Death of the 20th Century model of public service

One of the major issues facing the Queensland Government is recruiting and retaining a highly productive and motivated workforce – a topic featuring prominently in some public service reform work I’m undertaking here. Queensland is by no means alone in this; most governments around the world are dealing with the same challenge. The finger of blame is often pointed at either poor pay and conditions or a supposed loss in the value of public service.

The unfortunate but common reaction is often to focus effort on internal HR policies like graduate programmes, obscure and weakly transparent ‘talent management’ pools, or ill fitting workforce skills measures. An annoying example of the latter can be found in the UK’s ‘Professional Skills for Government’ model which not only delivered an absurd pre-Adam Smith approach to centrally proscribing generalisation but also used this as a deliberate sleight of hand to avoiding more pressing civil service reform issues.

I’m sure some of these HR policies have a role to play. What they miss though is the more fundamental issue that the ‘offer’ of a career in public service is still too rooted in a 20th Century concept of working life. The hallmarks of that are:

• Hierarchy: a long and weary trudge upwards which pays off when you get to the top of tree but requires excessive amounts of deference and subservience on the way up.
  


• Lack of autonomy: a reluctance to grant autonomy or devolve responsibility to more junior staff. Worse still, holding of power on many of the small but significant employment matters like secondment rules by organisational administrators who wield these in an inappropriate and untargeted manner.
  


• Deferred benefits: most obviously in pensions but also in a more hidden way in eligibility for wider-ranging and juicier roles with experience. These might help motivate when people stick in a single career for 30 years or more but have little relevance to employee aspirations today.
  


• Emphasis on stability and security not reward for risk or testing of boundaries: obvious in both public sector reward strategies and the softer culture and work practices.
  


• Presumption that status still holds or matters to people: I think people have developed a much healthier notion of what individuals are about. So even if the status of senior bureaucrats still stands (which I’m sure it probably doesn’t) it probably has a weaker motivating factor for people in attaining it.
  


• An idle assumption that the traditional concept of ‘public value’ holds: I actually think people still care about contributing to betterment of society. But they do so in a much sharper way – where in the past it could manifest in a more abstract way (e.g. like working in back office or support role of a ‘good’ institution) I think now people want a clearer demonstration of how they individually make a difference.
  

Much more recognition should be given to such changes in the underlying motivations, values and aspirations of employees. People want flexibility, control, better rewards for when they get things right, and a clearer sense of how they individually are making a difference. Therefore I’d suggest a more fundamental package of reform should include to:

• Remove restrictions on entry to public service: there’s still too much monopsonistic activity going on under the guise of recruitment and promotion rules, or irrelevant professional groupings. Even when roles are advertised outside they are often obfuscated in style or mode. Let the people who really want to work in the public service do so, and those who don’t move on.
  


• Be more flexible on pay and conditions: moving away from large numbers of rigid grades to looser banding of roles and more flexibility in reward and role.
  


• Abolish the concept of ‘interchange’ (which only serves to reinforce artificial barriers and too often ends up mired in HR bureaucraticese), instead rewarding wider experience where it genuinely adds value and leaving individuals to make their decisions in the light of this.
  


• Develop more fluid organisation models: for example like the ‘Shamrock Organisation’ model promoted by Charles Handy. This gives scope for people to make public service contributions in a way that retains more of the independence and autonomy that matters to them.
  


• Create more direct chains and reporting lines: which gives people scope to see and be involved in more of the strategic and organisational decision making going on and provides a stronger sense of personal impact.
  


• Find clearer ways to demonstrate how people can make a difference whether in ‘front’ or ‘back’ office roles.
  


• Promote the positive in the brand: public service can actually be an incredible rewarding and enjoyable career. You get to work with smart and committed people, have opportunities to make huge differences to people’s lives and, contrary to popular perception, are often reasonably remunerated.