A message from Tom Stannard

Salford as a city has changed dramatically in recent years and now really is Salford’s time!

Salford is growing and it’s an exciting time to join us. More people than ever are choosing Salford as a place to live, work, invest and visit and we really are transforming into a modern, global city. Unprecedented private and public investment over the last ten years, including internationally recognised regeneration around MediaCityUK, has transformed Salford from its post-industrial roots. Salford’s economy is growing well above regional and national averages and is outperforming both London and Manchester to become the UK’s hot spot for new business in distinct sectors, with a digital and creative hub.

We aim to have 40,000 new jobs and 40,000 new homes by 2040 and we already have one of the youngest and fastest growing populations in Greater Manchester. Salford is the home of MediaCityUK and the BBC and also the site of the fifth national RHS garden,
Bridgewater. With a developing strong cultural and visitor offer, a rich heritage, waterside attractions and huge swathes of beautiful green spaces, the city truly has an impressive offer.

Here at Salford we are people centred and values based. Our people are at the heart of delivering our priorities for the city. We are passionate about putting our people first and helping everyone gain the skills, experience and support they need to develop and succeed
within our values based, diverse and inclusive organisation.

The Spirit of Salford is tangible with our values of pride, passion, people and personal responsibility capturing the spirit and expectations of the city and they also inform the way we operate. These values underpin our leadership behaviour framework which sets out the skills and behaviours required of our leaders in Salford. The Spirit of Salford has been more apparent than ever as we have continued to respond to the current pandemic, the commitment and dedication from our colleagues and partners across the city has been inspirational.

All of this has been recognised nationally and we have been shortlisted for Local Authority of the Year at the MJ Achievement Awards 2020. These prestigious awards recognise the best local government services and personnel in England and our shortlisting is a
testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone across the council.

The following information will give you an overview of what we as an organisation offer our people as recognition for their continued commitment and effort in building a better and fairer city.

Tom Stannard
Chief Executive

Our vision and priorities

Although every day is different, we all come to work for the same thing, to achieve our vision ‘to create a better and fairer Salford and provide the best possible quality of life for the people of the city.'

Our City Mayor has set out this vision with a clear set of priorities called the ‘Great Eight’. Whatever role we have, we’re all here to make that vision a reality. This vision gives our people direction and a shared sense of purpose.

Salford is a place for everyone to thrive – a place where everyone cares, and everyone counts.

We have eight priorities.

1. Tackling poverty and inequality
2. Education and skills
3. Health and social care
4. Economic development
5. Housing
6. Transport
7. A transparent effective organisation
8. Social impact

Our values and the Spirit of Salford

Here at Salford we are people centred and values based. The Spirit of Salford is tangible with our values of pride, passion, people and personal responsibility capturing the spirit and expectations of the city and informing the way we operate. They influence our choices, behaviours and how we make decisions and change how we do things.

Living the values day in and day out creates the supportive environment that allows us ‘to be the best we can be’ and achieve our vision.

The Spirit of Salford represents our culture, our social conscience and pride – our organisation is about people and the communities that we serve.

We live and breathe our values in everything we do and more importantly we say thank you! Whether that be a colleague sending a ‘shout out’ to recognise one of their peers or a manager recognising their team members for living our values, recognising our people is important to us. 

Our annual Spirit of Salford employee awards recognise our people for living our values, we also recognise our managers, teams and an employee of the year–which is voted for by their peers.

We also take the opportunity to recognise the commitment of our people who have been with us for 25 years.

Our commitment

Our people are at the heart of delivering our vision for ‘a better and fairer Salford for all’.

Salford is a place for everyone to grow, develop and thrive – a place where everyone cares, and everyone counts and we are committed to creating ‘a great place to work’.

Diversity and inclusion

Every person is different but equal, and everyone’s unique talent is recognised and encouraged.

• We are committed to developing a culture which respects individuals, treats people fairly, values and welcomes diversity, appreciates difference and allows everyone regardless of background to reach their full potential.
• We work closely with our established employee network groups (BAME, Equal in Salford and LGBT) to make positive changes. We are proud to be an accredited disability confident employer and we are working with Stonewall, Europe’s largest, lesbian, gay, bi and trans charity to create a truly inclusive workplace.
• We are also prioritising engagement with our working carers and have an established carers network.
• We have also committed to the Greater Manchester Workforce Race Equality Standard which is a collaboration of public sector employers across Greater Manchester working together to tackle race inequality in the workplace.

