Email
The cuts to public sector spending, as proposed last week in the Queen's speech, has not come as a surprise to anyone. Given the current UK fiscal deficit, we all knew the new coalition government would set out plans to slash public sector spending as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the ramifications of this go beyond cost control.
Clearly, a cut to public sector spending will impact on staffing levels. However, public sector managers must learn from the mistakes of the private sector, where many organisations adopted a 'slash and burn' approach during the recession. They cut too deep, too soon and in the wrong places.
This can impact on productivity, staff morale and retention in quite catastrophic ways. Cuts made should be carefully considered and not be a knee-jerk reaction to proposed spending measures.
Over the past five years, the public sector has made significant steps towards attracting and retaining the brightest talent, often from the private sector. Therefore, while these cuts are inevitable, the public sector will need to work hard to safeguard this reputation and ensure it is still viewed as an employer of choice. If public sector organisations fail to do this, then they will struggle to entice and hold on to high quality, talented staff, risking their natural migration to private sector rivals and damaging the work already done to improve efficiency, apply commercial models and delivery.
A blanket ban on recruitment
And let's not forget the proposed recruitment freeze across the public sector. While we are optimistic that this implies a focus on managing human capital within specific budgets, we must remain cautious that this could also imply a blanket ban on recruitment. This could leave some departments significantly under resourced and have severe consequences on both service and staff morale. Instead, we hope that as long as managers work within specified budgets, they will still be able to bring in additional resource where needed.
While uncertain times lie ahead, it is clear that these cuts will impact on jobs. As such, my recommendations to public sector employees would be to make yourself indispensable wherever possible. Try to establish your own personal brand in the workplace – by this I mean taking measures such as ensuring you know your job inside out, raising your profile where possible at events and keeping constantly up to speed with the aims of your organisation and wider industry issues. Also, remember to have confidence in your abilities and actively seek feedback to help shape your role in the organisation.
My advice to managers would be to keep clear lines of communication open to employees and to focus internal engagement strategies on maintaining high levels of staff morale and service. This will help managers ensure that staff members do not become disillusioned and start looking to the steadily increasing opportunities in the private sector.
Ultimately, these cuts put both public sector employees and managers in difficult positions. However, by keeping internal lines of communication open and continuing to deliver a high quality service, the sector will be able to make the best out of a tough situation.
Nicola Linkleter is managing director, Badenoch & Clark
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
From Flip Chart Fairy Tales
;
Comments