People and Leadership
Sheffield faced a systemic risk with the potential to fracture the organisation, drain public finances, and lock the council into years of costly dispute. This work shows how decisive leadership and the right partnership can turn an existential threat into lasting reform.
In 2023, Sheffield City Council faced a critical organisational challenge. A longstanding equal pay issue affecting thousands of employees had become a major risk to the Council’s financial resilience, workforce trust and industrial relations. Decades of fragmented employment records held across multiple systems, formats and paper archives created significant uncertainty around historic liabilities and threatened the Council’s ability to protect frontline services.
Rather than pursuing an adversarial legal route, Sheffield City Council partnered with Grant Thornton to design a wholesystem programme capable of resolving historic liabilities while rebuilding the foundations of a fair, transparent and sustainable pay framework.
The scale of the challenge was substantial. More than 8,000 employees fell within scope, supported by over 250,000 historic HR and payroll records accumulated across both paper and digital systems over several decades. Around 2,000 roles required reevaluation to ensure pay structures were being applied consistently and fairly.
Grant Thornton worked closely with the Council to create a programme structure that combined governance with analytical and organisational change capability. At its centre was a new Digital and Data Hub that consolidated decades of employment and payroll information into a single analytical environment. This provided a reliable evidence base that enabled the Council to understand the scale and structure of the issue and make informed decisions throughout the programme.
Reflecting on the partnership, the Council’s Chief Operating Officer said, “I hired Grant Thornton largely for their independence, quality and numbercrunching credentials, and I’ve come away with an impactful management consultant who’s become a trusted advisor going forward.”
In parallel, the programme redesigned the Council’s job evaluation and pay governance framework. Standards were clarified, documentation strengthened and moderation processes improved so that decisions could be applied consistently across the organisation. These changes ensured the programme addressed the historic liability alongside the systems and processes required to sustain fairness into the future.
Delivery then moved into largescale operational activity. Over an 18month period, approximately 2,000 roles were reevaluated through around 4,000 job evaluation panel meetings. Advanced analytics supported efficient and fair decisionmaking by prioritising cases, identifying comparators and highlighting edge cases requiring review.
Recognising the national shortage of job evaluation expertise, the programme established a Learning and Development Academy to build internal capability. Training materials, practical tools and governance frameworks equipped the Council to sustain its new systems and approach beyond the life of the programme.
In December 2025, Sheffield City Council and its trade union partners announced a landmark agreement offering redress to 3,600 employees across around 260 roles, with a settlement estimated at £36 million and funded from reserves to protect frontline services. As GMB commented, “Sheffield showed real leadership by working with us to deliver justice for its female workforce. They avoided years of expensive litigation and found a constructive way forward… Sheffield has set the bar.”
The programme resolved a complex, longstanding liability while strengthening governance and restoring confidence across the organisation.
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