Public: HR + Features | Public

Steep learning curve

Jane Dudman — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:50:51 GMT

As the new academic year approaches there will be thousands of young people not in education, employment or training. The Learning and Skills Network is one organisation who can offer them a lifeline. Jane Dudman reports

Next week, it will be back to school for students across the country and with record numbers not gaining a place at university, pressure is mounting to improve at GCSE and A-level.

But where does this leave those who are less academic? The Learning and Skills Network (LSN) recently reported on how schools and local authorities can provide better opportunities for the thousands of 18-24-year olds not in education, employment or training.

LSN supports training and staff development programmes, but also supplies services directly to schools, colleges, training organisations and the private sector.

John Stone has been chief executive of LSN since 2006. Before that, he was principal of a further education (FE) college, where, he explains he had taken the institution through a major merger, which gave him a taste for the more entrepreneurial and commercial aspects of educational life.

"I was looking for a new challenge, so when LSN phoned me, I let them put my hat in the ring, because this post is more overtly commercial, even though LSN is a charity, and that commercial side is something I'd greatly enjoyed."

Stone says there is still little comprehension that charities have to be commercial. "They have to earn money in an efficient manner and provide services that people want and are prepared to pay for," he points out. The difference between a charity and a fully-commercial organisation lies not so much in the execution of daily business, he believes, as in the ultimate aim. "Everything we do is focused on our core objective, which is to support education and training."

Commercial skills

Stone brings not just a knowledge of education but also a level of comfort with commercial skills that is still unusual in the sector. "I enjoy running a business," he says. "The central challenge of the job is understanding what the people who are to benefit really want – and that includes anyone involved in the design and delivery of education and training."

LSN employs 300 full time staff and one of its recent innovative moves has been becoming a partner in running an FE college in Reading. This is a unique development, says Stone, but may not remain so for long. "We increasingly see ourselves as developing a new form of consultancy support," he explains. "Consultants are often criticised for diving in and then disappearing. But we are interested in long term relationship and sharing the risk. When we talk about processes and models, we want to talk about things we've done ourselves, where we have learned the pros and cons. This is really about being a consultancy that also does things."

Prior to this appointment Stone was principal of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London. He was also vice-chairman of JISC, chair of the Association of Colleges London Region, a board observer at the London Development Agency and a board member of West London Business, Regenesis and the Southall Regeneration Partnership.

Jane Dudman

Consultancy spending set to fall

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:55:46 GMT

Under pressure public bodies are coming up with more innovative ways to save money, one of which is the creation of their own in-house consultancy services

Plans by the Labour and Conservative parties to cut government spending on management consultants may be tricky to enforce and cause staffing headaches for senior public managers.

In local government, however, senior managers are finding alternative to expensive consultancy on strategy and organisational shake-ups, by setting up their own consultancy departments, or by training graduates.

Budget shuffle

Over the past decade management consultancies have extended their tentacles into almost every aspect of public services, advising on everything from IT, finance, procurement and outsourcing.

An official report published by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) on the day of the Budget in March, said that government departments and quangos spent around £1.5bn on professional consultancy in 2008-09.

In the Budget, the Treasury revealed plans for government departments and quangos to halve spending on management consultants and PRs as part of a £650m cost-cutting drive.

The Conservative manifesto says that a Tory government would reduce spending on government consultants in order to help pay for a two-year freeze on council tax.

Interim managers

Cutting the amount spent on consultancy is relatively uncontroversial and will help reduce the £167bn national debt. But weaning the public sector off consultancy may be tricky after years of reliance on sharp-suited consultants.

In addition, there is also the potential to disguise consultancy spending by including it under other budgets.

Alan Leaman, chief executive of the Management Consultants Association, whose members comprise around 70% of the UK consulting industry, says: "If people [in the public sector] re-badge consultancy spend as some other type of expenditure, such as temporary staff or covering for vacancies then it looks like consultancy spend is going down."

Another potentially large grey area is the use of interim managers, who are becoming increasingly common in the public sector often as an alternative to management consultants.

