Osiris Training

Hogwash is not the title of a new Harry Potter book it’s what I think of all this rhetoric about Big Society, Co operatives and Social Enterprises. It’s an expression of my irritation at the coalition Governments attempts to present a second class offer as a first class choice. Co operatives or Social Enterprises are an inferior job offer for public sector workers. It’s better than redundancy and unemployment, it’s a little better than working for the private sector but it’s nowhere near as good as working for the public sector in terms of pay, holiday entitlement, sick pay, pension and job security. Even in these uncertain times you have a much better chance of redeployment in a large public sector organisation than in a small cooperative.

 Social enterprises in health and social care services are not good news for staff because pay and conditions are likely to be inferior to the NHS and Local Authority Social Services and there are no big profits to be made in the care of older people so not much “dividend” to shared amongst the workforce. But will it be better for the customer? Only if you think the not for profit sector is inherently better than the NHS or Social Services and seeing as the governments idea is that the expertise to run these services will come from managers transferring from the NHS and social services I can’t see that there will be much difference. Well who is it better for? The tax payer, it’s cheaper.

The real agenda here is nothing to do with empowering employees, improving services or creating dynamic and innovative organisations free from public sector bureaucracy. It’s about changing the relationship between the state and the individual or you will have to take more responsibility for you and yours because

1.  We can’t afford to

2.  We don’t want to

3.  We think it’s better for people to stand on their own two feet.

Blair McPherson is author of People management in a harsh financial climate and Equipping managers for an uncertain future both published by www.russellhouse.co.uk as part of the Developing managers on a tight budget series.

A national survey has revealed that money and job security are not the biggest source of conflict in the workplace but work load is. The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR) commissioned a survey of a 1000 full time employees the report “Tough Talk” found 32% of employees stated that the primary cause of difficult conversations at work was workload and that within the public sector this increased to 45%.

The report covers the last 12 months and indicates that there is a growing problem of conflict over workloads even before the public sector budget cuts are implemented. Cuts which will inevitably include further reductions in staffing and increased workloads. Employees at the front line are understandable concerned that they may get the brunt of the public’s increased dissatisfaction and frustration. 

No doubt the response of most front line staff will be “don’t blame me” when customers complain about service cuts and staff shortages. Many will feel very bad that they can’t do a good job. Some will suggest people complain to management or their MP but indicate it won’t do much good because everyone knows it is a result of the “cuts”.

 The report highlights that many staff feel that management don’t support them, increase workloads and ignore the resulting problems. A good line manager will offer staff some protection from unreasonable workloads and a good manager will not leave front line staff to cope with a frustrated and angry customer. But in local government much will depend on how senior managers and councillors have conducted the budget debate. Was the wider community involved and were their views taken account of. Some local authorities were very clear early on about the size and scale of budget saving required and made it clear libraries would have to close, grants to the voluntary sector would have to be cut, charges would be introduced or increased and some elderly people would no longer be eligible for help at home. Others maintained efficiency savings would mean front line services would not be effected. 

Even where councillors and senior managers do front up cuts to services front line staff will find that cost cutting inevitably leads to staffing reductions and bans on the use of overtime and agency staff. What senior managers and councillors need to be absolutely confident about is that these cost cutting measures don’t compromise the basic service to vulnerable people. It is one thing to have to queue twice as long for your library book it quite another to lie in a soiled bed.

Blair McPherson is author of People Management in a Harsh Financial Climate and Equipping Managers for an Uncertain Future part of a series on developing managers on a tight budget published by www.russellhouse.co.uk      

Now we can stop lying. Not that we were lying but a lot of people didn’t believe us when we said the planned changes weren’t about saving money. We said these changes were about improving services, giving customers more control, helping people be more independent. And we meant it. We said we would want to make these improvements whatever the budget situation. And we meant it.Yes we also said we were required to be more efficient. But that too was a good thing because being more efficient didn’t have to mean spending less it could mean buying more for the same amount of money. True we did tend to talk about efficiency saving and express this in how much money we needed to save to hit our efficiency targets.