MyWork and flexible working

Over twelve months ago we introduced our MyWork programme which is the council’s approach to enabling people to work smarter, using the available digital tools and technologies to work from the most appropriate place. With a shift from traditional office-based working, work is no longer just somewhere we go, it’s about what we do, what we achieve and the outcomes that we deliver.

This approach helps avoid unnecessary travel and frees up more time to respond to the needs of our residents and people in Salford. This programme of work stood us in good stead when almost overnight we had to adapt how and where we worked due to the coronavirus pandemic.

We are using MyWork to support the workforce and workspaces strand of our recovery plan, working with services across the city to take the opportunity to use MyWork to build back better, modern and flexible ways of working and use our corporate spaces differently to
develop workplaces that support this. Our principles for this programme have the health, safety and wellbeing of our people at the heart of everything we do. The key principles are to:

• Continue to build on our values and the Spirit of Salford and maintain the sense of team and our Salford identity.
• Maximise our digital tools and technologies to work effectively and stay connected #DigitalFirst.
• Develop safe workspaces that meet the needs of our services.
• Focus on what we achieve and the outcomes and outputs that we deliver and support colleagues to work in a flexible and inclusive way.
• Offer flexible working depending on the role that you do, we understand the importance of flexing to meet the needs of our people who can’t work a traditional nine to five. We are happy to talk flexible working with you and support you where we can.
• We know how hard it is to juggle caring for a loved one with work, so we aim to provide support and flexibility to balance caring responsibilities with work.
• Listen to our people and co-design our future ways of working.

Pay and benefits

Employment Standards Charter

We believe that as the city council we should set the standard as an exemplar employer and make sure that our pay and employment policies and practices reflect our City Mayor’s Employment Standards Charter and the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter.

Living wage

At Salford, we believe in paying not just the minimum wage but a fair wage. That’s why we are proud to be an accredited living wage employer. We are also leading the way as the first city in England to announce ambitious plans to double the number of organisations in the city to accredit with the Living Wage and make Salford a Living Wage City.

As well as paying the foundation living wage, here at Salford we offer fair pay for all and a range of employee reward and benefits. All our jobs roles are graded based on the key outcomes and requirements of the role. Each grade has a number of pay points which you will move through until you reach the top.

Pension – secure, flexible and tax efficient

When we welcome you to Salford you will be enrolled into the Local Government Pension scheme with the Greater Manchester Pension Fund. The scheme has some great benefits including tax relief on the contributions you pay, the option to exchange part of your pension for a tax free cash lump sum at retirement, and immediate valuable lump sum life cover. The amount you pay into the scheme depends on how much you are paid.

If you are a member of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), you will also have access to a valuable staff benefit - Shared Cost Additional Voluntary Contribution (Shared Cost AVC) scheme. This is a tax-efficient way to save for retirement and provides an
opportunity for you to supplement your pension to build up an additional retirement fund. They are available and beneficial to you, no matter how close or far you are away from retirement.

Some roles, such as Teachers, will be enrolled in to the Teachers Pensions Scheme or the NHS Pension Scheme.

Through our MyRewards scheme you will have access to many exclusive employee benefits with a focus on your wellbeing. These include high street and online discounts, salary sacrifice schemes and much more.

New wheels

As part of our MyRewards scheme the council has teamed up with Tusker to give you the chance to drive a new, environmentally friendly, car as part of a salary sacrifice scheme at an affordable fixed monthly amount To help the environment the council has capped the cars available through the scheme to a maximum CO2 level, this means that the car you get will be more climate friendly.

It’s a great way for anyone to afford and run a new car and save some money at the same time. The car benefit scheme is all inclusive – the monthly amount you pay includes replacement tyres, car insurance, servicing, MOT, road tax, repair bills and breakdown cover, so there’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about, other than adding fuel.

Cycle to work

At Salford, we want to do what we can to help reduce pollution. We also want our people to be happy and healthy. That’s why we encourage cycling to work. You can use our salary sacrifice, cycle to work scheme to choose a bike or e-bike from a range of retailers nationwide, making big savings on the original cost. We have showers and drying cabinets for your clothes, lockers and covered bike racks.

