I have just been reading the article below on the end of council league tables.

BBC News

It is amazing that the need to make the cuts required in the budget deficit may actually be leading to a more enlightened form of Public Sector management. Just a quick run through the article highlights the excessive checking and monitoring processes that have been placed on all of our public bodies over the last 13 years. The fact that it is suggested that one council has had to employ 90 full time staff at a cost of £3.7m, just to prepare information for central government, leaves one feeling slightly sick. How much more so for the poor people whose taxes have gone to fund that purely administrative function?

Over checking is a symptom of ‘Command & Control’ management. The unpalatable reality that says “We do not trust you.”

This level of inspection, information return and checking has, in the past, been seen as ‘Good Governance,’ but actually is one of the critical factors that destroys any governance.

There is no responsibility taken by the various departments for their own actions. Organisational efficiency is compromised by resourcing the huge bureaucratic machine required to comply with the scrutiny, and innovation is stifled.

So, it should come as a breath of fresh air to councils that this may be changing. However what comes next must not be a vacuum. Governance is a necessary process. If over checking is removed, there must be something to fill the gap. Responsibility must be taken by the individual bodies for their actions. There must be a sound governance structure put in place that assures and ensures the money is being well spent and the services provided add real value. This does not require ‘Big Brother’ looking at every last detail, or requiring endless reports, but it will need managing.

It is often the case that the people who do the work, know best how to deliver that work. Trust the councils to know their business, but give them the skills to ensure they are well governed. Targets that drive the wrong behaviour may be on the way out, let’s make sure what comes next doesn’t compound the problem.

Matthew Scott. Dip Management, Cert MCE.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the IIA.

I caught the episode of C4 Dispatches (Click link) the other evening, “How the banks won”.

I’ve been reflecting on it ever since, I suppose the point that is niggling at me is not the litany of shocking revelations about the behaviour of the banks since the bail out, and oh but there were many revelations to take your breath away. No, it was the fact that the programme and its long list of revelations needed to be broadcast at all.

Throughout the recession and now as we attempt to haul ourselves out of it and avoid another, we keep talking about the behaviour of the banks, but behaviour doesn’t come from entities, systems or bureaucracies, it comes from people.

Banks are just one example. I’ve had many experiences where the behaviour of people in organisations is oft bemoaned by insiders who feel that they just don’t fit. “Why doesn’t someone do something about it?” they say, but the truth is, these behaviours are allowed to flourish because culturally either implicitly or explicitly through our style, approach and communication we give permission for it to take place.

So what may be done about bad or negative behaviour drivers in organisations? In my opinion when asking “What really matters here?” and “What type of organisation do we want to be”, in answering these two questions the people at the top will set the tone and through the example of their own style, communication and behaviours where they lead, others will follow. Unless the answer to these questions changes, behaviour will not.

When we are busy working towards our goals, performing, delivering, achieving it is easy to lose sight of these fundamental questions. Organisations spend enormous sums of money, time and resource on change programmes when in fact a fundamental look at themselves would truly set them on their path. This is why we’re exploring Cultural Audits, People Risk Audits as a method of truly understanding the impact of people in the work place, on the achievement of objectives and the effect of behaviour on performance.

Jane Pound MCIPD, MIIA

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the CIPD.

Some years ago, whilst a bright eyed trainee auditor, I recall some lively debate at “audit school” regarding the items that could and couldn’t go on a Balance Sheet. In particular the discussion was fairly heated around the concept of goodwill and intangible assets. 

Now, years later, battle scarred in the fields of both Internal Audit and HR, if I have learned anything at all, it is the significant impact both positive and negative that people have on results. Aside from the very great advantages that enormous sums of money can buy, the one real differentiating factor in organisations, large and small is the knowledge, skills and experience, the very great talent that people bring. To quote the often over quoted “People really are our greatest asset”, but they really are.

Interesting then isn’t it that whilst we have gone some way to resolving the question of Goodwill on the balance sheet, there is still no meaningful way of accounting for the value added to an organisation’s capability by its people, or indeed the damage that they inflict through negative behaviours. The debate about intangible assets has variously been off and on the agenda.

The Combined Code requires Directors and Senior Managers to have in place a clear system for the identification, assessment and reporting on the various risks that impact the achievement of the objectives of the business, and to comment on the adequacy of the internal control mechanisms that they have in place to address these risks. In all the years since CoSo, Turnbull and statements on internal control, have we really got our heads around the real impact of people?

I’m willing to bet not. I can imagine the risk registers now in my minds eye, “Loss of key personnel” stated and some bland statement about HR Planning, Recruitment strategy, possibly mentions Reward Strategy and Talent Management framework.