Take the example of help for people with a learning disability. We have been trying to close those big draftee old Day Centre buildings for years. Much better to offer people leisure opportunities or adult learning than “day care”. So for a number of years now we have offered, swimming, ten pin bowling, horse ridding, archery, literacy and numeracy classes as well as basic computer skills. We also offer travel training to help people gain the confidence to use public transport and we provide job experience placements and help people to get part time work .All of this takes place away from those large institutional day centre buildings. So we really don’t need the buildings which are hard to heat and expensive to maintain. But people seem rather attached to them. Then along comes Personalisation the idea that rather than provide” take it or leave it” services we give people the money and they use it how they want, on holidays, going to the pictures or getting sky T.V. So we close the day centres down and the money spent on staffing, building maintenance and transport is divided up and given to people with a learning disability. Minus 3 per cent efficiency saving.

Then the financial crises hits and the Government slash public sector budgets. Now local authorities have to make huge financial savings. Plans are draw up to cut budgets by 25 to 30 percent. We are no longer talking about closing day centres and reinvesting the money in Personalisation we are talking about closing daycentres because we can’t afford them. So now we don’t have to lie we are doing it to save money.

Blair McPherson was until recently a senior manager in a large local authority he is author of People management in a harsh financial climate published by www.russellhouse.co.uk .

Some call it bluffing others an essential management skill but nobody reads all those reports and everyone wants people to think they have. Managers spend a very large part of the working day in meetings and meetings are always accompanied by “Papers”. Most meetings have too many agenda items and too many papers or reports to support the topics for discussions. Often there is simply not enough time before a meeting to have read all the reports beforehand and it doesn’t help that reports are often hard to read written by professionals with the aim of reinforcing their reputation for technical expertise.

It helps if each report has a one page executive summary. Of course most people will only read this. However, since most people are only going to skim read the reports anyway then a short summary written in plain English is likely to focus the discussion and get the result the author is seeking.

Some managers will be reading the executive summary as the author is introducing the report either to remind themselves of its content or because this is the first time they have looked at it.

There is a lot of bluffing goes on at senior management team meetings this is because senior managers are totally unreasonably expected to know everything about their part of the business. Clearly they don’t. As budget cuts lead to management restructuring and broader spans of control senior managers know less about individual bits of their part of the business. If asked a direct question about something very specific or technical they can get away with saying they will find out and let people know. This rarely happens as senior managers don’t do this to each other with a couple of exceptions. The finance director in frustration at the unwillingness of colleagues to get to grips with budget cuts or the boss who wants to make someone feel uncomfortable.

Being an effective bluffer is not the same as being evasive or just making something up. The aim of bluffing is to retain your credibility and buy enough time to get to grips with the issue under discussion. Basically you are giving the impression you are in a position to contribute to the debate whilst in fact you are skimming the report, listening to the comments of others and working out the implications for your part of the business. Which is of course why some people don’t say anything until well into the debate and then burst in with a number of concerns.

In an ideal world everyone would be properly prepared for meetings, agendas would be short and papers would be easy to read but it’s not an ideal world so bluffing is a legitimate management skill.

Blair McPherson is a former Director in a large local authority and author of Equipping Managers for an Uncertain Future published by www.russellhouse.co.uk

What if a Local Authority doesn’t make the savings? What if the ambitious efficiency targets turn out to be hopelessly unrealistic? What if the savings plans turn out to be undeliverable? What if it’s all is a lot messier, a lot more complicated and takes a lot more time than assumed? What if the Local Authority simply runs out of money and can’t pay its bills? It has never happened but then who would have thought banks could go bust?

It happened in New York in the 1970s. Well actually it didn’t but it came close the teachers didn’t get paid, creditors didn’t get paid and the yellow cab drivers complained about the holes in the road but central government bail them out in the end. Several American cites have gone bankrupt .Police and fire services still operated but city hall got protection from its creators. In other words it delayed indefinitely paying some bills and negotiated a part repayment of other bills. The real damage was to the reputation of the city no one wanted to invest there and of course there was no money for capital projects like repairing roads and bridges. More recently the state of California claimed to be bust and unable to pay its bills.

