Osiris Training

They only come out at night.  They don’t eat or drink and they feast on blood.  They have lived amongst us in secret for generations but now just want to be accepted to feel they belong.  Oh and to have equal rights with humans.  I am referring to the latest TV smash hit from the USA.  First Blood challenges the myths and champions the rights of vampires.  This is a new perspective on the equality and community cohesion agenda.

Can an employer reject an applicant on the grounds they can only work at night?  Can a service provider refuse to enter someone’s house or refuse to provide a service just because some one has a different lifestyle?  Should a vampire be able to marry a human? Should vampires have the vote?  What about pension entitlements for people who apparently live a very long time?  Are vampires more likely to commit criminal offences?  Should vampires be allowed to compete in the Olympics?

You may think this is all very silly but sometimes it is easier to explore sensitive issues in the safety of a make believe world. In the real world some have argued against inter-racial marriages, that some athletes have an unfair advantage due to ambiguity over their gender, that some groups like prisoners should not have the right to vote, that certain groups within society are more prone to criminality and that human rights don’t extend to everyone.

It is of course not by accident that this TV series is set in the Deep South in the very same plantation communities where racial segregation was most ingrained. In one epode a group of vigilantes burn down a house with the occupants in it. No great effort is made by the police to find those responsible for “clearing out the nest of vampires”. Despite their long lives vampires are not presented as having accumulated wisdom but having low cunning. They are strong, threatening and highly sexual. Young women are attracted to them. In fact there is a lot of ” fang –banging” going on. Vampires seem to hang out in night clubs. The theme music and opening title sequence reflects the rather seedy and sensual atmosphere, a swamp sound with the title “Bad Things”.

Are there parallels with other groups who suffer discrimination and prejudice?

Are there negative stereotypes and myths about this group?

Does the rest of the community make them feel they don’t belong here?

Are they reacting to prejudice and discrimination by considering them selves superior?

Are people afraid of them?

Are the news clips of vampire activists and spokes people for the rights of vampires poking fun at earnest middleclass liberals?

I only wish I had the courage to replace a few power point presentations on Equality and Diversity, Community Cohesion and Social Exclusion with an   episode of True Blood.

As in the Terminator the machines become intelligent, then self aware and then they try and take over. 

It’s like Dawn of the Living Dead the staff become mindless zombies. 

It’s like that film where the aliens gradually take over peoples bodies so that they look like the person, sound like the person but something about them is different.  Trouble is no one else can see it.

In other words it’s the introduction of new technology, new ways of working and a culture change all part of achieving greater efficiencies, cutting costs and doing more with less.  Only it doesn’t quite go to plan.  

Whilst the laptop can go anywhere I am still chained to it by emails.  Most of them unwanted, many just for info but still the machine has this strange hold over me.  It tempts me and teases me just to have a quick look even if it is the weekend.  It punishes me for going on holiday and neglecting it by multiplying in my absence filling my inbox and preventing me doing anything until I have lavished time and attention on it.  This intelligent machine corrects my spelling, argues with me about punctuation and won’t let me proceed without completing every section just right.  Every so often it makes me prove who I am to its satisfaction.  How long before it decides that it would be more efficient, reliable, consistent and 24/7 if it carried on without me. 

The staff are present in body if not in mind, happy to have a job but not happy in their job. 

Managers look the same as they did before but they are not the same.  Where once there were passionate debates about values and ethnics, about social justice and tackling poverty now the talk is of performance indicators, targets, league tables and “outcomes”.  Where they were once idealistic they are now pragmatic.  Where once there was innovation now there is procedure.  Where once there was passion now there is efficiency.

Yet all is not lost. I hear rumours of a resistance movement, small as yet unorganised groups who are using the old language of values to mount a counter attack. There is talk that necessity will bring back innovation. That the new technology can be used to create two way communications. Even that some managers have found a way to stop the ubiquitous “for info” email!

www.blairmcpherson.co.uk

The news that the London Borough of Barnet is not finding it easy to deliver savings is not surprising. All local authorities are going to struggle because of the size of savings required. What makes Barnet’s difficulties news worthy is that they claimed to have found the answer to delivering public services whilst operating within a reduced budget. Barnet proudly boasted that they intended to by the first “easy council”. They would meet ambitious efficiency targets by providing no frill council services using the model of the low cost airlines.

Councillors in Barnet have found that it’s not so easy to make the size of savings required and not possible to do it by simply making efficiencies. They were at best naive to claim that they had a way of making savings without making cuts to front line services their pre election claims were based not on what their officers will have been telling them but on an unproven believe that council services needed a dose of private sector realism.

