I listened with interest to the slot on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on the new recruitment plans for the police service (Link).

The argument has obviously split around the matter of the need for fresh talent and the risk of having senior people in an operational organisation with no operational experience.

At first glance I tend to fall on the side of the doomsayers and for this I am aware that the charge of hypocrisy can be laid at my door. I am a former graduate of a ‘fast track’ scheme within an operational organisation. However, my path is slightly different to the direct entry being discussed for the police. I was already a serving member of the service with a number of year’s experience of the operational nature of the organisation before I entered the scheme. In this way I used the opportunity to accelerate my promotion and get the benefit of the career development opportunities available. However, during my time going through this process I met many candidates who were direct entry and saw first hand the risks associated with this recruitment strategy.

The other evening when there was nothing much I wanted to watch on TV I ended up trawling YouTube for old favourites. Originally intending to watch episodes of “Yes Minister”, don’t ask me how, I ended up watching an early 2000’s BBC documentary about Bang Kwang prison inThailand, popularly known as “The Bangkok Hilton”.

Here’s the link  if you want to watch, be warned, it’s pretty depressing viewing.

This Christmas brought a much needed break, coffee room chats with colleagues in the run up to the festive season have focussed on the theme of great tiredness, of the need to just have a break, frankly Christmas was almost incidental.

Several marathon sleeps later and it’s time to honour the traditions of reflection on the past year and focus on the challenges to come in 2013.

This year we have worked primarily in the Health sector. As predicted it has been a year of significant change, as the impact of the Health and Social Care Act becomes a reality, cuts, competition and the uncertainty of the full extent of the power that the new GP Commissioning Groups will wield in the health economy and how they will use it has seen  organisations move to ensure their focus on core business, efficiency, economy and value for money. This is borne out in system and structural change, and in many cases in TUPE transfer as the many and various organisations of the wider health economy unfreeze, change and refreeze, albeit as temporary as that re-frozen state may be.

I suppose if there is a lesson learnt this past year, it is that staff are getting to grips with the idea that change is a constant state. Whereas in the past the Public Sector has seen large scale “change programmes” with defined start and end dates and pre and post change states, the state of organisational change now seems almost perpetual. The main difference that staff are coming to terms with, that these changes more often than not have a  TUPE transfer as  a key feature of change. Public Sector as a lifelong workplace is no longer a certainty.

If you’ve seen the Chris Rock film ‘Head of State’ you’ll know that the ‘small man’ on the presidential campaign trail has a light bulb moment where he stops trotting out the prepared corporate line and to the outrageous injustices staring him in the face, shouts loud and clear “that aint right!” Of course with the magic of Hollywood a triumphant election campaign ensues, you can guess the rest.

We’re having our own “that aint right” moment. Trawling back through the wellbeing section on our website we have written about stress, toxic behaviour, messy management and a plethora of factors that contribute to ill health, lost productivity, excessive costs and damaged performance on numerous occasions.

Signal was pleased to attend the first NoOffence! Criminal justice conference yesterday. This relatively new group has, in a short space of time, brought together an impressive cross section of professionals all interested in criminal justice reform.

We at Signal are currently working with NoOffence! on a working group to improve employment support for ex-offenders and potential employers.

Signal were pleased to attend the second in a series of events run by Human Potential Accounting (HPA) on the subject of Human Capital Management (HCM) and it’s place in the financial reporting of UK business.

The event was held in the Dorchester Library of the Royal College of Physicians in London and was attended by a wide variety of interested people from many sectors:

• Finance
• HR
• Journalism
• Education
• Banking
• Professional Bodies
• Think tanks
• Corporate Governance firms

One area that was sadly not represented was Government, but more on that later.

The BBC news story on 28^th July 2011, about Whitehall being ripped off by large I.T. firms made interesting reading. (Click Link)

Yet again, Government is wondering how they are spending so much money on projects that deliver very little, or in some cases nothing at all.

There is little doubt that the I.T. firms are making money out of Whitehall, but I do question whether it is wilfully ‘ripping them off.’

One of the key factors in the many examples available of I.T. contracts and projects that have gone so array, is the lack of understanding by Senior Managers in the Government on how to negotiate workable contracts, manage projects and set realistic budgets.

I am prompted to write today after reflecting on a headline news item that the Home Secretary has announced significant reform to Police reward structures. The pay bill currently costs more than three quarters of the overall £11bn budget, like all organisations with sound governance in place, the Police Service needs to keep a weather eye on its costs, specifically its paybill costs.

(Clink link)

Before I continue I want to say this, that no one is saying that the Police don’t do an important job, but they are a service in an environment of limited resources the same as all other critical services e.g. Health going through its own kind of pain right now, and the Government like any other organisation must cut its cloth accordingly.

There have been two big announcements relating to banking this week, the first was the surprise announcement by the Chancellor that he will implement the increase in the levy on Banks this year, second was the announcement of the so called Merlin deal. I’ll not embarrass myself by trying to explain all of this, it has been covered extensively in the news: (Click Link) & (Click Link)

The reason I have highlighted these significant announcements is for a rather more cynical reason. On the coattails of these announcements have also been a number of statements about how it is now time to leave the Bankers alone, to stop “Banker bashing”, “let that be an end to it”.

My attention was caught today by the following story on the BBC

UK Trade and Investment staff ‘told to use up £1m’

There is without doubt questions of propriety to be answered here, but before we jump on our ‘High Horses’ let us not delude ourselves. This does happen and frequently.

For many years, normally in the period between January and March I was regularly sent memos, emails and sometimes graced by a personal visit from the Head of Finance to invite me to look at ‘Any little projects’ that I may want to fund, that up until that point hadn’t been given the green light because of budget restraint.

Although these messages/meetings were conducted in a most jovial way, sometimes with tea and chocolate biscuits involved, the message was clear.