Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We have Catherine Shannon, who is deputy secretary with responsibility for the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) HR in the Department of Finance; Debbie Sherlock, director of people services; and Dr David Mills, who is the lead medical officer in the NICS occupational health service (OHS). Thank you all very much for coming to brief us. Catherine, please give us a brief opening statement, and then we will move to questions. We would like to have more time for questions, so please keep your opening statement brief. Thank you very much.

Ms Catherine Shannon (Department of Finance): Chair, Deputy Chair and Committee members, thank you for the opportunity to provide you with an update on a range of HR matters, which the Chair already mentioned, particularly sickness absence, the approach to using pre-recorded interviews as part of recent recruitment processes and unfilled vacancies. As you said, I am joined by Debbie Sherlock, director of people services, who joined NICS HR on 1 October, and Dr David Mills, who joined us in March this year.

On 10 September, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) published its annual review of sickness absence stats for NICS for the financial year 2023-24. Anxiety, stress, depression and other psychiatric illnesses were the absence reasons that accounted for the greatest proportion of working days that were lost during that period. In that category, work-related stress accounted for 38% of absences.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Just to clarify, Catherine, was work-related stress by far the biggest area of long-term sickness?

Ms Shannon: In that category of mental health-related absence, yes. Mental health was the most significant.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Mental health was the biggest, and, within mental health —.

Ms Shannon: Work-related stress was 32%; it was a subset of that absence.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Sorry, what percentage is mental health relative to physical or —?

Ms Shannon: It was over 43%, I think, Chair, but I can clarify that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Forty-three per cent is mental health-related things, and within that —.

Ms Shannon: Yes. That is the percentage for work-related stress.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. Thank you.

Ms Shannon: It should be noted that NISRA recently released stats for the first quarter of this year, from April to June, and those showed that the majority of Departments experienced a decrease in absence levels compared with the previous quarter.

Where our actions to support sickness absence reduction in NICS are concerned, we recognise the need for an understanding and supportive approach in the management of sickness absence, as well as the significant impact of ill health and sickness absence on the cost and quality of service delivery. All sickness absence in NICS is managed in line with statutory requirements and the relevant NICS policy.

The support that we have provided includes the development of a toolkit for the multi-tiered management of sickness absence, and that is available to managers. It was developed in collaboration with our NICS policy leads in order to help managers to manage staff absence appropriately during and following sickness and on return to work. Between March and September this year, we completed a review of absence management in NICS in order to standardise and streamline the process, including introducing a case management approach between our colleagues in employee relations, occupational health and human resources business partners to enable us to provide more consistent and effective management of absence across NICS.

In June this year, we introduced a piloted approach to a wrap-around service, and, again, we are working closely with our Departments to provide a mechanism to analyse absence or the potential for absence and to develop a greater understanding of the reasons for absence so that we can put in place a more targeted approach. We regularly meet our Departments' senior managers and boards regarding sickness figures and work closely with our trade union colleagues. All NICS staff have access to a range of health and well-being information, support and health promotion services, including a reimbursement scheme for the cost of annual flu jabs; health promotion information and events; and delivery of our NICS WELL programme, which incorporates support, education and information on a wide range of health and well-being issues.

Specifically, Chair, given the prevalence of mental health issues in both the workplace and wider society, we have taken a proactive approach to promoting and supporting colleagues on mental health and have offered a comprehensive range of interventions, particularly this year. For example, our NICS one-year people plan, which was launched in June, commits NICS Departments to supporting and improving health and well-being. It includes a greater emphasis on preventative health and well-being interventions, with a strong focus on mental health.

In May this year, there was a NICS survey for our staff whose mental health has been impacted on as a result of bereavement. We had more than 2,000 responses from staff, and we subsequently implemented a range of initiatives in September this year. Those include one-to-one bereavement counselling services; group sessions that our community partners in Cruse Bereavement Support deliver; information and support on baby loss awareness in partnership with Sands; and various ongoing signposting and support events.

In March this year, NICS HR initiated a public-sector occupational health forum to develop a system-wide collaborative approach to support the transformation and development of occupational health services across the Northern Ireland public sector. That forum includes representatives from NICS, the Department of Finance, the Department of Health, health trusts, the Education Authority (EA) and the PSNI. Three task and finish groups have now been established to take that work forward.

From October this year, following a successful recruitment campaign, we have enhanced the capacity of our occupational health and well-being service with additional medical officers and new occupational health technician roles, with further recruitment of nursing staff to commence this year. If we compare our performance activities, we see that, last year, the waiting time for occupational health appointments was an average of 24 weeks but that, as of October this year, it is now five weeks, which is a 79% reduction.

Our focus for the coming year is on promoting a preventative approach to occupational health. In October this year, we established the NICS mental health forum with representatives from all Departments and trade unions, and monthly meetings are scheduled. The purpose of that forum is to share best practice and learning and to develop collaborative approaches across NICS in order to support our staff. We will agree a prioritised action plan across Departments to support that. A key piece of work will be a detailed analysis of mental health-related absence, and that will be led by NISRA and our medical officers who have a specialist interest in mental health. We are also looking across the public sector, and that will include the involvement of Health and Safety Executive (HSE) colleagues, who will be members of the forum.

The Committee also sought information specifically about support for staff with PTSD. All NICS staff, including staff who work in the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS), have access to the NICS employee assistance programme. The programme, which Inspire Workplaces delivers, includes access to a free 24-hour helpline, confidential counselling and a range of therapeutic support services. All NICS staff also have access to the NICS welfare support service. That service may include support for staff who are suffering from PTSD or other mental health conditions.

For prison-grade staff absence due to sickness, NIPS provides a range of additional interventions, including an embedded HR business partner team that offers advice on sickness absence procedures and referral to welfare and support services. NIPS gives additional support to prison officers through its arrangement with the Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust (PRRT), which provides services for staff who experience mental illness or who have sustained a physical injury. Such staff can be referred to it for counselling and/or physiotherapy. Those services are widely available and are used by numerous officers whether they are in work or absent due to sickness. NIPS provides a further layer of support for staff through the critical incident stress management (CISM) initiative, which provides an effective voluntary and confidential debriefing procedure to help to normalise the overwhelming physiological, psychological and emotional responses to minor, moderate and severe critical incidents.

With your permission, Chair, I will move on to recruitment issues, or do you want me to stop there?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It might be worth stopping there. I suggest that we ask questions on absence and then come back to talk a bit about recruitment — obviously, the issues are related but are fairly distinct — if members are content with that. Members, do indicate if you want to ask a question.

First, thank you very much. That was really fulsome, and we really appreciate your coming to give us evidence. Is it fair to say that we have a strikingly poor record — perhaps that is the wrong word — or that we are in a bad place with the level of long-term sick leave in the Northern Ireland Civil Service? Is that fair?

Ms Shannon: It is probably reflective of other public-sector organisations more generally, but yes. That is why, this year in particular, we have looked to put in place a proactive and sustained effort to address it.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You mentioned that the most recent NISRA data suggested an improvement, but the NISRA data that I looked at suggests that the average of 13·8 days off in 2023-24 was up on the previous year. Have I missed a more recent improvement?

