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Multi-Skilling in rural areas

The Rural Matters Team is working with County Council Directorates to develop multi-skilling opportunities, so that individuals can undertake more than one job.  If this were successful we could provide more attractive ‘portfolio’ working for individuals and attract people to part time posts which are difficult to fill. 

So far we have gathered information on multiple employment through our Corporate Human Resources team. 

County Council Directorate Department Total
Client Services Cumbria Care 490
- Premises 343
Client Services Total - 833
Corporate Finance Client Services and Property Unit 1
- Corporate Finance Department 1
Corporate Finance Total - 2
Economy, Culture & Environment Culture 65
- Highways & Transport 6
Economy, Culture & Environment Total - 71
Education Access & Inclusion 7
- Cumbria Outdoors 1
- Lifelong Learning 6
- Policy & Directorate 5
- Pupil & School Support 14
- School Standards 5
Education Total - 38
Finance & Central Services Corporate Finance Department 1
- Member Services 1
Finance & Central Services Total - 2
Social Services Adult Services 11
- Children & Family Services 26
- Department Management Services 16
- GLOBAL - NOT DEPARTMENT SPECIFIC 1
- Performance 2
- Youth Offending Team 1
Social Services Total - 57
Strategy & Performance Community 3
Strategy & Performance Total - 3
Grand Total - 1006

The bulk of staff currently undertaking more than one job work for Client Services and Culture (Libraries). The posts most affected include library assistants, home carers, school catering staff and mid-day meals supervisors.

There also appears to be potential with the Fire Service and teaching staff. Their personnel data is held on a separate system but we have been discussing the project directly with their management teams. 

The next phase of this project is to identify individuals currently multi-skilling and interview them to identify the difficulties or barriers involved in this way of working. This in turn will suggest ways in which Human Resources policies and practices could support more multi-skilling.