Practices: Each year Blyth Valley hosts its own equivalent of the Oscars. Categories include team of the year, personality of the year and an innovation award.

The communications team makes light-hearted films introducing the contenders in each category. On the awards night, all the winners and runners-up receive an engraved trophy. The council has 500 employees, and rewarding them in this way could be one reason why 200 of them have worked there for over 15 years.

Managers are encouraged to praise individuals whose performance is outstanding and those who develop new ideas. Senior managers make an effort to involve all employees in the decision-making process. The chief executive, Geoff Paul, operates an “open door” policy and receives direct feedback from the regular staff forum. The council is currently beginning to pilot 360 degree feedback, giving staff a chance to comment on the performance of the council’s management team.

A new appraisal process for staff been designed to be a positive experience, with a strong emphasis on personal development. There is a special learning centre for employees without access to a computer, and feedback to human resources has shown that this is a very user-friendly way of offering training in areas such as equality and diversity, health and safety and personal development.

An employee assistance programme is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for staff and for family and friends living in the same house. It offers confidential advice and information on all types of problems — not necessarily work-related — and can help to resolve them.

Pay and benefits: Job sharing, compressed hours, reduced hours, flexi time and staggered hours are on offer to employees through an extensive flexible working policy. If a manager says that an employee should not be able to work flexibly for operational reasons, the chief executive personally becomes involved and challenges the reasons for this decision.

The vast majority of staff earn between £15,000 and £25,000 a year, while only one has a salary above £100,000. Male staff outnumber female staff, and the average age of employees is 43.

This year, the council won gold in the Northumberland NHS Healthy Business Awards. It had to demonstrate a wide range of services for employees, including alcohol and drug support, healthy eating, discounted rates at sports centres and robust occupational health.

Staff are entitled to up to 34 days’ leave, in addition to bank holidays, while the annual leave provision to lower-paid employees has just risen by three days a year.

www.blythvalley.gov.uk

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