Ms Shannon: It is in the data for April 2024 to June 2024, Chair.

Ms Forsythe: The comparable quarterly statistics for last year are worse.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is worse, though, this year. The 2023-24 number is worse than that of the previous year, I think.

Ms Shannon: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am looking at the NISRA data on NICS days that are lost to sickness absence. If you look at our obvious comparators, you see that we are significantly ahead of the Republic, but our figure is almost double that of the Scottish Government. It is striking that, in 2020, which was a COVID year, the figure for councils fell dramatically. I do not know why that was; perhaps there was a reporting issue that was to do with people being in the office less. Everyone dipped a bit in the COVID year, but there has been a stabilisation elsewhere and, in some cases, even a slight fall in the number of working days that were lost. In the Northern Ireland Civil Service, however, the number of days that were lost has just gone up and up. This is a simplistic question: why?

Ms Shannon: We have undertaken the work that we are trying to do this year in order to look at the reasons why. That work on the broader reasons — it will examine the composition of our workforce and the breakdown by age and gender — will look at the different reasons why that is the case. In Northern Ireland in particular and across society in general, there has been an increase in poor mental health and anxiety-related illnesses. Our waiting lists are also not comparable to those of other sectors.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Do you mean NHS waiting lists?

Ms Shannon: Yes. It is a multifaceted issue, which is why we have tried to come at it from a number of different angles. That involves working with our colleagues across Departments on the initiation of the mental health forum and looking at our public-sector colleagues more broadly across the health trusts and other organisations to see whether there are economies of scale or different pieces of work that we can do collectively to address the issues that we all face. We absolutely recognise that it is an issue, but we are committed to the initiatives that we started this year and plan to take forward to address that and, hopefully, reduce those numbers.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Mental health illness is a bigger driver of absence than physical sickness. Obviously, the two sometimes interact. Stress is the biggest reason. How is that recorded? What is the person required to tell their line manager in order for stress to be recorded? At what point is a doctor's note required?

Ms Shannon: It depends, because there could be a referral to occupational health. If someone is off, a doctor's note is required. There is a self-certification process for an absence for up to seven days, and, after that, GP certification is required. We have tried to standardise our processes in order to ensure that we can move in —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): At what point do they require GP certification?

Ms Shannon: After seven days, and there is a self-certification process before that. We want to be more preventative. We want to support our managers to ensure that they can identify the issues as early as possible so that, hopefully, our staff do not go off in the first place. Given the demographic of our workforce, if we know that a person is off because of bereavement and it is impacting on their mental health, we will look at what we can do to support them to come back to work more quickly.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am not suggesting that people are using the seven days vexatiously or skiving, but is it possible that there are people who might legitimately be very stressed out by such issues but know that they have to go to a GP after seven days, which might be a logistical hassle because they might not be able to get an appointment? Are there people who take six days off and go back for a few weeks before taking another six days off, which ultimately builds up more sick days, because they are not getting any kind of medical intervention, such as CBT, medication or something else, should they need one? Is that happening?

Ms Shannon: That pattern would trigger our HR processes that manage absence and give an overview of absence spells. We do not have any evidence to suggest that staff are doing that, but part of our HR role is to see whether patterns are emerging and, if so, we ask whether there are additional mechanisms that we can put in place to support staff. If we identify issues and potential abuse, it is also our role to recognise it and to support managers in that process.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The NISRA report — I do not know whether this is NISRA's classification or it links to how NICS HR records absence — uses the heading:

That concerns me slightly, because anxiety and stress are not necessarily psychiatric illnesses. We all experience anxiety and stress, which we all have to manage on a daily basis. How do we arrive at one broad category? Sometimes, not dealing with anxiety and stress can lead to acute psychiatric illness, but they are often completely distinct things and there is a problem with conflating them. I am interested in finding out how we differentiate between those things. I assume that NICS HR managers do that.

Dr David Mills (Department of Finance): I am not sure what specific classification NISRA uses.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): To be fair, I am reading from a NISRA document. That is a bit unfair, because you might not have it in front of you.

Dr Mills: One of the problems generally is certification, which is the data that I presume NISRA uses. Sometimes stress is written down, but it is only one of the problems or it is recorded as stress because the person does not particularly want to put down anxiety or depression. It is a very mixed picture. Similarly, yes, everybody gets anxious, but you can cross a line into where it becomes an illness. If people are certified as ill on that basis, they have crossed a line with the level of anxiety, and it becomes a diagnosis.

In my experience, regarding the figures for mental health, where an absence is classified as being work-related, quite a proportion of people may tell you, "This is not work-related, but there is a work-related component". Similarly, for quite a lot of people, the absence will be recorded as being work-related, but, when you talk to them, you find that a lot of other elements that are outside the workplace are involved. It is quite a mixed picture. There is, clearly, a percentage of people for whom, once you talk to them, you have no doubt that it is entirely related to their work. That applies in the Civil Service and everywhere else that I have been.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You may not have perfectly comparable historical data, but, going back a decade or two, can you give a broad view on whether there are markedly more people off for anxiety, stress and depression etc?

Dr Mills: The general pattern is that the proportion of sickness absence that is related to mental health has definitely increased. Anecdotally, I can say that, if I look back at my first five years in Civil Service occupational health since 2001, the majority of sickness absences would have been for musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions. Within 10 years, that had switched, and the majority of absences were to do with mental health conditions.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That is when someone sprained an ankle and could not make it into the office, or they suffered a break of some kind. The majority of sickness absence was because people had sprained an ankle or broken a leg and were not able to make it into the office. Now, the majority is stress or anxiety, or that range of stress up to —.

Dr Mills: I think that that reflects across quite a lot of other working environments.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Of course.

Dr Mills: If you look at Health and Social Care (HSC) figures, you will see that they are similar.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am straying into the next thing that we are going to talk about, which is vacancies. Is there an interaction between the high numbers of vacancies and where there is persistent long-term sick leave, both at a departmental level and by grade?

Ms Shannon: We do not have that information, but we could certainly look at it and provide you with an analysis. Staff report to us increased levels of stress in areas where there are significant vacancies. That is something —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): They feel as though they are doing multiple people's jobs, and they probably are.

Ms Forsythe: Thank you all for coming here today to speak to the subject. As has been reported, Civil Service absence cost us £44 million last year, and that figure is increasing. The level for the most recent quarter is down on the previous quarter, but it is up on the same quarter last year, so it looks like we will be looking at another increase. It is really significant. You talked about getting into the detail. I want to bring it back to the fact that it is about people. I am concerned. I was in the public sector when we moved to centralised HR. You provided information about the structures and the number of staff. There are some 500 staff in centralised HR. I wonder about the personalisation of the process. Are there enough HR staff in each Department to deal with people hands-on when they go off sick?

Ms Shannon: Importantly, for us, the role of the line manager is to support staff. They will probably be more generally aware of personal circumstances or other arrangements. We have tried to work with our line managers to upskill them as best we can. They are on the front line of ensuring that staff do not go off in the first place. We also have our business partners aligned to the Departments. Again, they have that local intelligence and work with line managers from a HR perspective. There are different layers in that, so I do not think that it is necessarily to do with having more HR staff in the Departments; it is about making sure that our line managers have the skills to spot the signs and refer people appropriately to us, particularly to occupational health teams, when it is needed.

