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The Government is set to spend £900,000 on voluntary redundancy payments for 16 employees, with most departures from the Health Department, Express can confirm.
The scheme was announced last autumn in the Government Plan 2022-2025 as part of a bid to cut staffing and employment costs by £4.1m by the end of 2022.
At the time, Chief Operating Officer John Quinn said there was no “firm target”, but that the expectation was for around 50 redundancies.
129 formal applications were received by the December 2021 closing date, with 17 applications deemed successful. However, one applicant later withdrew theirs.
Six people will be leaving Health, costing £409,678.
Meanwhile, there will be 10 departures costing £487,634 across Children, Young People, Education and Skills (CYPES); Strategic Policy, Performance and Planning (SPPP); the Office of the Chief Executive; Infrastructure, Housing and Environment (IHE); Justice and Home Affairs; and Non-Executive Departments.
Pictured: 16 applications for voluntary redundancy have been approved.
Government officials said that numbers were too small to provide an exact breakdown as it may identify individuals.
Of those individuals, four were just below the top tier of Government, with pay grades in Tiers 2 and 3. Five individuals were in Tier 4, five in Tier 5 and two in Tier 6.
Redundancy payments will vary by pay grade but average £56,000.
Staffing measures make up around a fifth of the Government’s overall savings target of £20m by the end of 2022, which itself fits into a broader plan of making up £120m in efficiencies between 2020 and 2024.
“Voluntary Release Schemes are an effective way of managing headcount and associated staff costs,” Constable Richard Buchanan, who is Vice-Chair of the States Employment Board, the panel of politicians which acts as ‘Employer’ to the public sector workforce, explained.
“They reduce the need for restructuring, which can have serious, adverse implications for staff morale, take time, and reduce the focus of affected employees.”
Addressing the number of approved applications, he added: “The Government of Jersey’s scheme has very tight criteria and applications are approved only when the cost benefits are clearly demonstrated, which is why fewer than 20 of the 129 applications were ultimately approved.”
The last redundancy scheme was in 2019. Then, 33 staff underwent compulsory or voluntary redundancy, costing £1.9m, while two people were compensated for loss of office (£67,459).
In 2020, a total of 34 individuals received exit payments: nine staff were made compulsory or voluntarily redundant (£374,071), 18 people were compensated for loss of office (£808,173), six had their roles outsourced (£57,876), and one person took voluntary early retirement (£42,589).
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