Other benefits

Going green

As an environmentally responsible organisation we are a bronze carbon literate organisation and, through our carbon management programme, have made an overall CO2 reduction in our operations of 42% (2007 to 2017). We encourage all of our people to make green travel choices and are striving to transition all of our business travel over to sustainable travel options.

Car club

Rather than using your own vehicle to travel on council business, you’ll be automatically registered to join our car club scheme.

We have a fleet of low-emission cars through Co-Wheels, a community interest company. Cars can be booked online or through a smartphone and each has a fuel card, so you just get in and drive. You automatically become a Co-Wheels member for personal use as well as business use, so you can take advantage of some really cheap car hire rates over the weekend or in the evening. Cars are available across Salford so there should always be one near you. 

Just hire it when you need it and return it when you’re done.

Leave

Working here you’ll get up to 33 days holiday a year (plus bank holidays).

You can carry annual leave forward from one year to the next, or alternatively you can bank up to five days a year from your entitlement so you can save your holidays for that extra special trip.

Leave Plus

You can also buy additional leave and spread the costs throughout the financial year.

Family-related or emergency leave

To support you to deal with family related matters or emergencies we offer a whole range of support such as parental leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, adoption leave, carers leave and special leave.

Learning and development

We believe that learning and development is really important so we offer opportunities from as soon as you start your journey with us to support you to learn, grow and develop. Talk to your manager to create your own personal development plan.

#LeadingSalford

If you are joining us in a leadership role, we will support you to develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence to lead highly committed, motivated teams and be a values-based leader.

In Salford we want all individuals and teams to benefit from excellent leadership. This is where our leadership behaviours and our #Leading Salford development programme comes into play. The framework sets out what great leadership looks like in Salford and the learning you can access to develop the skills and behaviours to successfully lead our people.

Your development

We don’t believe in traditional annual appraisals – instead we have something called a PDR (Personal Development Review) to help you and your manager to talk about you, your achievements, your challenges, and most importantly, your future career aspirations and development needs.

This isn’t a one off it’s part of a continuing conversation with your manager. We place equal value on how our people behave as well as technical ability this discussion is also about making sure that how you approach your work aligns with our values of Pride, Passion, People and Personal Responsibility.

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships have changed a great deal over recent years they’re now for people of any age and at any stage of their career who want to further develop their skills and knowledge and gain a qualification! These qualifications go all the way up to postgraduate qualifications.

An apprenticeship is a work-based learning programme which enables you to develop the valuable skills, knowledge and behaviours you need for a specific job role and to progress in your chosen career.

E-Learning

Our Me Learning e-learning site contains over 180 topics, which are available to all Salford City Council employees.

It is easy to use, and you can access it anytime, anywhere; you can even complete it at home if you wish! The site also contains resources such as user guides and information sheets on a wider range of topics.

Volunteering

24 Hours to Make a Difference is our employer supported volunteering scheme which allows our people to take up to 24 hours out of work time to give something back to Salford through volunteering. You can take up to 24 hours paid time off a year during your normal working week to volunteer.

Our commitment is to increase volunteering in Salford, give you the opportunity to inspire, be inspired and learn, grow and develop as a result.

Our digital journey

Salford is aiming to become a Digital City, an ambition which forms part of our wider vision for a better, fairer Salford to improve resident’s lives.

#DigitalSalford

We are strongly committed to digital inclusion.

We wanted to ensure that we have a digitally inclusive workplace where all of our people have the skills and capabilities to thrive, so we launched our Digital Eagles across Salford. The Digital Eagles are committed to helping people to develop and improve their digital
skills, so colleagues and residents can operate safely and confidently online and most importantly make the most of new technology in their work and personal life. 

We were the very first council to team up with Barclays to develop Salford Digital Eagles and you can hear more about their journey by watching a short film. 

This approach has established itself as one of the most successful mechanisms to grow digital skills capabilities across the organisation. Over 400 active Eagles are blazing a trail to support their colleagues and residents to become comfortable and confident online.