Are interim managers classed as consultants? That is not clear.
The OGC has published guidance notes for government departments and agencies on the procurement of consultancy services. It defines consultancy services as the provision to management of "objective advice relating to strategy, structure, management or objectives of an organisation in pursuit of its purposes and objectives."

DIY consultancy

In local government, some councils are already reducing their reliance on consultants.

Birmingham city council, for example, has developed its own consultancy service, to help manage a £450m programme to revamp back office functions including IT, finance and procurement. The council reckons that its internal consultancy service saved it £2m in consultancy fees in 2009.

The councils use 12 consultants who are assigned to specific projects, such as reducing the organisation's carbon footprint, or helping to design mobile technology for housing staff.

The consultants have been recruited from all parts of the council and from all levels of seniority. They are given training and seconded full-time to the projects they are working on.

The scheme may be extended. Birmingham council says it is in discussions with other councils about setting up a regional "talent pool" of in-house consultants, which it says would be charged at a significantly lower rate than external consultants.

Joan Munro, national advisor workforce strategy, strategy division of the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) for local government, says: "It's much easier to institute the cultural change programmes and make them work well if they are seen as something that has been developed within the local authority rather than something from smart and expensive consultants telling you what to do."

Another benefit of the in-house approach is that public bodies retain more skills and experience when the project is finished, leaving managers better equipped to tackle future challenges.

However, consultants can still play a role in local government, Munro adds, particularly in helping organisations plan change.

Meanwhile, more than 100 councils have used graduates supplied by the National Graduate Development Programme (NGDP), which is part of the IDeA, for various work, including consultancy.

Malcolm Craig, NGDP manager, says that charges for the graduates, who work on the two-year programmes, are about half the cost or less of using consultants from the big consultancies, although he stresses that the NGDP scheme is not intended to source management consultants for local government.

Consultants and interim managers are a useful resource for public managers, plugging skill gaps and offering a fresh perspective on difficult decisions. After the election, however, public managers are set to face increased pressure to cut spending on consultants.

There may be enough wriggle room to allow consultancy spend to be shifted into other budgets, but some councils are already showing that building in-house consultancy is a smarter move.

How to be indispensable in today's job market

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:08:13 GMT

There is no room for complacency in the public sector - from both employers' and employees' points of view. So what can HR departments do to maximise staff and resources, asks Eifion Rees

There is something vaguely Orwellian about public sector workers being asked to "recommit" to their organisations.

The idea is that workers realign their values and goals with those of their employers in order to make themselves more valuable and, the hope is, indispensable.

The term itself may sound like newspeak – and 1984's Winston Smith was a civil servant, after all – but it's founded in a less literary dystopia, one of impending and wide-ranging public sector redundancies.

Recommitting is ostensibly about helping employees help themselves, according to Jo Ellen Grzyb, director of professional development firm Impact Factory, and it's just one of the practical ways the public sector is preparing itself for a seismic shift in human resources.

"Employers will always prefer to retain people who can make things happen, rather than simply doing the bare minimum," she says. "Public sector workers will need to be operating at a higher level than before, and this is one way to help them do that."

Job description

Gryzb's company works primarily with local authorities and the NHS, running workshops encouraging employees to think about how they can demonstrate their worth – how they might do things differently within their current roles, how they could go beyond the bare requirements of their job description.

They are effectively being taught the skills to keep their jobs.

"Where departments are being merged, those who are more enthusiastic are more likely to get the job – it's harder to change a negative attitude than it is to develop someone who's already keen to begin with.

Positivity means being more likely to come out on top if you're competing against someone with an equal or even slightly higher skill set."

For other parts of the public sector it's a case of preparing their workforces for eventualities such as interviews, as pertinent for those expected to reapply for their own jobs as for those leaving the public sector entirely.

Gillian Hibberd, strategic director of resources and business transformation for Buckinghamshire county council, says the council has introduced a professional outplacement service to help employees prepare for redundancy.

She expects 400 jobs to go over the next two years.

"As well as a support package to help people make informed choices, they will receive one-to-one support and career counselling, support with preparing their CVs, help improving interview skills and advice on starting up their own business."

