May 2021 Role Alignment update from Jim and Sonia
Jim and Sonia wanted to share a personal note to staff who are going through the role alignment process. This letter was sent to current employers to be shared onwards with staff.
“Dear all,
Many of you will now have received your role alignment letter from your current employer. We wanted to reach out to you all with a personal message as we know that these letters have caused concern for some groups of staff.
First, we wanted to say that we’re sorry that for some of you the letters didn’t give you the level of clarity you were after, and we understand that this has caused some worry and anxiety. We know this is particularly true for the group of staff who received a letter saying that you were not yet matched to a role or incorrectly matched. We can understand why this would be a worrying thing to read. In this note we want to touch on what this means and hopefully provide you with an understanding of what the next steps will look like.
Aligning over 7,500 people into roles within the NPS, HMPPS and MOJ was always going to be a difficult task and unfortunately, we haven’t managed to align a small number of you at this stage. This is because of the challenge of aligning 20 different CRC structures with the Probation Service and Ministry of Justice ways of working.
The most important thing we want to highlight is that not being matched to a role doesn’t mean that there isn’t a role for you in the future organisation. Our organisation is growing and we absolutely need all of you and your skills and experience to make our new unified organisation a success. The teams within the regions or within NPS national, HMPPS or MOJ want to engage with you to help you find the right role match for you, taking in to account your skills and experience. However, we do expect this process to take some time due to the volume of people that we need to work with directly. So whilst we hope that we can work with the majority of you ahead of transfer, some people may not receive full clarity on their future role until after transition as we want to ensure we get the right outcome for you. The protections we have agreed with the Trade Unions, including a categoric commitment to no compulsory redundancies continues to apply.
So, what you can expect next is to hear from a team within the NPS or wider organisation, we expect this to be within the next two weeks. They will want to find a time to talk to you personally and the timeframe for this will vary depending on where the different teams are in their planning. We also plan to release additional communications to support you through the next steps of the process.
Finally, we want to reassure you that not being aligned to a role will not impact your pay. You will still transfer to the NPS in June and you will still be paid on time.
We hope that this information has been helpful in explaining where we are now and the next steps. Please do be reassured that working with you to find clarity on your future role is the top priority activity within the programme team.
Yours sincerely,
Jim Barton and Sonia Flynn”