However they will not be the only council facing up to the fact that they have to make large scale redundancies, cut grants to the voluntary sector, close day centres, libraries and leisure centre and take away home helps from frail elderly people. They will not be alone in finding that such dramatic cuts are unpopular but also that they take a lot longer to deliver than they anticipated. In the face of hostility from local media stays of execution will be granted whilst options are considered, closures will be phased to give time for alternative to be found, compromises will be agreed because politics is the art of the possible and frankly the original plans were impossible. And then there are the efficiencies which never really existed except on paper. The savings that allowed officers and councillors to claim that cuts to front line services would not be necessary like halving absenteeism rates, the ban on over time and the use of agency staff and better management of vacancies. And of course the total ban on the use of expensive management consultants.

What happens if the saving are not made? In the past if an individual department over spent some one might be sacked but under spends from other departments and reserve funds would balance the budget. What would happen if over ambitious efficiency targets resulted in a local authority running out of money and being unable to pay its bills? It has never happened but then no one thought banks could go bust.

Blair McPherson is author of People Management in a Harsh Financial Climate  www.blairmcpherson.co.uk

Slash and burn could be a rock band but increasingly it’s a phrase used to describe a drastic response to cutting an organisation’s budget. The approach is simple, if brutal, large scale compulsory redundancies. The calculations are simple how much do we need to save? (more…)

I am writing to you from the future. Your future. I am writing to tell you what happens when the money runs out. I am writing to tell you about a time after the Public Sector. A time when the Private Sector takes over the care of elderly people, the frail and the vulnerable. When the bottom line is profit and the only question is can we afford it?

In local government councillors and the local voters will have to decide which services will no longer be provided, expectations will have to be lowered not only in what the local authority can afford to provide but in the local authorities ability to shape and influence the prosperity and quality of life of local people.

To date the discussion has focused on the extent to which local authorities can afford to provide services like libraries, museums and swimming pools. Whether local authorities can continue to maintain local parks, make grants available to theatres, fund artist and musicians to go into schools, provide financial assistance to dance and drama groups or money to provide sporting opportunities for people with a learning disability. In the current financial climate can local authorities justify financial support to carnivals and festivals organised by ethnic minority groups or to fund welfare rights and advice groups. All these services could be considered non essential things you do if you have the money.

Taken in isolation it is hard to justify spending in these areas in view the competing demands from schools and child protection services, from services to support the increasing numbers of elderly people with dementia or the needs of people with severe learning disabilities and their families who provide the largest share of their care.

But these services don’t operate in isolation they are part of the way local authorities address the big issues of long unemployment ,homelessness, juvenile crime, drug and alcohol abuse. They are the means by which local authorities have been promoting social inclusion and community cohesion they are part of the strategy to reduces health inequalities.

It is not hard to see that that public swimming pools, leisure/ sports centres playing fields and parks are part of encouraging a healthy life style and form part of a strategy for addressing health inequalities. Less obvious is the impact of libraries if you still view them as simply lending books. Today’s libraries do so much more. A library in the middle of a housing estate is a community centre where single mums and their toddlers meet and are introduced to books and live classical music, it’s a venue for welfare rights sessions and local councillors’ surgeries, it’s a place for pop concerts in a safe alcohol free environment a hipper version of the church youth club. Libraries offer free access to the internet because not ever one has a computer at home, which is also why many libraries offer home work clubs

 In Lanacshire it was the library staff that got together with staff from children’s services to offer after school activities for gypsy and travellers children. The trust and good will generated providing a way in for other agencies including health and housing. When Lancashire suddenly acquired a Polish community it was library staff who first were first to engage as people came in to use the internet to keep in touch with family and friends back in Poland. It was library staff who answered questions and signed posted people to other services that could help. It was library staff who got together with the museum staff and put together a local history box of old photographs and house hold items to take round old people homes because the long term member stays intact and suddenly people come alive as the memories flood back.

These actives support people who otherwise would be at risk of being socially excluded.

Social inclusion, community cohesion and health inequality these are very big issues. Are we going to tolerate differences in life expectancy which mean that in some parts of the same local authority people die ten years younger than in other parts? Are we going to live with increasing numbers of disaffected young people coming into conflict with other members of their community? Are we going to accept riots, social unrest and disturbances as inevitable consequences of communities which are mixed in faith or race?

 How will local authorities address these issues if they are no long able to provide these services? Who will tackle the wicked issues if local authorities don’t.

Blair McPherson was until recently the Director of Community services at Lancashire county council. www.blairmcpherson.co.uk

Managers in the public sector are often not well equipped to manage an increasingly diverse work force. Many managers have not acquired the necessary confidence and skills to deal with situations which regularly arise in the modern work place when these situations have a racial dimension or involve a gay or disabled member of staff.