One thing that we have tried to do is standardise and streamline our process so that all staff across all Departments are given the same level of service from us. One piece of work that we did initially was just slightly different and was dependent on the situation, and that was in our own team. We have tried to standardise that so that all Departments get the same level of service and all staff are managed in the same way. Key for us is supporting our line managers, who really do know those members of staff, in their time of need and to escalate them through HR where appropriate.

Ms Forsythe: On the same point, it is people whom we are dealing with, and I am concerned, because the Civil Service is so big and has a standardised approach. Is that, potentially, what is not working, given our increased sick leave? Do different Departments require different approaches? The Chair touched on this, but do you analyse levels of sickness absence alongside what is going on in the Departments? For example, David mentioned work-related stress and getting into the detail of that. Do you analyse, hand-in-hand with work-related stress, workplace bullying or complaints that come through?

Ms Shannon: We do, and we work closely with our business partners who are aligned with Departments in looking at hot spots. We correlate that information with whether there is an increase in complaints or dignity at work issues. We then bring in a wrap-around team, involving occupational health, our employee relations teams as well as our learning and development team, to work with teams on the ground. We have implemented and introduced that this year in order to look at those specific areas.

You are right: one size does not fit all. Anecdotally, we knew, with regard to absence and stress, about staff who were bereaved. That is why we asked them, "What are we not providing? What are the gaps? What should we provide?". That is why we linked in with partners in Cruse to develop bespoke sessions for staff. We had face-to-face sessions and online sessions. That was a direct result of asking our staff what they needed or what they felt we were not providing enough of. You are absolutely right. Standardisation and streamlining help us, but they are there to ensure that we can focus and tailor our intervention. We are saying and doing it in the same way, but we can tailor it depending on the needs of our staff.

Ms Forsythe: Say that I am working for a Department and having a lot of HR issues. I have put in a lot of complaints, there have been complaints from other members of staff about workplace bullying and I am off with work-related stress. When that comes through to the HR department and you look at it, what actually happens? You talked about wrap-around teams. There is a group of staff in a particular Department who are facing issues. What is the mechanism for them to get those dealt with? What happens?

Ms Shannon: As with any of those situations, we would first of all want more informal management of the situation. Our business partners are aligned with the Department, so they have local knowledge and understanding and are known to the Department. If we identify that there were a range of issues, which has happened on a couple of occasions, our business partners will go in and work with line managers to do a bit of a risk assessment or an assessment to ask, "Look, what are the needs?". We will look at the data that we have for absence levels, dignity at work issues, complaints or anything that has been raised, and we will then put an appropriate intervention in place. That could involve learning and development support for managers and specific interventions and support from occupational health or our welfare teams. We would use that as an opportunity to tailor an intervention that suits the needs of that Department to support all our staff, including the managers who are managing the situation. A formal HR process could come out of it, but our first approach is to manage and handle it informally and locally with the member of staff in question.

Ms Forsythe: Is that reported at a departmental level? You head up the HR team in the Department of Finance. My understanding, and correct me if I am wrong, is that you are picking the issues up and dealing with business partners and that all happens at the mid-level Civil Service grades. Is there a forum at Senior Civil Service level whereby you can go into the Department of Finance or the Department for the Economy, for example, and say, "Do you realise you've got a pocket of HR issues that is linked to sick leave?"? Is there a forum for that at Senior Civil Service level?

Ms Shannon: There is, on a number of levels. We meet regularly with Departments and bring with us some of the statistical information or data that we have. We are developing a number of dashboards that will help to do that in a one-stop shop. We can then go to Departments, and say, "Look, we know there's an issue" or, "Your level of disciplinary cases is going up", and we can drill down into that area, and that will help us to flag up issues.

We will do that at a departmental level and for departmental boards, and we will also present the information to the NICS board. The dashboards will use the evidence base to help us drive that work forward.

Ms Forsythe: Will you take the lead on holding the other Departments to account for that?

Ms Shannon: We will flag issues, work collectively with Departments and, yes, hold them to account to ensure that there is compliance with HR policy. I go back to your point that it is about ensuring that we come at it from a supportive perspective and therefore support our staff who, for whatever reason, find themselves in that situation. You are right: there is transparency to our working with other Departments, which is what we were specifically trying to achieve with the creation of the dashboards.

Ms Forsythe: As you say, there is a significant problem, and it is costing a lot of money. There are a lot of vacancies, and people are off sick as well. There is a common theme in the feedback. People come to me, in my capacity as an MLA, who are concerned about Civil Service-related queries and the complaints process. When did you last review the process by which Civil Service staff can make complaints?

Ms Shannon: There is an ongoing review of a range of HR policies. We can share the schedule for that review with the Committee. It is a continual review process. A number of our HR policies are due for review, so there is a significant programme of review planned. We can find the specific information for you.

Ms Forsythe: That is good. It is also good to see other legislation coming through, about which I have asked questions. For example, now that the new leave arrangements for miscarriage are in place, an element of female gynaecological leave will be taken out of the equation. Do you do any reviews of thematic sick leave in order to make recommendations to other Departments about where there may be a need for legislation because the leave in question is not genuine sick leave but something else?

Ms Shannon: We do. We continually review that. Baby loss is an example. We worked with partners in Sands to look at what help and support can be provided. We therefore continually look at the information, whether through surveys, by speaking to our staff, through the different forums in which our staff are involved or through the establishment of the mental health forum. It is about gathering as much information as we can to influence how we deliver our service.

Ms Forsythe: That is great.

You told the Chair that you will be able to provide the Committee with data on the connection between sick leave and vacancies. Can you also provide us with data on how sick leave and complaints from staff about workplace bullying go hand in hand?

Ms Shannon: We will endeavour to do that, if we can.

Ms Forsythe: Thank you.

Miss Brogan: Thanks for your briefing, folks. I have a couple of quick questions for you. First, I am not overly surprised by the number of staff absences as a result of mental health issues, stress and anxiety, although it is concerning. As the Chair said, pressures at work have increased over the years. It is almost a societal issue, but it needs to be focused on. What are you doing to address stress and improve mental health in the Civil Service?

Ms Shannon: I will bring in Debbie.

Ms Debbie Sherlock (Department of Finance): We have a range of measures that are specifically designed to support the mental health and well-being of all our staff. We take a multilayered approach. For example, on the learning and development side, we have an online platform on which staff can access training and development and different products that are not just for individuals to use for their mental well-being but for managers to use. The site includes training products for building resilience and dealing with stress, as well as tools for enabling managers to help their staff maintain their mental well-being and to support them when they return to work.

We also have our well-being programme, which is rolled out across the entire Civil Service. Again, that is an online platform that contains loads of information about physical and mental well-being. It supports people to stay in work and to stay healthy, and staff can also access it, if needs be, when they are off work We roll out a lot of programmes that focus on health and well-being. We hold roadshows. We now focus particularly on mental health-related issues such as building resilience, dealing with stress, dealing with stress at home and assisting staff with their financial well-being. We call in the services of the likes of Charity for Civil Servants, which can provide a lot of support for carers and people in financial difficulties. We also offer the employee assistance programme through Inspire. Staff, whether they are in work or not, can avail themselves of six counselling sessions and get some specific therapeutic interventions, also through Inspire. If you think about it in the round, a lot of products, information and activities are available to try to support our staff, whether they are in work or not, to maintain good mental health.

