ceremony at Dalmally Train Station – a place where fate and love first crossed paths. The happy couple first met on the same platform where a proposal took place later. We were thrilled to be part of their magical journey as they said ‘I do’ on 1 January.”
“We were more than happy to bring to life their unique love story and vision for a romantic start to the year. Here’s to love that begins in unexpected places and lasts forever.”
Staff benefits
Did you know that as part of your employee benefit scheme, you have access to independent, confidential health and wellbeing support for you and your family?
Help@Hand by UNUM provides the Council’s Employee Assistance Programme. With this free service, you can access a range of benefits. They include:
- 24/7, unlimited remote GP appointments – so you can get fast access to a doctor at a time convenient to you
- Unlimited mental health support from qualified mental healthcare professionals – no more cap on the number of sessions or issues per year.
- Physiotherapy — eight sessions a year
- Medical second opinions
- 360 Wellbeing Score — take just four short assessments to get your score
- Six 1-2-1 lifestyle coaching sessions per year
- On-demand wellness content, plus our Wellbeing Calendar, which is packed with podcasts, articles, webinars and more to help manage your wellbeing