management | ukwatch.net

In the Name of Efficiency

Ellie Keen — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:48:02 +0000

Under New Labour, the public services have increasingly been subject to modernisation programmes as government policy has attempted to introduce private sector practice in order to gain supposed efficiency savings. A key facilitating instrument here have been so-called “new management techniques”.

In civil service, the new management techniques have taken the form of Taylorist means of work organisation. Bespoke packages have been introduced following millions being spent on reports from management consultants. In Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the Lean technique – originally derived from the Toyota car company in Japan – has been the result. It provoked a strike during its test pilot.

Alongside Lean, and as part of the same overall neoliberal vision of modernisation in the HMRC, a new regime of hotdesking has been implemented. Hotdesking is predicated on no worker having their own, particular desk in order to maximise utilisation of desks and to reduce the existence of “surplus” desks. Cost-cutting and cost-saving have been the order of the day here. This has meant civil servants in the HMRC are barred from having tea, coffee, sweets, crisps and paraphernalia like photographs of family and teddy bears on their desks because these suggest ownership and desk rigidity.

In one HRMC office in the north west of England, local management established what the workers there have labelled a “Guanteddymo Bay”. All staff’s teddy bears were removed, staff said, by “dawn raids” and “special rendition” from their desks and placed in a locked glass case so the workers can still see their teddy bears but not touch them.

The local branch of the HRMC workers’ union, the PCS, highlighted the absurdity of the situation in its recent newsletter with photographic evidence of the practice.

In another HMRC office in the north west, a worker was leaving late one night, having stayed on to finish some tax returns. Instead of showing concern for the worker being late getting home or congratulating the worker for their diligence, the manager at the office asked whether the desk that the worker had used had been cleared, adding the night shift was coming in. The worker responded: “But we don’t have a nightshift!” The manager told him: “No, but we’re twinned with another office and they do, so this means we have to do what they do.”

In another civil service office, this time a much larger one in central London and nicknamed the village, hotdesking is also used. People who work there are referred to as “village people” but others have been turned into nomads as each morning they turn up for work, they have to roam the building looking for a desk to work at. It looks like a playground of small kids where there is competition to be first in line.

Such unusual, if not bizarre, management practices highlight that the zealous search for efficiency savings has become a search at all costs. Management look for huge savings as a result of central government diktat. They are, thus, willing to pay consultants, as outside experts, huge fees to dream up new means of lean ways of working. And as we know to our cost, the chances of management consultants’ ideas working are not great.

Quite apart from the dehumanising side to the experience of these examples of work, such new ways of working easily create inefficiencies themselves. They either stop work from being done at all, or slow down the existing rate of work because of plunging morale and ill-feeling by staff.

But in an era of dogma about the superiority of market methods, this does not seem to matter. The competition for the political kudos of cutting the size and alleged waste of the public services remains king. And that is why the current government has established a risk assessment mechanism which implicitly recognises the craziness of these new works of working at the operation level.

Thus, the civil service has a monitoring practice of what is called “looking for elephant traps”. Departments and offices are asked to centrally report on any instances or phenomenon that could lead to bad publicity. With this information sent in, monitors come round to carry out a risk assessment of whether remedial action needs to be taken. In the case of Guanteddymo its removal was ordered. The fear is that bad publicity, possibly instigated by the PCS union, could lead to public pressure to row back on the government’s modernisation programme.

Loyalty to Corporation, Services to Customers

Ellie Keen — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:12:20 +0000

HEFCE wants from staff loyalty. From an article by John Gill in THES, 30 Nov 2007:

A report from the Leadership, Governance and Management Strategic Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council for England says that the sector is “on the cusp of substantial and complex change” and calls for staff to adopt new attitudes.

It says: “Staff will need to be more aware of and aligned to the strategic needs of the higher education institution.

“Academics’ goals are often related to their discipline rather than their institution, and they will need to develop institutional loyalties in addition to discipline loyalties.”

It also warns universities not to be “afraid” of the language and culture of business, and says that managerial leadership is not valued or rewarded highly enough.

So, the new corporate mentality of universities make them love loyalty and demand loyalty from their staff.

But it is widely accepted that a person’s answers to the question “What you do not like?” provide more insights into his/her personality than answers to a positively charged question “What do you like?” Let us apply the same approach to universities and see what they do not like.

A case study is provided by the Leeds Metropolitan University’s programme document “Leeds Met ACTS: Attitude, Character & Talents” for its new staff performance development system, see Leeds Met ACTs Source Booklet. Staff attitudes are divided in two groups: More Effective Behaviours and Less Effective Behaviours. It is the Less Effective Behaviours list that is interesting. A few gems:

Does not accept the concept of “customer” or “service user”
Does not demonstrate respect for rules, regulations and procedures
Does not prepare written or verbal communication effectively for meetings and other interactions
Does not engage with the Vision & Character of Leeds Met
Does not volunteer new ideas/suggestions for improvement
Sceptical about change – lets negative reaction to change affect morale of self and others
Fails to explain the need/reasons for change
Talks negatively about others and the university
Uses learning and development opportunities purely for own self development or recognition

We see the prominent role of the concept of “customer” or “service user”. It is another key buzzword; I feel that it is directly linked to the loyalty issue.

Indeed, Lewis Elton‘s brief letter to THES (“Client not customer”, 25 November 2005) contains a remarkably precise formulation:

Students are neither customers (“persons who buy”), nor consumers (“persons who purchase goods or services”) – they are clients (“persons who seek the advice of a professional man or woman”). [...] (All quotes are from the Collins English Dictionary.)

If we accept that students are clients who seek the advice of a professional man or woman, we instantly recognise that the relations between a client and a professional are regulated by professional codices controlled by a wider professional community. You cannot just come to a solicitor, hand her money and dictate what she has to do for you — a solicitor’s primary responsibility is compliance with the law and extensive professional regulations. Similarly, you cannot come to GP and demand a prescription — it is a doctor’s duty to decide what is best for you on the basis of his experience and, again, norms of his profession.

In my humble opinion, only loyalty to their disciplines and their communities makes academics what they are. In the present disputes about the future of academia, we have to insist that we are professionals, that only the peer review and peer control of professional communities ensures both rigour of research and high standards of education — and, of course, we have to insist that students are our clients. Moreover, it is crucial for survival of universities that some of our students become our disciples and absorb the ethics norms of our communities.

HEFCE wants to de-professionalise university staff by cutting their connections to professional communities and professional networks.

It could be part of a wider picture: anecdotal evidence suggests an increasingly hostile stance of the Government towards learned societies. But this is a serious issue which has to be properly discussed on its own.

Disclaimer. Should I remind you that my views are mine alone and not those of my employer, or of any professional organisation, or anyone else, for that matter?