 Could it happen here? I did hear of a social service department that was over spent and told residential home owners that it couldn’t pay the fees for elderly residents .I think they simply missed the payments for March. We have already heard from Liverpool and Leeds that the combined effects of budget cuts, loss of public sector jobs and the recession will have a disproportionate effect on their local economy. Clearly some local economies are more dependent on the public sector as an employer than others even so it is hard to imagine the likes of big cities like Leeds and Birmingham and large local authorities like Nottinghamshire becoming bankrupt. Like the banks they are too big to be allowed to go bust and like in the USA central government would have to step in. But what about all those small District councils their budgets are comparatively small may be £30 million as opposed to a big city budget of a billion pounds but a 20 to 30% budget reduction is still a massive cut and they have fewer options other than closing down all their swimming pools, sports centres and out sourcing all their support services they don’t have much room for manoeuvre if the bins are still to be empted.

If you think this is all a bit farfetched well one well know accountancy firm has already predicted a local authority will become bankrupt during the next couple of years.

Blair McPherson was until recently a Director in a large local authority he is author of Equipping Managers for an Uncertain Future due to be published by www.russellhouse.co.uk in November 2010.

When a child tells his parents about the day’s school trip it becomes clear that some children were sitting three to a seat on the coach. The parents think this was dangerous and approach the school to insist it doesn’t happen again. The Head is sympathetic but says with budget cuts they can’t afford two coaches. So the parents say their son will have to stay behind in future. The Head says I understand but  a teacher will need to stay behind to look after him and if I do that there will not be enough teachers to go on the trip. Are the parents been awkward?

The villa is lovely but you said it had access to the sea and whilst there are steps down to the sea they are steep and narrow and lead to rocks you couldn’t possibly swim from. Is this a reasonable complaint?

It is 8.20 in the morning and as usual everyone wants to get up and go down for breakfast at the same time. A care assistant is helping an elderly female resident get dressed. The women says she would like to wear the blouse her daughter bought her for Christmas but the care assistant can’t find it in cloths draws. “It must be in the laundry” she says. To which the elderly women replies “Well could you go and look for it please”. The care assistant tries to persuade her to wear one of her other pretty blouses but the old lady is insistent. Is she being awkward?

Blair McPherson is author of People Management in a Harsh Financial Climate and the soon to be published Equipping Managers for an Uncertain Future.

When does hopelessly optimistic and unrealistically ambitious become head in the sand political wishful thinking?

Sunderland City Council are reported to have stated that despite the budget cuts there will be no redundancies and 100% redeployments. The London Borough of 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. The coalition government claimed front line services would not be affected by budget cuts in the public sector.

The civil servants will have told the government ministers that efficiency saving alone could not deliver the size of budget savings they were looking for. Local government officers in Barnet will have raised concerns about claims that they could make the level of savings required without cutting services simply by adopting the business model of a low cost airline. And I have no doubt that HR and finance staff in Sunderland cautioned against stating so boldly that there would be no redundancies and 100% redeployment. After all Birmingham and Nottinghamshire have already given notice to large numbers of staff that their jobs are at risk  and most local authorities have told their staff that the size of savings required and the time scale for delivering the make redundancies inevitable.

All local authorities are going to struggle because of the size of savings required. You can’t make up to 30% savings over four years without reducing the workforce, and cutting services. So why have some councillors tried to maintain despite advice from officers and evidence to the contrary that savings can be achieved without pain and without making very unpopular decisions.

Perhaps some were naive and believed that out sourcing back office functions, reducing the number of management posts, halving absenteeism levels and a ban on overtime and the use of agency staff would mean they wouldn’t 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. May be some officers told them what they wanted to hear or maybe they just didn’t listen or was it that it was just too unbelievable to be true.

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

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Do persecuted minorities forfeit our sympathy if they in turn are intolerant of others? The question was promoted by watching a documentary about three brides from the gypsy and traveller community. The film focuses on the girls, their dresses, the weddings and what this tells us about the community they are part of.

 There is a shop in Liverpool that specialises in wedding dresses for gypsies and travellers. Each dress is unique and made to order. They seem to be inspired by the fairy tale look, lots of sparkle and lots and lots of frilly lace.. One of the dresses featured had a 20 foot trail and all three spectacularly over the top dresses were so big and bushy as to make it extremely difficult for the brides to get in and out of their Cinderella carriages. The dress maker said that some wedding dresses were heavier than the brides and the weight often left scars on the girl’s bodies.

