Sharing good practice: Recruiting temporary staff

Considering how to make working at elections more appealing to council staff and preparing them for the roles can help to ensure you have sufficient levels of staff for elections.

At Torridge any staff member who works the election will receive their normal salary for the day and then the election payment on top of this. They are also not required to take a day’s holiday. Each member of staff is entitled to one ‘election day’ per election.

Operational Managers were asked to run day to day services on ‘skeleton staff’ to allow the council to continue to function but to also ensure that we had the required number of staff for the election. Any staff shortages were normally filled by using internal staff. All new staff at the council are introduced to the elections team and we run through the opportunities for them at future elections.

We have had a number of staff changes over the last couple of years so we have a number of Poll Clerks who have carried out the role twice or more who are not sure if they want to step up to a Presiding Officer role. We are setting up a ‘mock polling station’ and will produce all the necessary paperwork to try and make them more familiar with what is required for the role, and hopefully lead to some additional Presiding Officers.

Ensuring senior management engagement can help ensure that the importance of elections is understood across the council, and can help with the identification and recruitment of temporary election staff from within the organisation. Encouraging senior staff to lead by example and take on electoral roles can also help raise awareness of electoral work and prompt interest from others in the council.

We have a “silent army” who can be deployed from January up to election day, every year. This was put together to mitigate the risk of not having enough trained staff deployed when needed – providing much needed resilience on the day as well as future proofing for “people” resource issues.

This “army” consists of a number of officers across the council and is not office title nor salary range dependent. There is a council-wide understanding – which gets cascaded from the Central Management team (Strategic Directors), Senior Leadership team (Service Directors and Heads of Service) and Team Plymouth (managers and team leaders) that election is a council/corporate affair which everyone is responsible for.

Operational plans for several departments are adapted to make sure that either cover is arranged during election period or expectations of elected members and Directors are managed so they are aware that a few operational activities will either be paused or will take additional days to complete.

Our silent army consists of officers from the following departments (not exhaustive):

• Emergency Office team - emergency POs and supervisors for Verification and Count.
• Democratic and Scrutiny teams – tactical command centre for the day for either polling stations or registration.
• Policy and Performance teams - emergency POs and supervisors for Verification and Count. Performance team also leads on QA of the register for all election activities and the IT programmes/spreadsheets for Verification and Count.
• Transformation team – Assists Performance team on QA of the register as well as auditors on Verification and Count night.
• Finance (even the S151 officer was deployed as a PO at elections last year and this May).
• Streets and Highways – Presiding Officers, Triage team and ballot box prep. They also assist in making sure that parking spaces are designated on the day (if parking spaces are at minimum or non-existent). Service Director for Streets is one of our area managers for the count.
• Legal team – most are released to be Poll clerks, Presiding Officers and 2 senior lawyers and Monitoring Officer are Polling Station Inspectors. A few junior lawyers have been trained in registration as well as PV opening - this was very important during the transition to Voter ID!
• Call Centre colleagues – two FTEs dedicated for all election and registration queries, with an additional four on election day.
• Central and corporate Business Support team – emergency POs and lead on preparation for Verification and Count. Also assists in verifying employment eligibility.
• Events team – response team for all polling stations and leads on security and parking arrangements for the verification and count.
• Facilities team – booking for and making sure that all council offices used for different election activities are available and ready when needed.
• HR team – standby verification and count assistants.
• Procurement team - POs and supervisors for Verification and Count.

The Chief Executive and the Service Director of HR has agreed that council officers who will be called will not need to take annual or flexi leave for election activities. There is also arrangement for officers working on election night to be able to come in later in the next morning.

Consider what existing communications channels can be used to promote working at elections to staff such as staff newsletter, intranet and staff briefings. Promoting it as an opportunity to come together and work on something as a whole-council team can boost morale and strengthen working relationships.

In recent elections we had around one third of appointed staff drop out from between mid-March to the day before polling day. We had already lost a large number of staff from our database as a result of Covid and lost a few more this year due to their nervousness over dealing with Voter ID.

