Employee Benefits

As well as the conditions of service the Council offers a range of benefits to employees including:

  • Attractive Pension schemes
  • Buy and Bank Annual Leave Scheme
  • Career development
  • Childcare vouchers (not open to new entrants)
  • Credit Union
  • Cycle to work scheme
  • Family friendly and Work Life Balance policy
  • Health and wellbeing support
  • Learning and development opportunities
  • Occupational health support

Further information on these schemes can be obtained from Human Resources or in the Employee Benefits Booklet, linked in the download section.

Employee Pension Information

Council employees are entitled to membership of either the Strathclyde Pension Fund (non-teaching employee) or the Scottish Public Pensions Agency (teaching employees).

The Scottish Teachers’ Pension Scheme (STPS) and the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) has long been a valuable part of the pay and reward package for employees/teachers working in local government.

For Inverclyde Council, the LGPS is administered by Strathclyde Pension Fund Office and Inverclyde Council currently contributes 19.3% of your pensionable pay to your pension account.

The STSS is administered by the Scottish Public Pension Agency and Inverclyde Council currently contributes 23% of your pensionable pay to your pension account.

Both these schemes can help secure your future by providing:

  •          a pension based on your pensionable pay
  •          a pension that keeps pace with inflation
  •          a pension for your surviving spouse or partner on your death
  •          a tax free lump sum in exchange for some of your pension
  •          death in service protection of three times your pensionable pay as a tax free lump sum
  •          an ill health pension paid from any age provided you have two years’ service but are permanently unable to work.

In order to fully understand how these pension schemes operate, please read the information provided in the links on the downloads section of the page.

Worklife Balance and Flexible Working

Everybody knows the old axiom that we should work to live, not live to work. Our staff often tell us that one of the most valued benefits of working for Inverclyde Council is our approach to a work/life balance. We recognise that employees want a career that will not demand excessive hours and enable them to spend quality time with their families and pursue other commitments.

Our standard working week is 37 hours, Monday to Friday. We start at 8.40am and finish at 5.00 pm, with the exception of Friday, when we finish early at 4pm.

However, as we are such a diverse organisation we are able to offer a wide range of flexible working patterns and hours to suit all.

Full details of the options available to employees can be found within the Council’s Family Friendly and Work Life Balance policy which can be downloaded from this page.

Learning and Development

In-House Training

Alongside your on-the-job learning you'll also benefit from a range of courses run by our in-house employee development section to help you develop your knowledge. Transferable skills such as communication, motivation, presentation, stress management, and time management are only some of the courses available. For those of you identified as having the potential to be tomorrow’s managers, or those wishing to consolidate their existing management skills, we also offer a Management Development Programme.

We want our staff to be skilled, motivated and driven to deliver excellent customer services to the residents of Inverclyde. This means your continual learning and development is important to us.

Performance Appraisals

One of the most important areas where you will see our training programmes being used is in conjunction with your performance appraisal.

By reviewing your work priorities and personal learning objectives with your manager you will be able to choose from a blended learning approach between 'on the job', face to face training courses or by e-Learning. An overview of our Performance Appraisal system is given on the downloads section of this page.

E-Learning

Our E-Learning courses offer something for everyone, whether you want to brush up on your spreadsheet skills or need training to help you manage budgets.

  • Online training with over 350 courses which can be accessed from your work PC, your home PC or at your local library.
  • Bite size e-learning courses (15 mins) are accessable during the working day but access to longer courses must be be approved by your line manager.

The E-leaning course catalogue which is linked on the page details all available courses on the e-learning platform.