Miss Brogan: That all sounds very positive. What is the feedback from those who have used the programmes, and what is the uptake rate? Do you know?

Ms Sherlock: I did not mention it previously, but we also have welfare officers. They are in-house officers who make contact with staff if they need some help and advice either when they are in work or when they are off sick. That service achieves a consistently high satisfaction rate. Inspire gets good feedback. As for other events, such as a well-being roadshow, we would issue evaluations after they happen. All the programmes and services consistently get good feedback. We want to continue to provide services on which we get good feedback, but on occasions on which we perhaps do not get such good feedback, we look at the reasons for that. We want to offer services and products that are industry best practice, that we know will work and for which we have an evidence base to show that they work.

I do not have the uptake figures, but I can find out for you what the uptake rate is for Inspire services and with the welfare officers specifically.

Miss Brogan: That would be helpful. On the same point, how do you communicate to staff that those services are available? Very often, people do not know about them. Even for us, as MLAs, there are services available, including Inspire, that I did not know about until this week. There are counselling services for Members that I was not aware of, so how do you communicate services' availability to staff so that they become aware of them?

Ms Sherlock: We do that pretty consistently and try to do so in different ways. Every Department has an intranet site that is specific to it. We take lots of opportunities to highlight mental health and mental well-being. Take, for example, World Mental Health Day in October. When anything such as that is approaching in the calendar, we will issue an article to staff. In that article, as well as dealing with the particular subject matter, whatever it may be, we will always signpost staff to all the available sources of information.

Likewise, when members of the WELL programme team, or anybody else, go out and do a roadshow, they will always bring leaflets with them and mention the general package of information that is available to staff. We therefore take lots of such opportunities not just to focus on one activity or product but to show the breadth of what we have out there for staff. In the past couple of weeks, we have introduced a line manager brochure, which pulls together lots of different things on signposting, information, policies and forms. It contains as much information as it can for line mangers, but for new line managers in particular, not just on how to have good mental health, how to contact sources of support and how to manage sickness absence but on all the other elements of how to be a good line manager. All of that will help reduce stress at work.

Miss Brogan: Thanks for that. It all sounds very positive. Have you scoped out or done any research on the potential benefits of a four-day working week for staff and how it might reduce sickness levels or on how working from home has perhaps reduced sickness levels, even for physical ailments. When people are working from home, that reduces the chance of viruses and bugs spreading through the office.

Ms Shannon: Not specifically on the four-day working week, but there have been a lot of discussions about it. As I said, we have not, but I recognise that it is definitely something that other industries are looking at. We will continue to look at the issue and do research, particularly on the impact of hybrid working and of staff working from home. From looking at our absence figures, we can see that there is a move away from MSK-related absences to mental health- and stress-related absences, so even hybrid working may not necessarily be having an impact on the latter. It is definitely something to consider, so we will continue to analyse any potential benefits as best we can.

Miss Brogan: That is fair enough. Finally, you mentioned the public-sector occupational health forum in your opening remarks, Catherine. Will you give me a bit more information on that, please?

Ms Shannon: We recognise the issues, particularly from an occupational health perspective. We mentioned the cost of absence to the NICS, but it is more than £100 million a year for the entire public sector. One of the things that we looked at was at how we can work collectively as a set of public-sector organisations to see how we can learn from one another and share resource. To go back to the recruitment piece, as occupational health professionals, we are all fishing in the same pond. We, our medical staff, our nursing staff, the trusts, the EA and the PSNI are all looking to recruit from or utilise the same small and ever-dwindling cohort of staff. We took that work forward from a NICS HR perspective, and we did it really just to gather together our colleagues from all those organisations to see how we can work together.

We have held a number of workshops across all those sectors and established three task and finish groups. One looks at occupational health as a career and at how best we can attract people into the occupational health service. It is looking at commissioning places and doing things jointly, as opposed to organisations all doing them separately. The second task and finish group looks at the training and support that is there for our staff. For example, some of our organisations use occupational health technicians, while some do not. Some of public-sector organisations have psychology services, while some do not. Again, that group is looking at how we can learn from one another and potentially share some of those really key resources for our staff. The third task and finish group is looking at service improvement. If a public-sector organisation is doing something really well, from which we can all learn, let us take the opportunity to do so. The three groups will then report back to us as a collective forum.

There is no lead as such. We are working collaboratively so that we can look across each of the three areas in order to have that impact and provide support for all our staff across the public sector. That is where we have got to. On the medical side, as David would tell you, there is an ever-dwindling number of occupational health medical staff. It is reaching the point at which we need to work collectively together to try to address that.

Miss Brogan: There is evidently a lot of work going on there. Thank you. I appreciate that update.

Dr Aiken: Thank you for your evidence so far. I made a declaration of interest earlier, but I will re-emphasise it now. My questions are going to be specifically about the Northern Ireland Prison Service and the implications for mental health and issues to do with stress. Can you tell me what percentage of cases of stress and long-term stress are in the Northern Ireland Prison Service, please? That is my first question.

Ms Shannon: I do not have that figure at hand, Steve.

Dr Aiken: Can you provide us with it, please?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is in the pack, Steve. The figure is in there, if you want it for the purpose of your next question.

Dr Aiken: It is important, because the levels of stress in the Northern Ireland Prison Service are significant and the issues behind it have been highlighted for a considerable period. I welcome that, in the brief, we saw that there have been improvements made to the process. My specific question, however, is about previous members of the Northern Ireland Prison Service who did not have those support facilities. Moreover, in the past, many members of the Northern Ireland Prison Service felt that the support that they were given, particularly from Northern Ireland Civil Service HR, was, to say the least, suboptimal. Are there any plans to review the process? What can we do to make sure that those people who felt that they had been disadvantaged are being dealt with appropriately and given the level of support that they need?

Ms Shannon: Thank you, Steven. We met you previously to discuss that. There is always an opportunity for learning in order for us to move forward. We are not, however, in a position to review the cases of staff who have left, but there is definitely an opportunity for learning. We and our occupational health team have been out in prisons, looking at where staff are working and how best we can address their needs. Across a number of areas, we are making sure that we provide, where necessary and depending on the working environment, a bespoke arrangement. David, do you want to add anything?

Dr Mills: I am not sure that I have anything to add. There are well-established services for staff in the Prison Service. Staff need to be referred to us in the occupational health service, and the likely turnaround time for that happening is considerably better than it was last year.

Dr Aiken: Does the Northern Ireland Civil Service, particularly NICS HR, recognise the fact that there has been a significant problem with leadership, management and staff support in the Northern Ireland Prison Service, leaving its staff feeling, as I judge to be the case from the large number of people who have contacted me, as though they have been left out and sidelined and that, until recently — I hope that the situation has changed — nobody in Northern Ireland Civil Service HR felt for them in their positions?