As a result, we ran several campaigns in our staff newsletter. We highlighted election work to any new staff who hadn’t previously been aware of the opportunities to get involved. We also asked staff to spread the word amongst their friends and relatives. We have an online form which people can complete to register their interest and we made sure this was included in all our communications.

We recruited around 50 additional staff for these elections using this method. Although we still had to rely on internal staff to fill a number of the shortfalls, it was made clear to internal staff that they wouldn’t be required to take leave in order to help with the elections, which did result in a few more coming forward.

When we put out the request for help internally it is very much couched as an opportunity to build “Team Teignbridge”, i.e. the opportunity to meet colleagues you wouldn’t normally encounter in your normal area of work, all pulling together to deliver successful elections, support the RO etc. I have to say there’s always a good positive feeling and the team building element is particularly so at the verification and count. A thank you email goes out to all staff after the election and the RO also puts a thank you item in the staff newsletter after the election.

Using a variety of different methods to target staff at different levels across the organisation can lead to positive results and ensure that roles are filled effectively, hopefully retaining staff for future elections.

Apprentice team

We are currently working with the Apprentice Support team to provide staff to assist with postal vote opening, ballot box filling and with helping with sorting and storing stationery.

With new apprentices coming through each year and hopefully retaining those that have already worked on an election we can increase the pool of staff. Apprentice inductions also contain information about working on upcoming elections.

Directors PAs

We have a number of PAs to provide office cover for postal vote opening sessions and on election day. A vast number of our directors are doing election duties which in turn frees up their PAs to help assist with providing cover.

Cascading workflows

We decided to start early appointing senior postal vote opening and verification and count staff after hearing issues from neighbouring Authorities in May 2023. We approached DROs and once confirmed asked them to provide their own supervisors who they would want to work with them. We then in turn asked the supervisors to provide their own assistant supervisors, which has proved highly successful with some even providing their own counters and postal vote openers.

We believe that doing it this way means teams are familiar with working for each other and should hit the ground running. We also hope that staff will be less likely to withdraw given that in most cases its their director or line manager who they will be working alongside and where staff do drop out we will be initially going back to the person that provided the name to see if they can find a replacement.

Starting the recruitment process early is a good way to ensure that you get ahead on recruitment and gaining the buy-in and support from other teams, including your HR team can make the process easier on electoral teams.

As part of a corporate approach, the HR team have carried out the recruitment of staff for the count for a number of years. This leaves the election team time to carry out other tasks which take up a considerable amount of time and effort.

The HR team start the recruitment process in October. A save the date email is sent in October to all Council staff:

• Count Assistants to support with the verification and count.
• Support Roles such as our receipting team and count supervisors to support the local elections.
• Poll Clerks to assist the Presiding Officer in the conduct of the ballot in the polling stations on the day of the elections.
• Presiding Officers to play a key role supervising at a Polling Station, supporting pre-election activities and supervising poll clerks on the day of the election.

A document explaining the counter role is also produced which sets out each step clearly and in an easy-to-read form.

High quality information is provided so that people understand the role and a sufficient number of staff take up roles to support elections.

Utilising existing activities, such as staff inductions and meetings to promote working at elections is a good way to reach council staff and including the activity in job descriptions as an expectation helps to ensure it is seen as everyone’s role to help ensure elections are well run.

All new staff inductions at Northumberland include information and encouragement about working on elections with our information details included so they can contact us should they be interested in working.

Senior staff and heads of service joining the Authority also have the following included as part of their Job descriptions.

To undertake functions in the event of local or National elections, supporting the Returning Officer ensure the democratic nature of such activities is undertaken efficiently and in compliance with all statutory requirements.

Our heads of service also meet once a month so ahead of a previous meeting we sent all HOS an email asking them to cascade the message that we needed new polling station inspectors as we had 14 vacancies to fill. The response was very positive with the 14 vacancies filled within 3 days and off the back of the success of the email we are planning to send a further email to the HOS group for polling station staff.