In the past the response has been a short recruitment and selection course to ensure managers follow procedures designed to reduce the risk of unintended discrimination supplemented with an equal opportunity training course aimed at making managers more culturally sensitive and aware. However this limited training does not equip managers to manage a diverse work force, to deal with people who hold different values and views, who spend their time out side of work very differently. It doesn’t equip managers to resolve conflicts between members of staff which may or may not be to do with their race or sexuality. It doesn’t equip managers with the necessary people management skills.

 Managers need to recognise that people bring into the world of work their experience of the wider world. If that experience is of prejudice and discrimination of constant negative stereotypes in the media then when they are over looked for promotion, when they are unsuccessful in gaining a place on a course, when they are excluded from conversations or believe people are talking about them behind their back they will ask themselves, is it because I am Black? If the response of management is dismissive then these staff will take this as further evidence the organisation does not recognise prejudice and discrimination except in its most blatant forms. However if management appears to willing to interpret any complaint by a black member of staff as evidence of racism then the  staff group as a whole will lose confidence in management and lose faith in the fairness of the organisations procedures and policies. What’s true about race is also true about sexuality, gender, disability and faith.

 Management is about managing people and the more diverse the people the more challenging the task.

If a manager lacks the skill and confidence to address an issue of poor attendance when face with a member of staff who claims this is harassment. If a manager struggles to deal with a member of staff who responses to being taken to tasks for failing to meet agreed deadlines by sighting bullying. How much more difficult will they find it to deal with a member of staff who responds with allegations of racism, complains of harassment due to their sexuality or accuses the manager or insensitivity to their disability.  

 The individual may well perceive that their treatment is because they are black or gay or disabled but that does not make it so. The manager needs to have the skill and confidence to manage a diverse workforce, to be sensitive to issues of race, gender, disability, faith, age, and sexuality yet not to let poor practise go unchallenged, inappropriate behaviour go unchecked or tolerate lower standards of work.

 To gain the skills and confidence to manage a diverse workforce manager’s need to develop their people management skills. This can best be achieved thought management development programmes that emphasis 360 degree feedback, coaching, mentoring and action learning sets. These support / learning forums can then be used to explore scenarios based on the type of situations managers find them selves in. Either with their mentor or in their learning set managers can work through scenarios like dealing with an attendance issue when the member of staff has a disability, dealing with a conflict between two members of the team when one is black, responding appropriately to a member of the team who claims they are being excluded and people are talking behind their back because of their sexuality or dealing with resentment arising out of a member of staffs request for annual leave to fit in with religious festivals. 

Blair McPherson was until recently a Senior Manager with a large Local Authority. He is author of An Elephant in the Room an equality and diversity training manual and People management in a harsh financial climate both published by www.russellhouse.co.uk

When you think of museums do you think of the V & A or the Natural History Museum in London. Huge buildings capable of housing a full sized Dinosaur and with queues of foreign tourists lining up to get in. These are national museums funded by central government. Most museums aren’t like this they are small, in out of the way places and run by local councils. A museum can be a terrace house with period furniture, a cotton mill with fully operational water or steam driven weaving machines, a fishing trawler and a large shed full of nautical related stuff, a partially preserved castle or just an old building with all sorts of odds and sods in it from Roman Britain to military memorabilia up and till the second world war.

Unlike the national museums these local ones are not open all the year round or every day of the week as visitor numbers just aren’t there. In fact the numbers are largely made up of school trips which is why so many museums feature displays on Roman Britain and the 1^st and 2^nd World War in line with the national curriculum. Of course there is also a focus on local history because even if there is no longer a cotton industry or a fishing fleet these occupations have shaped the locality and given it its unique character.

The buildings have most often been donated and the collections loaned or bequeathed. In fact so much has been acquired over the years that only a fraction of the collections are able to be exhibited the rest are stored-big sheds full of agricultural machinery from between the wars or office equipment from long closed factories like typewriters, phones, clocking in machines and tools for making things that are no longer made.

The size, randomness and location of all this is part of the challenge of running a big local authority museum service. A challenge which in the current harsh financial climate includes cutting costs. These museums don’t generate sufficient income to meet their running costs. The buildings have high maintenance costs and as a result of age and design are expensive to heat and light. There is little point in raising admission charges at the expense of visitor numbers when the cafe and the gift shop are the biggest source of income. Casual staff are engaged during the season and supported by enthusiastic volunteers as part of keeping the costs down. The “Friends of the museum service” do some fund raising and try to get corporate sponsorship from local businesses to fund exhibitions during the summer but the collections are not sexy enough to attract corporate sponsors and local businesses are cutting back.

Local government councillors say museum services can’t be protected from cuts and must make their share of the savings. Increasingly questions are being asked about whether we can afford all or any of these museums.