Ms Shannon: I know that that is what people have fed back to you, but I hope that the situation is improving, Steven. We have listened to you on a number of occasions. We have met you to hear your views and act on them. We are continually looking to improve. We are more than happy to consider anything that you want to feed back to us separately. As I said, however, we have a bedded-in team in NIPS and are continually looking at how we can review our service. As I said, some of our staff speak with NIPS staff on the ground so that we can get a clear sense of their needs.

Yes, there is recognition that we will always want to improve. Can we improve? Absolutely. We want to do that and are committed to doing so.

Dr Aiken: With your indulgence, Chair, my final comment in representing my constituents and the people who have come to me is that they have always felt that nobody has had much concern for the Northern Ireland Prison Service. In other parts of the United Kingdom, prison service staff are seen as being part of a separate service and are given support, whereas, in Northern Ireland, they have been considered civil servants but have never been given due recognition for their service and the strenuous circumstances in which they work. I want to make sure that that is on the record and that you recognise that they have been under severe stress, have experienced a significant number of difficulties and do not feel that they have been properly represented by Northern Ireland Civil Service HR. We all need to work together to address that.

Ms Shannon: Absolutely. We are committed to working with you on that, Steve. We have said that to you before, and our commitment remains.

Dr Aiken: Thank you, team.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Are prison officers not civil servants in England and Wales? Are they Crown servants there? I am not exactly sure whether their situation is totally different. In any case, you put that on the record, Steve.

Mr Carroll: I have a pretty elementary question about the breakdown of industrial posts. There are Department for Communities industrial posts, Department for Infrastructure industrial posts and NICS industrial. What types of jobs are they?

Ms Shannon: Are you asking for a list of the specific types of jobs? They include road workers.

Ms Sherlock: They also include forest workers and people who work for DFI Rivers.

Mr Carroll: Are they all manual jobs in the NICS?

Ms Shannon: Yes.

Mr Carroll: I note that their options levels tend to be higher than those for people in non-industrial jobs.

I will follow on from the Chair's point about there being high levels of stress, anxiety, depression and other related illnesses among those who are off work. The numbers are quite stark, but, in some ways, that is not surprising, given the scale of the mental health crisis here. Somebody may have touched on this earlier, but could the numbers off work be related to people not being able to access a mental health practitioner — a counsellor or a psychiatrist — and therefore becoming sick and their mental health deteriorating? Are the numbers connected to people doing two or sometimes three jobs? There were redundancies in the Civil Service 10 years ago, I think, and I hear a lot of reports of civil servants now doing the jobs of two or three people. That would make anybody stressed. Has either of those issues appeared on your radar through the feedback provided?

Ms Shannon: It is probably both, Gerry. There is a variety of reasons that they might find themselves in that situation. That is why it is important for us to look at taking a multifaceted approach to supporting our staff. We have control over only our ability to refer our staff internally or to provide them with a service that we need to provide them with from an occupational health perspective. In my briefing, I referred to the measures that we have put in place to enhance our occupational health service's capacity We have reduced our waiting times by about 75% by getting our staff in. Our priority is to ensure that we are providing the necessary service and getting the necessary intervention for our staff as quickly as possible, because, as we know, the earlier that we provide that intervention, the less likelihood that there is of members of staff being off for a sustained period. As part of the future development of our service, we are looking at providing psychological support. We are looking at developing our service and increasing our capacity in a number of areas. You are right, however. There are a number of reasons that our staff are absent, and mental health-, stress- and anxiety-related issues are among them. It is about our ensuring that we have different interventions in order to try to address those absences.

Mr Carroll: Thanks. I am keen to see the figures that Nicola asked for. I hope that every staff member knows about the internal services that are available, but, presumably, they do not, and, for want of a better way of putting it, there is a missing group of people.

I have one final question. The scale of illness and absence in the public sector compared with that in the private sector is often referred to. For many reasons, however, that is not comparing like with like, especially because, generally, there tend to be fewer protections for workers in the private sector and stronger union representation in the public sector. I therefore do not think that we are comparing like with like, and, moreover, it is not fair to do so. It should not be a race to the bottom and a case of saying, "A private-sector worker takes off x number of days on average, so we should aim for that number from a public-sector worker". That is a general observation. I do not know whether you want to comment on that, but I do not think that we are comparing like with like when that comparison is introduced into the conversation.

Ms Shannon: Gerry, I agree. When carrying out a comparative exercise, we need to ensure that we are comparing like with like. Notwithstanding that, we recognise that we have an issue with staff absence levels, regardless of the other comparators. There could be some really good things happening in other sectors — including the private sector — from which we could learn in order to support our staff. You are right: our concentration is not necessarily on how we compare with others, albeit that is important, but on what we are doing to address the issues that we face as a result of staff absences and on what we are doing to support our staff.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I completely agree that it definitely should not be a race to the bottom. I would like to see more unionisation in the private sector, particularly compared with what there is at present. Trade unions would want to see less absence, because that would mean a more content workforce. I do not think that the Northern Ireland Civil Service, or any of us, should be relaxed about the level of absence, whatever the reasons for it, and there are multiple reasons, because if our civil servants are so stressed and anxious that we lost £44 million last year as a result, that is not a good thing.

That brings me on to the question of vacancies. I have a couple of questions, but if any members have questions on vacancies and where we are at with them, I will give them the opportunity to ask them, because the questions on sickness have been answered thoroughly. Some £44 million was lost last year because of absence. That figure is the crystallisation of lost working days. Do we know how much is unintentionally being saved from carrying all those absences?

Ms Shannon: Not off the top of my head, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You touched earlier on how NICS HR would accept that a contributory factor to the high levels of work-related stress, anxiety and absence is the high levels of unfilled vacancies. That is what I am getting at.

Ms Shannon: It is one of the contributory factors, yes. That is something that our staff are feeding back to us.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): A number of years ago, the NI Audit Office (NIAO) did a capacity and capability review that the Public Accounts Committee subsequently looked at. I should declare an interest, as I was on the PAC at that time. The review stated that there was a need for transformation. There were questions raised about the age profile of the Civil Service, given the very high number of staff over the age of 55. It is not that that is old these days, but, when you are a civil servant over that age, it means that you are likely to retire in the not-too-distant future. Multiple other points were raised, one of which was that the voluntary exit scheme (VES) that was operated in the past decade was not — I say this diplomatically — a raging success. Do you agree with that?

Ms Shannon: I was not —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am not asking whether you were culpable. I know that you were not in your current role then, but the general impression is that the voluntary exit scheme made things worse. It got a lot of people out of the system. Civil servants left, but their leaving did not save any money. It was therefore kind of the worst of both worlds, because you lost headcount and talent but did not save much money. In fact, I think that I am right in saying that it ended up costing money, although I am happy to be corrected on that.

Ms Sherlock: Perhaps I can answer that. I was the project manager for the voluntary exit scheme —

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am glad that you are here, then. [Laughter.]

Ms Sherlock: — just to be up front.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You can disabuse me of all my incorrect statements.

