Facts4eu sent out a good note highlighting the productivity collapse in the public sector. Productivity is now 8.5% down on six years ago. The government needs to reverse this quickly, as it is making public services unaffordable to taxpayers.
As someone who has led parts of the public sector as a Councillor with Council Executive responsibilities and as a Minister I know the need to work with the staff and system to get better performance. As a former Chairman of two international industrial businesses I know what you can achieve with the right approach and key staff.
The first thing for the public sector to grasp is quality and productivity are two sides of the same coin. An efficiency drive must not be cost cutting above quality of service. It must be better and smarter working, mindful of the needs and views of staff.
Put in a quality system. Get things right first time to save duplication of effort and more complaints. Fix things that go wrong as soon as they are identified. Manage error out by changing approach when a series of errors emerges. Keep service design and delivery straightforward and easy to understand. Reward staff that do well. Make managers experience what staff have to do. Dont put off serving a user. That means you need more than one contact, a holding reply followed by the reply or action. Don’t allow backlogs to build.
As Chairman I always asked to see the complaints. They present opportunities . They reveal what is wrong that needs fixing. Remedy something well for someone you have messed up can create a more loyal customer. They see they matter. Listen to customers or service users, as it is their needs that give you a job. Design a service they want, not one that is convenient for the provider.
I would be happy to help the public sector be better for both employees and users. Like productivity and quality they go together to create success.
January 10, 2025
Good morning.
Alas, yesterday one of my elderly neighbours had to go back into hospital, which will be the third time in six weeks. They missed the fact that she had a compound fracture from a fall she had, and issues with her blood. She will now have to go through the same routine as before.
This is EXACTLY how I think. In a previous job as a manager I would often would have to deal with what I called, ‘Customer Issues’. I never referred to them as complaints as this had a negative connotation. We had a three step process.
1) Listen.
2) Ask questions.
3) Go and fix it.
The company I was then working for was providing a service. A service which people were paying for. And not only that, I realised that these customers had the power of CHOICE !! They chose to come to me and not anywhere else. This I valued. That is why I so firmly believe in competition, those that don’t care soon go to the wall. I call it, “Economic Darwinism” Not so much the survival of the fittest, but the less stupid !
We need CHOICE in the Public Sector. Hence why I keep banging on about allowing companies the ability to offer private Health Care as a non-taxable benefit. This and other reforms would make our healthcare much better.
January 10, 2025
SIr John’s prescription sounds like what I was trying to get managers to do as a consultant in both private industry and the public sector for years in the late 1990’s and 2000’s, sometimes with great success. There is a key difference between the two sectors. If people – nearly all naturally resistant to change – ultimately won’t change, despite re-training, support, counselling etc – you terminate their employment. That is extremely difficult in the public sector. In industry you don’t get stuck with problem people as you sometimes do in the public sector. In the public sector you can move them sideways or, if you’re lucky, the majority will carry them, bypassing them in key processes. Either way overall productivity does not increase as much as it could because the dead wood still has to be carried even if it’s moved somewhere less damaging.
Anotyher key difference is the absence of competition in the public sector. One state industry, I knew got its internal teams to tender in competition with external contractors. It worked well but many unions will not accept such a practice so it is rarely an option.
January 10, 2025
Large manufacturing companies or I should say successful ones run their businesses within the constraints of ISO 9000 or in some cases QS 9000 whose collective aims are quality and productivity. I have been away from the game too long to know whether there are particular forms of these disciplines that deal with purely administrative organisations such as the DVLA, HMRC, or DEFRA for instance. If there are, then they should be applied for the overall good of the end product, just as it is with Nissan for instance. The moral and esprit de corps within an organisation that works well is always better than one that limps along. Costs and quality are carefully controlled, resulting in happy customers and the continuation of a profitable organisation. Profit in the case of a public service equals customer satisfaction to a large extent. Cost to the customer is part of that. The application of japanese Kenzei, or continuous improvement, also adds to job satisfaction.
My one and only contact with the DVLA suggests that they have put earlier problems behind them. Reporting across many other government organisations suggests that they have yet to face the challenge, not helped of course when government itself does so much to alienate the public for purely party political ends. If you cannot retain customer, ie electoral support, you are on a downhill slippery slope to an early demise.
January 10, 2025
Excellent advice. It is unfortunate that, so often, it is not followed in the private as well as the public sector. I do wonder if the ease and volume of digital forms of communication has something to do with failures to get responses. Being old fashioned I wrote actual letters to a number of companies in November last year. The speed of response has ranged from immediate to still waiting for a reply.
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