But the severe cuts in budget will also affect those who don't get laid off. In consideration of the shape of the organisation in the aftermath of job cuts, who stays will be as important as who goes, which is why employers are not only asking employees to prove themselves, but helping them to do so.

Longer-term strategy

Switched-on employers are taking a longer-term strategic look at their resourcing requirements, according to Robin Wood of Career Management Consultants. They are identifying the skills gaps that a smaller workforce and a maturing population will produce, and encouraging employees to explore new and additional roles.

"Instead of letting people go they are retraining them and developing their skills, anticipating a very different public sector, one with less people doing more work," says Wood.

"Employees are also deciding for themselves that they'd like to stay – either in post or within the public sector – and using the tools supplied by their employers to help them realise that goal."

He adds that more enlightened public bodies are becoming effective at communicating to employees affected by redundancy what the opportunities are, and encouraging and supporting them in their efforts to improve their retainability.

"There needs to be a clear and fair selection process when restructuring, of course, but it is also intelligent to make employees who have the potential to fill those future roles aware of the benefits of staying," he says.

Abusive behaviour against public sector staff is rising

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:22:00 GMT

Abusive behaviour against public sector staff is rising and action is still piecemeal, writes Anna Bawden

Many public sector workers will be relieved the festive season is over - far from being a time of goodwill to all, for those working in the NHS, the police and social services, it is a time of heightened danger of assault by inebriated clients or members of the public.

As drunkenness increases during the Christmas and New Year celebrations, so too does the risk of violence against public workers. According to the British Crime Survey, victims believe that in 40% of assaults and 31% of threats at work, the attack was alcohol-fuelled.
But December is not the only dangerous time. In fact, violence is an occupational hazard for large swaths of the public sector. According to figures from the Health and Safety Executive, public sector workers are the most likely to be victims of serious violence. As the graph shows, six out of the 10 sectors with the highest rates of violence were in the public sector.

Of the more than 6,000 incidents reported to the HSE, almost 1,468 were against care assistants and home carers, 731 were against police officers, 627 were against nurses and 467 were against prison officers. Proportionally, staff in the Prison Service, the police and the NHS are in most danger (bus and coach drivers are also at risk but are mainly private sector employees).

The HSE's figures are based on incidents reported through the regulations on reporting injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences, so they only include cases where the victim needed at least three days off work. The data does not capture minor assaults and many cases are not reported. The frequency of violence is actually much, much higher.

The Prison Service's own figures show that for the year to April 2008, 12,773 staff were assaulted, while the latest data from the NHS Security Management Service (SMS) reveals that there were 55,993 reported assaults against NHS staff. Recent research by Incomes Data Services for public sector union Unison found 71.5% of custody staff had been threatened with physical violence, more than 60% had been victims of minor assault and one fifth had been so badly attacked as to need medical treatment. Police community support officers, forensic services, traffic wardens, police station receptionists and security staff are also at particular risk of assault.

In local government, social workers, residential care assistants, library staff and day care workers are most likely to have experienced threatening or violent behaviour. Data from 2005 surveys found 3% of respondents reported having been victims of violence requiring medical assistance or first aid, while 14% said they had been physically threatened.

Tough measures

While some public sector professions do involve an element of risk, unions and other commentators feel much more could be done to mitigate the danger to staff and pose the question of why public employers have made so little headway in tackling the problem. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, says: "It's disgraceful that violence against nurses, paramedics, social workers and other public sector workers is on the increase and we need tough measures to deal with it. No one should have to put up with violence and abuse just for doing their job."

Part of the problem is the perception by some staff that their employers do not take violence seriously enough. Around a third of victims of workplace violence or abuse do not report it. While in some cases, the individual may feel the incident was too trivial, 14% said they did not believe management would have done anything even if they had reported it. The public sector also has a patchy record in terms of monitoring the extent of the problem. While the NHS collates data centrally, there are no comparable figures for local government or the civil service. "If we are going to stop the violence we must have accurate, up-to-date information about the number, nature and where these attacks are happening," says Prentis. "A national database is a vital first step towards knowing the extent of the problem and how to better protect the workforce."