Having been there – lost some key personnel I mean, I can say with certainty that it was incredibly painful, and it wasn’t just the cost of the recruitment bill;

• Ever increasing overtime bill
• Domino effect of people leaving
• Impact on service users, complaints
• Impact on remaining staff resources stretched to breaking point and on morale
• The services that got cut to deliver the essential stuff
• The staff relations that went downward

The costs to the organisation over a year were immense, but we didn’t put a price tag on all of this. So now, in the aftermath of the recession, we’re beginning to see a response both from business and Government on how to prevent anything so awful happening again, including the publication of the latest Governance Code. Although well meant, the responses so far are limited to process and procedure, no one yet has tackled the bad behaviour, the strange behaviour of target chasing that brought so many financial businesses and countless others to the brink.

There has been much comment on the likely impact of making the UK financial industry too regulated and “constrained”, a brain drain of the best talent to more friendly shores. We clearly understand the real value of our people, especially the benefits they bring when they’re engaged and working for our best interest, we also understand in our gut, if not in numbers the unthinkable impact when they leave us. So surely now is the right time to design a more meaningful grasp on measuring the real value of people to our business capability?

Jane Pound MCIPD, MIIA

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the IIA or CIPD.

In a former life I worked in Prison for a while. It was a life changing experience for me in many ways. I do not propose to talk about that in any great detail here perhaps that is another article. No, the thing that prompted me to sit down and type today was two-fold.

I have mostly locked my prison experience away in a place inside, but every so often something will happen and out it pops, and I am there again, right in the thick of it. On other occasions, prompted by nothing at all, a vague thought or random memory will sneak up on me and once again I am in the high state of alert that seemed to be the normal way of working.

Both methods of reminder have happened to me over the past few days. First whilst driving through beautiful countryside the other day a specific thought came into my head “I tried so damn hard”, it is an ongoing source of frustration and regret that against the vast Victorian machine that is prison way of life (well in the one I worked in anyway) it was so incredibly tough to permanently effect change that it often felt like swimming in treacle.

Later during the same day, still with this thought lurking in the background I got to thinking about my line manager, Governor I should say, someone whom I held in very high esteem. I Googled him and found an article written by him during the time that I was there working with him. There were those words once again “We try very hard”.

Then yesterday morning the new Justice Secretary Ken Clarke was the headline item, prison needs to change he said, the population pressures are so great it means that nothing meaningful can take place inside prison to reduce re-offending rates. Prison doesn’t have the impact on offenders that it should, it doesn’t effect a change in behaviour that tax payers might expect, in fact it’s a revolving door, and the approach is positively “Victorian” he said.

My own view is that the Victorians designed a very effective “prison machine”, the buildings and the daily way of life complemented each other perfectly. It is a very simplistic machine, but it makes absolute sense from a Victorian perspective. It works very well in terms of control over time and people’s activities. Attempts to change it, modernise it often seemed like window dressing, the fundamentals sitting underneath all those positive things that we tried so hard at, Education, work, drug rehabilitation programmes, just didn’t change, which meant that all those important reducing re-offending activities were viewed as add ons, taking place in “out stations”.

The truth is that no matter how hard we tried, we were up against a very effective machine.

During my tenure there were many occasions when a requirement to make significant cuts arose, it was very painful and we did everything we could to preserve staffing, not directly affect the regime and therefore prisoners. It got to the stage where there was nothing left to cut, the next request would inevitably affect staff and prisoners directly. Since that time we have had the arrival of a new Government and the full (we hope) revelation of the yawning hole in the public finances.

My hope for prisons then is that when those cuts begin to take effect that in order to change prison the system has to change. If the way a system is designed drives the behaviour of the people who work and in prisons case, live in it, then work on the system. It is in my view not about choosing what to cut, how and when to cut, but how to build something that does what you want it to do in the first place. This means unpicking the knitting from within, changing the system, new ways of working, new organisational structures, a transformation that will mean everything else will flow from this, placing different priorities at the centre of everything that gets done, leading to different perspective on core values, ultimately effecting a cultural shift that outwardly demonstrates that this is a different place than it used to be. Those who don’t feel that they can align to this will either quietly grumble and grin and bear it, many others who feel that they don’t fit will leave.

My point here is made in very simplistic terms ,but it is long term and not at all easy, but I think it is the way to deliver meaningful savings and a prison system that is more effective in delivering the results that Mr Clarke said he is looking for.

Jane Pound MCIPD, MIIA

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the IBC.