Local government joins new skill-sharing scheme

Up to 30 local authorities will be joining StaffShare in the New Year in a Local Government Employers’ pilot scheme to help address the cost savings required following the council settlement announcements before Christmas.

StaffShare (www.staffshare.com) is a new online secondment service which helps level out employment peaks and troughs, connecting employers to available secondment candidates, providing a flexible alternative to redundancy. It enables organisations to retain skills through an online ‘skill exchange’ – an internet marketplace for employers to share employee skills and costs.

Introduced in conjunction with Local Government Employers, part of Local Government Group, the local council StaffShare pilot is likely to lead to a roll-out of the scheme as the Office of Budget Responsibility, which provides forecasts for the Government, expects some 330,000 nationwide public sector job losses by 2015.

“Local councils are under extraordinary pressure to cut their cost of operation, and looking for ways to help valued employees to move into new roles within the private and third sector is part of that strategy,” said Jan Parkinson, managing director of Local Government Employers.

She continued: “Through its online skill exchange StaffShare provides an innovative and practical way to save skills and develop employee careers through secondment to any number of new employers, while significantly cutting costs.”

Using smarter marketing and relational databases, StaffShare will facilitate ‘on-line introductions’ between employers wanting valuable skills and those employers trying to cut costs by finding temporary or even permanent new roles for their employees. StaffShare uses a low cost, simple and flexible employee secondment process – passing talent not used in one organisation to be better applied in another – and both employers effectively share the salary.