Preventative action is also piecemeal. The exception is the NHS. Following concern that hospital staff were being subjected to excessive danger, the Department of Health established the NHS SMS five years ago. As well as monitoring and collating data, it also promotes conflict resolution training, which is mandatory for all frontline staff in the NHS. Around 90% of trusts now have a dedicated local security management specialist who is on the frontline to deal with issues as they arise. The SMS provides them with support and guidance.

Taking action

Next year, the health department is paying for 30,000 personal alarms to be issued to frontline staff in trusts. Although that is just a drop in the ocean, given that there are 750,000 frontline workers in the NHS, it is better than nothing.

The NHS is also getting tougher with those who attack staff. Criminal sanctions have risen from 51 in 2003-04 to almost 1,000 in the past year and a total of nearly 3,500 since the SMS started work. It has brought 29 private prosecutions against individuals who have assaulted NHS staff, where the police haven't taken the matter further. "If the police won't take action we will consider bringing a private prosecution with the health body. It is important to send out a message that we won't tolerate violence," says Richard Hampton, head of security at the SMS.

"Clearly it is unacceptable that any public sector worker should face abuse or violence while they are doing their job. It is important that where at all possible, incidents are prevented rather than relying on action after the event. The responsibility lies with both employers and staff to ensure that risks are identified, action agreed and importantly taken to ensure that staff can carry out their duties free from fear of abuse."

Ultimately, while prevention is always the best option, there may be a case for giving all public employees the same legal protection as police officers by making it an offence to assault a public sector worker.

public sector pay: government appears unworried

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Public pay appears far down the list of government priorities even as public sector workers strike

In the light of the government's other recent political difficulties, public pay has been the least of its worries. That may be because the opposition parties broadly agree on the need for restraint and because some of the unions involved in action, specifically the National Union of Teachers, have few political friends. But it looked bad, as on a black Thursday, schools shut and civil servants and coastguards took action. Meanwhile the Police Federation asked for judicial review of the decision to stagger constables' pay and strike action by clerical civil servants is ongoing.

At issue is the government's insistence that pay must not rise by more than 2%-2.5% - in order to damp inflation and to enforce control of public spending. Last year's pay rises for nurses and the police were not only capped but staggered, reducing the real terms increase to 1.9%.

There's dispute about how far public sector pay stokes inflation in the economy at large. The decision to peg public pay to the consumer price index has increased the gap between public and private sector pay. Until December 2003, public sector pay rises were based on the all-items retail price index, excluding mortgage interest. The Treasury now prefers the consumer prices index, CPI, which excludes housing costs and so is typically 1% lower than the old measure. Incomes Data Services says private sector pay is rising at about 4% - double the rate of the public sector.

Parts of the public sector are being capped more strictly than others, just as pay rises for the different groups in recent years exhibited no logic to do with performance or productivity. Pay offers for the Armed Forces, prison officers and teachers in Scotland averaged 2.7% while nurses (in England and Wales) will get 2.75% this year, 2.4% next year and 2.25% in 2010-11. Under the three-year deal, if inflation exceeds expectations, unions can appeal for adjustments to restore purchasing power.

Efforts to appease council workers were criticised as empty gestures. Local government employers increased their pay offer to 2.45% from 2.2% and 3% for the lowest paid, which matches the proposed settlement for teachers in England and Wales.

But Unison claims that even with the extra payment, the lowest earners will still take home less than they could get at Tesco. The union says the lowest payscale for local government is £11,577 a year - £6 an hour, compared to £6.25 an hour at Tesco and £12,182 in the NHS. The GMB union meanwhile pointed out that chief officers' pay has increased by 11% over the past two years.

Discontent is not restricted to England and Wales. In Scotland, council employees threatened to walk out for the first time in nearly a decade, even though their pay offer - 7.5% over three years, equivalent to an annual rise of 2.5% - is higher than their counterparts south of the border. They want 5% or £1,000, whichever is highest, three days' additional annual leave and an extra one-day public holiday.