The wedding took place in church and then on to the reception. The proud father informed us that neither he nor the majority of guessed knew where the reception was to be held and wouldn’t find out till after the ceremony. The reason for this was not secrecy but practicalities due to the fact that venues for receptions were often changed at short notice hotels frequently cancelling the booking once they found out it was a Travellers wedding. As if to prove the point one of the brides mothers had a phone call three days before the big day informing her the venue for the reception was no longer available.

Weddings and wedding receptions are one of the few opportunities girls have of meeting boys so there is a lot of completion for attention and some very daring out fits on the disco floor. The bride’s proud father sits with a group of married men and explains that this is how a lot of young people meet their future husband or wife. At which point he explains that he has nothing against the settled community (those people who are not gypsies or travellers) but it is important to him that the traditions and customs are maintained. This is why gypsies and travellers live together, why they don’t marry outside the community and why he doesn’t want his children to mix with children from outside the community. He is proud of the self reliance within the community and states that gypsies and travellers are all self employed “place us anywhere and we can survive “ he boasts.

 Most of us meet our partners at school, through social activities or via work which increasingly in multi faith, multi cultural Brittan means we mix with people of a different, faith, culture or race. This is one explanation for mixed race or dual heritage being the fastest growing ethnic group in the country. How are we then to respond to those how do not wish to integrate who say this type of mixing undermines their traditions and robs their children of their identity. Those who wish to send their children to faith schools so they will not mix with non believers, those who only wish to live amongst their own kind. How do we respond to the father who says I have nothing against them but I would not let my daughter marry one when he is from a minority group and he is referring to the rest of us .And should this in any way affect our views about minority groups rights and our opposition to discrimination and prejudice?

Blair McPherson is author of An Elephant in the Room an equality and diversity training manual published by www.russellhouse.co.uk .

Budget cuts, service reductions and redundancies mean big changes and bad news. Rather than rumour people want to hear what’s going to happen direct from the top person. The chief exec has a blog but feedback consistently tells us people want more face to face contact with senior management. So all credit to those chief execs who go on the road and have a series of large meetings at different locations open to all staff. The aim is to explain the budget position, explain there is no choice but to make big changes however unpopular and to answer questions as staff try to work out what this will mean for them as individuals.

Getting the tone of these meetings right is tricky too formal and front line staff will feel inhibited about asking what they really want to know and go away confirmed in the view that all senior managers live on another planet and just want to lecture staff. However, if a large meeting doesn’t have a structure then a small number of individuals can dominate the meeting and turn it into some very specific questions about their job leaving everyone else frustrated that the meeting never got round to discussing the big issues that affect most of them. I have in mind the member of staff who asked the director why he had not had a chair when he first started work to which someone else chipped in that they didn’t have a telephone. In the spirit of being willing to answer all questions the director was forced to spend some time clarifying the circumstances and then expressing her view as to what should have happened before saying she would ask the local manager to look into it. By which time twenty minutes of a one hour lunch time meeting had been taken up.

On another occasion the chief exec announced monthly meetings open to all staff to hear direct from him what was happening about the restructuring. He decided to call these meetings ‘Pow wow with the big chief’. He clearly thought this was an amusing title that would convey that this was an informal meeting with a man who was keen to talk to a broad cross section of staff. Unfortunately a lot of staff felt that calling himself the big chief was part of the problem and the rather flippant title of the meeting reflected a failure to appreciate just how anxious some staff were about the proposed changes.

The way I have seen it done best requires some preparation and organisation. Basically the chief exec gives a short ten minute speech telling it like it is-here are the facts. This is followed by a session to address concerns and generate suggestions. The audience is divided into small discussion groups with a group facilitator and a flip chart. They are given half an hour to list their top three concerns make three suggestions to improve the implementation of changes and suggest three ways of engaging staff in these changes. Each group gets to feedback one point from each of their areas of discussion. The chief exec gives a response to each group. All the flip charts are collected, the comments summarised and an undertaking is given by the chief exec to discuss all these points with the senior management team and publish a detailed response on his blog. All the questions won’t be answered at once but all will be addressed over the coming weeks.