The thing is it turns out to be very difficult to close a museum or give away a collection. Could the “Friends” take over the running of the museum and staff it with volunteers? Is this an example of “Big Society” get the local community to look after their local heritage? Sounds an obvious solution but even if you don’t employ paid staff it still costs more to run these museums than you can collect from visitors and then there is the responsibility of repairs to the building. The “Friends” don’t want the financial liability unless the local authority will retain responsibility for the capital costs and provide a guaranteed annual grant to meet the gap in running costs, which they won’t. You can’t sell the building or collections because of the terms on which they were bequeathed and you can’t loan out the bulk of this because other museums don’t have the space.

The answer so far has been to apply for grants to the Heritage Lottery Fund for capital works but often there is a requirement for matched funding from local authorities which increasingly is not there. Opening hours are reduced, repairs neglected and paid staff replaced by volunteers. At some point a museum will be closed and moth balled whilst the legal people work out a way to get round the obstacles to selling off the lot.

Blair McPherson was until recently the Director of Community Services for a large local authority. He is author of People management in a harsh financial climate www.blairmcpherson.co.uk

After savage public sector budget cuts organisations will look very different. They will require a very different type of manager. Those managers who remain will have to unlearn what they thought management was about.

New smaller organisations will have fewer staff and a lot less managers. Fewer managers means greater spans of responsibility. Managers will find themselves responsible for a very broad range of services in which they have no professional background and no technical expertise they will have to rely on their management skills and be enthusiastic delegators.

To start with three long held truisms will have to be unlearnt.  Management is about controlling people. Management is about knowing things .Management is about doing things. These will need to be replaced with management is about asking good questions. Management is about freeing people up to get on with it. Management is about helping people get another job.

  Management will no longer be about knowing things. Put another way, in the new organisation being good at your profession doesn’t qualify you for management. Lots of managers have excellent technical skills, they were a great engineer, a brilliant teacher, a skilful lawyer, an accomplished accountant but now they are a manager and they need to develop management skills. Managers should not spend time doing things because that usually means they are trying to do someone else’s job, possibly drawing on those professional skills that served them so well in the past. Now they have to delegate and learn to manage people who have technical knowledge and skills in areas they don’t. They must instead rely on their management skills. Management skills are about knowing the right questions to ask, the ones that make people stop and think, and demonstrate you are taking an interest. These are often why questions. Why are we doing this, how will this benefit customers?

  Management is not about controlling people, it’s about trusting them, building up their confidence in their own ability, and supporting them by removing the obstacles which stop them from doing a good job. This means delegating financial decisions so that the individual does not have to get authorisation from above before they do what they know needs doing. As long as someone stays within their budget, why do they need you to authorise expenditure?

  In order to delegate tasks and decisions you have to help the individual develop the knowledge and skills required. This is not about sending someone on a course, it is about showing them how to do something, being there to answer questions and advise. Of course, delegating is initially time consuming, it’s quicker to do it yourself, but in the longer term if you skill up someone, then that’s another thing you don’t have to do.

  Why would someone want to take on more responsibility, learn new skills and increase their knowledge? Why to get a better job of course. So, a good manager helps their best people to leave.

Blair McPherson was until recently a Director in a large local authority he is author of UnLearning management-short stories on modern management and People management in a harsh financial climate www.blairmcpherson.co.uk

I expect that over the next few months we’re are going to hear a lot more about fairness and morality as the savagery of budget cuts in the public sector  becomes apparent.

Fairness is what the public sector is all about; services are not run for profit but provided for the greater good of the community. At one time this meant clean water and clean air, free education and free health care, it meant protection for the vulnerable and help for the frail. The public sector championed equal opportunities and strived to ensure people were not discriminated against because of their race, gender, disability, faith, sexuality or age.

So how come cuts in welfare benefits are being justified on the grounds of fairness and cuts in services designed to help the vulnerable and disadvantaged are planned at the very time they are needed most. That doesn’t seem right.

Of course there were always those who talked of the deserving and the undeserving poor. Some people didn’t deserve our help the lazy and workshy those who were unemployed, homeless, destitute or ill due to their own actions, criminals, drunks, drug addicts and those who are not from round here. It would appear now that the argument is that we can’t afford to help so many people. So welfare cuts are aimed at those who don’t deserve help. That seems fair. Fair but not morally right. If we only gave to those who deserved it there would be very few in recite of our help. We provide help and assistance because people need help not because they deserve it. Morally you cannot refuse to treat someone because they had unprotected sex, drove while under the influence of alcohol, chain smoke or live on a diet of unhealthy fast food. You can’t say people have the right not to be discriminated against provided they are nice people.

The debate on how we balance the books is in danger of confusing us into thinking that if something is” fair” it is also morally right. I am a big fan of Dexter a television show imported from the USA. Dexter is a serial killer the twist is that he works for the police and only kills other serial killers. Dexter therefore is the good guy who kills bad guys. But that doesn’t make it right does it?

Blair McPherson www.blairmcpherson.co.uk