Ms Sherlock: If memory serves me right, we have saved around £90 million on the annual pay bill every year as a result of around 3,000 people leaving the Civil Service. I think that the upfront cost was around £96 million in compensation payments, but then, year on year, we should have saved around £90 million. We therefore did save money. I suggest that the whole reason for the voluntary exit scheme in the first place was not to reposition our workforce. Rather, it was a blunt tool that was used to help us live within our budgets, given the financial position that we were in at the time.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am glad that you have clarified that for me, Debbie, and fair play to you for doing so, but it is certainly still the case that the NIAO's judgement is that a significant proportion of the people who left have been recycled back into the Civil Service, or back into the public service generally, in contractor roles. I think that that is fair to say. A significant number of them —.

Ms Sherlock: I do not have any information on that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I cannot quote from the NIAO report, because I do not have it in front of me. I am sure that I have read that elsewhere, but I do not want to be accused of making up statistics, so I will not pursue that line. The voluntary exit scheme is one of the things that has driven the high level of vacancies structurally, however. We had the voluntary exit scheme, and a significant number — 3,000 or 4,000 people — left. We have never quite caught back up since then. Is that fair to say?

Ms Shannon: I suppose that, over the past number of years, because of the budgetary situation in which we have found ourselves, we have not been in a position to fill vacancies. Even in the two years since I have been in post, we have undertaken a number of different re-prioritisation exercises. Over the past year, we have specifically concentrated our efforts on key posts, such as those in the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS) to do with the Windsor framework. Those are specifically professional and technical posts, so we have not been filling our general service posts. The Budget situation has therefore been driving a slowing down of recruitment in some areas. That is exacerbating the situation with temporary promotion (TP) levels and Departments' ability to fill some of the vacancies permanently. Departments need a budget in order to fill their vacancies. It is therefore the case that there has been a continual process of managing budgets, looking at vacancies and delivering services. Departments are in a constant state of struggle and flux. A raft of reasons has contributed to the vacancy situation, but, from our perspective, over the past couple of years, there have been a number of pauses to recruitment and a specific targeting of priority vacancies. We have been working with Departments to identify what those are. Prioritising the filling of some vacancies, along with a slowing down of recruitment because of budgetary challenges, has had an impact on other Departments, as they have not been able to fill some of their vacant posts.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. I will bring in other members now, starting with Eóin Tennyson. You did not get in on the issue of sickness absence, Eóin.

Mr Tennyson: My question is on sickness absence, if that is all right, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That is fine, yes.

Mr Tennyson: It follows on from the Deputy Chair's questions on self-certification for absence. Apologies if you have covered this already, Catherine, but what is the process for self-certification? Is it done by email?

Ms Shannon: There is a specific document. It is completed by a member of staff and submitted to their line manager with the reasons why they are absent.

Mr Tennyson: OK, so it goes directly to their line manager. Is that a digital process?

Ms Shannon: It can be emailed or, if staff do not have access to that, it can be printed off and posted in — whichever way staff can do it.

Mr Tennyson: OK. I just wanted clarity on that for my own understanding. Thank you.

Ms Forsythe: When we see budget reports coming through, vacancy levels are always cited as a saving. Is there a process by which HR reviews how long a vacancy has existed, whether there is still a role there or the Department has re-profiled it, or whether we are just declaring a saving arrear for a role that is being compensated for by something else?

Ms Shannon: Departments manage their vacancies, Diane, so we recognise a vacancy when it comes through to NICS HR for us to run a competition to fill it. We do not have sight of vacancies within Departments, because, as you say, they may not want to fill vacancies for a variety of reasons. They could be re-profiling or restructuring, or they might just not have the budget to fill those vacancies. We do not hold that information centrally, so the vacancies that we classify as vacancies are the ones where we are actually running competitions for Departments. Departments will have different rationales for the number of vacancies that they have and the reasons why they have those vacancies.

Ms Forsythe: It sits more in the organisational departmental role rather than your central role.

Ms Shannon: In Departments, yes.

Ms Forsythe: That is grand. What are the processes and rules around temporary promotions across the Civil Service?

Ms Shannon: Departments put temporary promotions in place for a variety of reasons. By their very nature, they should be temporary. It could be to fill a role or undertake a special project that is time-bound due to maternity leave, sickness absence or just because the Department does not have the budget to fill the role permanently. The process is then managed within Departments. Whether it is an expression of interest or whatever, it is conducted in line with what we expect with regard to HR procedures and the merit principle.

Ms Forsythe: If, for example, there are vacancies sitting in a Department, who makes the decision to go straight to temporary promotion rather than to external recruitment?

Ms Shannon: The Department makes that assessment.

Ms Forsythe: Based on what? What are the rules or guidance?

Ms Shannon: It is based on the reason why the vacancy has arisen in the first place. It is for the Department to assess whether there is affordability, it needs to fill a short-term position or there is a special project. Departments will assess whether they want to fill positions temporarily.

Ms Forsythe: Is it good HR practice to decide to go for temporary promotion rather than open recruitment? Surely, if you go with open recruitment, you get the best internal or external candidate, because staff internally can go for it?

Ms Sherlock: I suppose that you would not want to go to open recruitment because, generally, we recruit on a permanent basis. The reason for a temporary promotion to be in place should be to fill a substantive vacancy — a permanent vacancy — temporarily: for example, when somebody is off on long-term sick or maternity leave, with the expectation that the post will be filled permanently in due course. The temporary promotion plugs that gap.

Ms Forsythe: What is the guidance on a period's being temporary? Is it less than a year? Is there a defined period?

Ms Shannon: Our expectation is, and good practice suggests, that it is up to a year, but, in exceptional circumstances, that may be increased. We have been providing Departments with an update on the number of TPs across all Departments and the length of time that those have been in place. Our position is very much that they should be temporary, but, for whatever reason, in exceptional circumstances, Departments may extend them. Again, if there is a permanent post and there is funding for it to be filled permanently, we expect that it would come through to us for a competition.

Ms Forsythe: What sort of numbers do you have across the board of temporary promotions that have lasted for more than a year?

Ms Shannon: Across NICS at the end of September there were 2,792 temporary promotions. I can share that breakdown with —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): More than 10% of the entire Civil Service?

Ms Shannon: Yes.

Ms Forsythe: That is the total number of temporary promotions, not how many are over a year.

Ms Shannon: There are 683 between one and two years, 530 between two and four years, and 177 over four years.

Ms Forsythe: Do you do a quantification of the additional cost to the Civil Service of temporary promotions?

Ms Shannon: We could. That would be weighed up against the purpose of the temporary promotion in the first place. That would be reviewing, for example, those over one year. From our HR Connect perspective, and on the system, managers log a variety of reasons why a post was filled on a temporary basis, anything from maternity leave, sick leave, a special exercise or a vacant post. If there is a temporary promotion to a management position, that sometimes leads to other temporary promotions as backfill. There is a variety of reasons why Departments put a temporary arrangement in place.

Ms Forsythe: Does the review management interception on that then fall to yourselves in HR? For example, would you be feeding back to them to flag a really long temporary promotion? Is there a point at which you ask them to go to open recruitment? There are substantive, well-paid Civil Service posts sitting under temporary promotion for a long time, and it is blocking people from the outside getting into the Civil Service at that grade.