The Eagle role has constantly evolved, and we are now aligning our Digital Eagles programme and our Eagles as a key enabler to support our new Digital Skills Academy. 

Digital Skills Academy

The Academy is bringing key partners and digital programmes together to develop a digital skills development pathway for our whole workforce to develop their essential workplace digital skills and then move beyond this to develop more comprehensive workplace skills.

Your voice

Trade unions

We recognise and positively support the principles of collective engagement, consultation and bargaining and promote trade union
membership. We believe that a truly representative and effective trade union relationship supports employee engagement and enhances
workforce employee relations. We enjoy a positive and constructive working relationship with the recognised trade unions, in which all parties are committed to working together and our trade union stewards are also part of our Salford 100!

There is an established framework within which council officers and trade unions can make a positive contribution and establish good working relationships to support good employee relations, encourage workforce development and facilitate local resolution of potential disagreements. Trade union support is also available to individual members including representation as required.

Our approach to change is built around the principles of co-design with our people and our local stewards are encouraged to be actively involved throughout all stages from planning through to implementation.

The council works with the trade unions on collective matters via a joint secretary arrangement; the current joint trade union side secretary is the UNISON branch secretary.

Salford 100

As an organisation we foster a spirit of trust, empowerment, openness and co-operation with all our employees putting people at the heart of everything we do. We aim to give a voice to and listen to our people by effectively communicating and engaging with all our
employees.

Our Salford 100 are a cross section of people who work in a range of services across our organisation and are helping to make Salford a great place to work. Their role is to be the voice of our employees and support our values and organisational culture. They engage others and support our internal communications and contribute to and support the development of key initiatives, activities and projects.

They’ve contributed to the design and delivery of our chatbot Ralf, helped us to develop our employer supported volunteering scheme, contributed to the changes to how we recognise people and our new internal communications arrangements. They’ve also been involved in the launch of MyWork our smarter ways of working programme and have contributed and given feedback on lots of activities
taking place across Salford.

Anyone can join the Salford 100 and be a positive disruptor and have their say on making Salford a great place to work!

Wellbeing

Here at Salford we’re passionate about supporting our colleagues to look after their health and wellbeing. We create an environment which promotes positive physical and mental health in the workplace and encourage and support employees to develop a healthy lifestyle. We also create a management culture of openness and communication and support colleagues who have manageable physical and mental health conditions or disabilities to maintain access and return to work.

We offer support, activities and resources to support your mental, physical, social and financial wellbeing. Here’s just a selection of what’s on offer.

Mental wellbeing

Vivup

We have partnered with Vivup to provide you with access to a 24/7 helpline, staffed by trained counsellors, who can help you tackle a wide range of challenges including anxiety, bereavement and stress management. The portal also contains number of self-help guides and workbooks, based on the principles of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and instant access to a range of discounts.

Ambassadors

We have a great team of volunteer Wellbeing Ambassadors who are here to lend an ear. They are trained mental health first aiders; which means they have been trained to listen and signpost to professional services where required.

Physical wellbeing

Keeping active

We offer reduced membership at Salford Community Leisure centres.

Your health

• Free physio - You can access free physiotherapy sessions through our occupational health service.
• Free counselling - We offer free confidential counselling services, so you always have someone to talk to if you need to.
• Hospital appointments and cancer screening - We offer up to two hours’ time off for hospital appointments and in addition we support you with time off if you need to attend for cancer screening.
• Disability leave - We offer additional leave to support people who have a disability or long-term health condition who may need some time for treatment or rehabilitation or may just need a period off work to adjust to a change in personal and professional
  circumstances.

Health Improvement Connect is here to help you improve your health and wellbeing – Our fantastic team do lots of online activities to improve your health and wellbeing including help to stop smoking, weight management and how to get more active. The team also offer free health checks for council workers.

Social wellbeing

There are various opportunities for you to connect with colleagues on non-work matters such as our Salford City Council book club, album appreciation society, tai chi and mindfulness sessions and lunchtime dance sessions.

Financial wellbeing

• Salford Credit Union exists to provide safe, competitive and fair financial services to anyone that lives or works in Salford
• BetterOff Salford aims to help residents become better off by helping them to help themselves
• Welfare Rights and Debt offers expert free, confidential and independent advice and representation on benefits and debts