Ms Shannon: We will share information on the temporary promotions and their numbers on the dashboards. It is for us to flag that up, but, again, it is for Departments to assess the reasons why those individuals are in those temporarily promoted positions for longer than a year. If there is an exercise to be run on a permanent basis, it would be at that point. However, sick leave or maternity leave will be temporary because that individual will be coming back, so it would be for Departments to make that assessment.

Ms Forsythe: I read somewhere this week — it may have been in the press — that somebody was on temporary promotion for something like 18 or 19 years.

The Committee Clerk: Nineteen and a half.

Ms Forsythe: Is that correct?

Ms Shannon: That is correct, but that has now been resolved.

Ms Forsythe: OK, that is grand, because those stories are not helpful to anyone. It is not really the perception that we want to see of our Northern Ireland Civil Service out there. We want to see open and transparent recruitment and getting the right people in the jobs.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is not good either for the people who are temporarily promoted. I remember being temporarily promoted for a while. If you are trying to get a mortgage, take out a loan or you have some other reason for having to certify your income or your job, that becomes a problem. I presume that all the statistics that we have been looking at in relation to absences relate to substantive grades. If someone is reporting absence, are we getting that bias? All the stats on how many people are on long-term sick leave at an administrative grade or a grade 7 or whatever — are we getting that by substantive grade? If someone is on long-term sick for six months, do they show up in the statistics as their substantive grade or as their temporarily promoted grade?

Ms Shannon: I will double-check for you, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That would be useful to know. Given that getting on for 15% of the entire Northern Ireland Civil Service is on temporary promotion, that would be statistically relevant. Also, there is surely a bit of statistical analysis looking at whether people on temporary promotion are more likely to be on long-term sick. That would be a double problem. If somebody is temporarily promoted and on long-term sick, I imagine, that is a complete handling in terms of management because they might have responsibilities that are not being seen to. I will bring you in in a second, Paul Frew. It will never be zero, but is there a target or strategy for radically reducing within, say, two years, or by 2030, the number of temporary promotions?

Ms Shannon: It has been well-rehearsed this week that we made a commitment that we would continue to do that, but there are so many contributing factors. If we are not filling vacancies because we do not have the budget to do that, that is having the effect of maintaining and sustaining some of those temporary promotions.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We know that there is going to be a draft one-year Budget by the end of this year. We know that the Executive have the opportunity to produce a multi-year Budget next spring. Would it be a good action for the Department to say, "We now need to get a grip on this" or, "We need to have hard, cold, blunt look at these temporary promotions"? I just wonder whether that is being planned for, given that there will be a multi-year Budget and people will know what their limits are, so they can say, "Well, look, let us reconcile this. Let us be honest about what we can and cannot do".

Ms Shannon: There have been recent discussions with Departments about that. Again, it is about collective responsibility because Departments and all of us work together. We can very much flag and support that and do what we can do on sickness absence, for example. If that is the reason why there is a temporary promotion, the measures that we are putting in place to manage sickness absence will alleviate that. We have levers, I suppose.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You could set a target. The permanent secretary or the Finance Minister could write to accounting officers in Departments and say, "You have your budget. By next spring, hopefully, we will be closer to getting multi-year Budgets out to 2028" — or will it be 2027?

The Committee Clerk: Two years at first, and longer after that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): At that point, theoretically, the Minister or the permanent secretary could write to accounting officers — permanent secretaries or HR directors in other Departments — and say, "You will have a multi-year budget. What is your plan for getting your number down?". The Department for Communities, for example, has a particularly high level. Writing to the Minister or the accounting officer — that is a power; that could happen — and saying, "Here is your target" —.

Ms Shannon: The individual accounting officers have responsibility for managing that in their Departments. Our role is to ensure that any contributory factors that add to the increase in temporary promotions are managed. That is the lever that the Department of Finance has to support that piece, which will help Departments to drive down temporary promotions.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): There is nothing to prevent it from being a NICS HR policy to bring down the number of temporary promotions, is there? There is no legal prohibition on you guys setting a target, even if the target is not in law, or you do not have —.

Ms Shannon: I am not sure that we could set a target. From a policy perspective, we can double-check that for you. The accounting officer has responsibility for that, but our role is to do with any factors that add to that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): On balance, it feels a bit like there is no — what is the point of having an NICS HR central function if it cannot focus energy and drive performance and outcomes? It feels as though we have a huge structural problem — more than 10% of the entire Civil Service is on temporary promotion — and, if there is no real way of driving towards a specific outcome, that feels like a problem, to be honest. How does it ever get solved if it is, "We just wait and see what the permanent secretaries do"? I will leave that with you.

Mr Frew: You must be content with the level of temporary promotion.

Ms Shannon: No. We are not content because, as we said, it is not an ideal situation. Temporary promotions are useful to cover short-term arrangements for whatever reason, but we are not necessarily content with it, which is why we are looking at any way in which we can address it. The temporary promotions that are filling vacant posts are being driven by the budgetary situation.

Mr Frew: I agree with the Chair that a goal should be set to reduce the level, but there should also be an understanding about an acceptable level, and that is my next question. What level is acceptable?

Ms Shannon: I do not know whether there is a straightforward answer to that. The level that is acceptable is what covers any special exercises or maternity leaves, for example, that temporary promotions are designed to cover. I cannot put a number on it, but I suppose it is where we go over and above that, where we have levers to make a difference to or a dent in temporary promotions, that I have concerns. I recognise that the level of temporary promotions is not where it should be, but there are a lot of contributory factors that we can try to do something about.

Mr Frew: If we were to get to a point where we knew what an acceptable level was, we could probably all be content with that, because temporary promotion brings flexibility. It concerns me that we do not know what that level should be. I think that there is a job of work to be done to drive temporary promotions and vacancies down to acceptable levels, but that will not be achieved if we do not know what acceptable levels look like. I will leave it there.

I looked at table 2 in your paper and thought, "My goodness, the DUP Minister is making a real difference here because he has increased vacancies by 1,051 in the one year in the Department for Communities". I then realised that, no, those are just new jobs. At the minute, we have 3,735 vacancies. Last year, we had 1,951. That is an increase of 1,784, just to place that on the record. Do we have a breakdown of new jobs? I do not class new jobs as vacancies. That figure is probably unfair to the Civil Service with regard to vacancies. I can clearly see that, in the Department for Communities, a lot of this is, if you like, subcontracted from the Department for Work and Pensions, and it will have said, "We need 500 new posts based in Ballymena or Belfast or wherever", and that is how you are getting that figure. Is there a breakdown between genuine vacancies and new jobs created?

Ms Shannon: I am sure that we can look into that for you. There has been significant recruitment this year in Communities because of the DWP contract and the move to substantive staff as opposed to agency-based staff as well. We can certainly look to see whether we can provide you with a more detailed analysis.

Mr Frew: Yes. That is important, because the headline there is that there are nearly 4,000 vacancies in the Civil Service, and that is not correct, because a lot of that is new jobs that have not been filled yet. There are issues there about speediness of recruitment, which is a different issue. The one that is in-house is DAERA and the number of posts that it has created to implement the Windsor framework. Who makes the decision as to how many jobs are required?

Ms Shannon: It will be for the accounting officer and the senior leadership team in DAERA.

Mr Frew: Right, OK. Each accounting officer will be best placed to know how many jobs they need for their function.

Ms Shannon: Yes.

Mr Frew: Does the Department of Finance not have any say in that other than with regard to budgets?

Ms Shannon: The allocation of budget will have a direct impact on the decisions that accounting officers make, I suppose.

Mr Frew: When you have a temporary promotion, where is the vacancy there? Is the vacancy at the promoted post or at the post where the person has risen up from?

Ms Shannon: It is more than likely to be at the post that the person is temporarily promoted into.

Mr Frew: That is where the vacancy is.

Ms Shannon: Yes.

Mr Frew: If I were to look at a line graph of vacancies and also temporary promotions, would I see a correlation?

Ms Shannon: Again, we have 1,288 staff temporarily promoted into areas where they are basically temporarily promoted into a vacant post, so yes.

Mr Frew: If you tackle the temporary promotion piece, genuine vacancies will come down, which solves both problems.

Ms Shannon: Yes, but I suppose that Departments need the budget to enable them to commit to filling those permanent long-term vacancies. That is the dilemma, I suppose.

Mr Frew: I will leave it there, Chair. Are we going to go on to recruitment?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I think that we are on that now, so if you want to ask about that, go ahead.

Mr Frew: On the electronic interview process, for want of a better phrase, we have received complaints about the process of remote interviews. A vast number of people were able to be interviewed in a relatively short time, which is a really good thing, but many people were discontent or complained about the process. Given the speed and given the number of people who you were able to interview, it is bound to have saved a lot of money. First, how much money did it save? Secondly, given that you have saved money and time, is there any scope for an appeals process?

Ms Shannon: There is an appeals process during that, Paul. Any candidate who wrote to HR Connect during the open window when folk were able to complete their interviews could highlight at that stage that they were encountering issues, and that was then considered on a case-by-case basis. Once the interview window closed, the appeals process was not open to them. The only subsequent avenue that they will have had for making a complaint was through the normal complaints process. About 210 individuals did complain through that route for a variety of reasons. I do not have information on the cost savings, but I can certainly look to see whether we can help to quantify that. The process normally takes about 12 to 16 weeks, whereas that was able to be done within that four-week window. It was a different way of looking at new technology and trying to speed up the recruitment process.

Mr Frew: I actually support the concept. I think that it is a really good idea, because you can interview more people, albeit remotely. The time that is saved on this is, to me, incredible. I like the concept. It is about making sure that it is robust enough so that nobody is treated unfairly.

Ms Shannon: Depending on people's circumstances, they can undertake it at their leisure, I suppose. As I said before, we want to learn from all the new initiatives that were taken forward, particularly the pre-recorded interview. We have reviewed that, and we have looked at the outcomes. We involved our central trade union colleagues in providing us with feedback. They worked with us through a mock interview process, and we asked for their feedback, which they provided, so we enhanced certain aspects of the guidance. The result was that there were 210 complaints in phase 1, but, in phase 2, the proportion of candidates who said that they experienced technical issues decreased from 13% to about 4%. We absolutely want to use new technology and new ways of doing things, but we also want to learn from that and learn from the feedback that we are receiving and from any complaints.

Mr Frew: Is using this technology now the routine recruitment process, or are some Departments quicker than others in moving over to it?

Ms Shannon: It was specifically used for administrative officer posts, and we want to make sure that the new technologies and approaches are not one-size-fits-all. We used that for DFC colleagues, and we have recently gone out for the broader administrative officer competition for NICS using the same technology. We have had, I think, up to 10,000 applicants for that, and we are in the process of rolling that out with the enhanced guidance and with the enhanced support. We will use it for that grade of staff, but it may not necessarily be appropriate for others. Again, we will continually look at different ways of doing things and review them and seek feedback as we move along, listening to complaints.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The technology provider is Fujitsu. Am I right?

Ms Shannon: No, that was the platform that hosted it, but it was not the provider of the software.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Hosted it in what sense? It did not provide the software platform. What did it provide?

Ms Shannon: It provided the link for candidates. As part of the recruitment process, it emails you a link, you click on the link and it goes into the separate software provider.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): So Fujitsu did not provide the software on which candidates did the interview, but it emailed them the link.

Ms Shannon: It manages the logistics of that process for HR Connect, so yes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is Fujitsu that provides HR Connect. So that we are clear, where is that contract at the minute? Is it up for renewal? Has it been renewed with Fujitsu?

Ms Shannon: We are in the process of procurement for our new systems replacements. That process is ongoing.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): For HR Connect?

Ms Shannon: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): So that I understand, Fujitsu is the main technology supplier partner for HR Connect?

Ms Shannon: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): For how long has it been?

Ms Shannon: Since 2007 or so.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): When is that contract due to run out?

Ms Sherlock: I think that it is 2026.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Is Integr8 supposed to take over at that point?

Ms Shannon: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I know that there is a question about who is bidding to do the Integr8 service, but, currently, to be clear, Fujitsu is contracted to be the technology platform for NICS HR Connect until spring 2026.

Ms Shannon: Until 2026 or 2027. Again, it is —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. When was that renewed?

Ms Shannon: It was renewed last year.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Was it renewed after an open competitive tender?

Ms Shannon: It was an extension to the current contract.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. Was the decision made to simply roll it over because that was more straightforward, or was there any discussion about a competitive tender?

Ms Shannon: We are in the process of that in terms of —

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Integr8?

Ms Shannon: — the broader systems replacement. We are in the midst of that process.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): If it was renewed in, whenever it was, last year or three or four years ago —.

Ms Shannon: I will confirm the exact —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It would be helpful to know whether a specific decision was made. It would be helpful to have clarity on whether the decision was made just to roll over the Fujitsu contract until a full procurement for Integr8 because it was easier and quicker that way — because that was post Horizon, for example — or whether there was any discussion about migrating it in the meantime. It would be helpful to understand that.

Ms Shannon: We can certainly get you a response to that, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK.

Ms Shannon: The extension to the contract was normal.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am aware that contracts are regularly extended in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, but that does not mean that we should not ask about the context in which they are extended.

Ms Shannon: We can get you a response to that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That would be helpful, just to understand the decision points around that and the timing. There are a few other bits that we probably — I have now forgotten some of them, but there are a few bits. One of them is — we will get back to you on them. No other members have indicated that they wish to ask a question. Thank you very much for answering a whole range of questions. Thank you, Debbie, for sharing your experience of the voluntary exit scheme.

Ms Sherlock: You are welcome.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You now have the opportunity to voluntarily exit this Committee. [Laughter.]

You can stay if you want and listen to the rest of it, but you have probably had enough. There are several things that we need to follow up on. There are, I think, persistent concerns — I appreciate that there are good intentions there — around long-term absences and the high levels of unfilled vacancies. The Committee will continue to look at that, and we hope to be able to support you. Obviously, however, we will want to see some positive momentum and clarity of purpose in that direction. I hope that when we talk to you next, we can talk about some of that. Thank you very much in the meantime.

Ms Shannon: Thank you.