2776 People and Performance - CIPD

Chartered Institute 

of Personnel and 

Development 

People and public services 

Why central targets miss the mark 

The change agenda

PEOPLE AND PUBLIC SERVICES | 1 

FOREWORD 

‘Cash starved, poorly managed’. In the 1980s and 1990s this was the standard explanation for 

the travails of Britain’s public services. In response, the Treasury has started to make up for 

decades of severe under-investment with a massive injection of tax-funded expenditure. But 

with the Government staking its reputation on a rapid improvement in service delivery to quell 

taxpayer dissatisfaction with the quality of services on offer, reform of management and 

working practices has become an urgent priority. Yet despite constant ‘modernisation’ rhetoric, 

doubts remain as to how ‘modern’ the Government’s reform agenda actually is – especially 

when it comes to the management of the people responsible for service delivery. 

As Simon Caulkin concludes in this timely and thought-provoking Change Agenda, which 

synthesises all the public sector strands of CIPD research, the public sector needs to undergo a 

fundamental shift from traditional command-and-control styles of management to a highperformance 

model based on autonomy and trust. This means above all that the Government 

must seriously rethink its still largely ‘top-down’ approach to reform. 

Although ministers talk about the so-called ‘new localism’, managers and workers at local level 

have limited discretion over how they go about meeting delivery targets set in Whitehall. This is 

understandable given the need to ensure that managers are clearly accountable to the 

taxpayer. But, as Caulkin shows, the resulting red tape and form-filling not only undermine the 

autonomy and trust needed for high performance but also, and perversely, slow the process of 

change. Far better, therefore, to enable public sector organisations to develop their own 

quality-based ‘routes to excellence’ and make them more accountable at a decentralised level – 

in the process turning the rhetoric of ‘new localism’ into reality. 

In setting out guidelines for reform – reducing the number of centralised targets, increasing 

consultation on the targets that are set, greater managerial discretion at local level over paysetting, 

and putting people management at the very heart of the reform process – Caulkin 

offers a road map for improved service delivery and calls on the Government to show the way. 

The journey may not be easy but its successful completion will be to the common good. 

John Philpott

2 | PEOPLE AND PUBLIC SERVICES 

Key recommendations 

• Greater consultation and fewer targets – the Government’s centralised and obsessive 

approach to target-setting should be replaced with one that consults with the organisations 

affected by them. Such an emphasis on targets leaves employees little scope for initiative 

and no margin for error, undermining devolution and accountability. CIPD research shows 

that this approach leaves many public sector workers feeling that their performance is being 

constantly monitored, resulting in high levels of stress and low levels of trust in senior 

management. 

• Greater decentralisation – while it is the Government’s job to set national standards that 

really matter to the public, these should be set within a framework of clear local 

accountability. As the Government has recognised, such standards can only be delivered 

effectively by devolution and delegation to the front line, giving local leaders responsibility 

and accountability for delivery, and the opportunity to design and develop services around 

the needs of local people. 

• More flexibility – the devolution of responsibility would promote the greater flexibility that is 

required for public service organisations and their staff to meet service levels. This means 

challenging restrictive practices and reducing red tape; greater and more flexible incentives 

and reward for good performance; regional wage variations; strong leadership and 

management; and high-quality training and development. Greater job flexibility should also 

allow workers to move between different tasks and greater managerial flexibility permits the 

workforce to respond to customers, not targets. 

• A transformation of management style and practices which put people management at the 

heart of the reform process.


INTRODUCTION 

The public sector has steadily pushed itself forward to become the major challenge and 

preoccupation of the Labour Government’s second term. 

Stakes are high because of huge political and economic investment … 

There are three reasons for the raising of the stakes. 

The first is that the amount of political capital tied up in the improvement of public services is 

in direct proportion to the huge economic investment. According to the 2002 Spending 

Review: 

• Current spending on public services will rise in total by 3.3 per cent a year in real terms in 

2004–5 and 2005–6. 

• Public sector net investment is projected to rise from its 1.8 per cent of GDP target in 

2003–4, to 2 per cent of GDP by 2005–6 and to 2.25 per cent by 2007–8. 

• UK spending on the NHS will increase by an average of 7.4 per cent a year in real terms in 

the five years to 2007–8. 

More than 75 per cent of additional spending will be allocated to the key priorities of health, 

education, personal social services, transport, housing and criminal justice (HM Treasury, 2002). 

In money terms the increase translates into around £60 billion – about the same amount 

according to one calculation that would be added to GDP if UK productivity matched that of 

higher-performing rivals. As the Treasury is well aware, there is a pressing need for the extra 

cash to buy real improvement and not just disappear into higher public sector pay. Some 

people believe that overall productivity in the NHS is actually declining (The Economist, 2002). 

… the underpinning role of the public sector … 

The second reason for the focus on the public sector is that it has an important underpinning 

role to play in the Government’s ambitions to improve the performance of the economy 

generally. ‘Increased public service productivity lays the foundations for a more productive 

economy. Improved education, health and transport infrastructure can help to raise private 

sector performance by producing a healthier, better skilled and more mobile labour force’ (HM 

Treasury, 2002). 

… and the fact that the public sector is within government control 

These two reasons are powerful enough in themselves. By overtly underlining their significance, 

the Government itself has laid it on the line. By its own definition, failure to perform in the 

public sector will undermine its entire social and economic programme, not to mention its 

electoral hopes of a third term. Although of a different order, the third reason for the 

importance of the public services combines with the first two to make a compelling case not 

just for focus but for action: the fact that the public sector is within the Government’s control, 

or at least influence.


Despite the transfer of large sections of what used to be the public sector into private hands, 

in its priority areas of health, education, personal social services, some transport, housing and 

criminal justice, the Government itself is a crucial determinant of both productivity and the 

quality of service delivery – this by virtue not just of the amount of its spending but also the 

management frameworks and performance and service contracts it draws up for its 

departments and agencies. 

Turning challenge into opportunity… 

Interestingly, this turns its greatest challenge into a considerable opportunity. The CIPD believes 

that the Government is right to envisage world-class public services for the UK. But to bring 

about the step-change in service delivery that we need requires investment of a different kind, 

largely independent of money, but without which the extra spending certainly will not produce 

the desired result – a transformation of its own management style and practices to put people 

management at the heart of the reform process. 

… means confronting institutional and management factors: leadership and the primacy of 

policy over implementation … 

We believe that current efforts to improve public services are held back by important 

institutional and people-related factors. One is the quality of leadership and management. 

A recent report by the Council for Excellence in Management & Leadership (CEML) found 

practical leadership skills in the UK ‘in short supply from top to bottom of organisations’ 

(CEML, 2002). The CIPD’s research on developing managers for business performance 

(June 2002) highlights the problems experienced by large UK organisations in both public 

and private sectors in aligning their leadership development with their new performance 

goals and requirements. 

One powerful reason for the poor average level of public sector leadership can be traced back 

to Whitehall itself, where policy-making has long trumped policy-implementation in importance 

and status. ‘The importance of management has been undervalued right across the sector. In 

the Civil Service, what matters is policy, not management. If you can’t “do” policy then you are 

relegated to the Siberian fields of management,’ says one former permanent secretary (quoted 

in Keep and Westwood, 2003). Or as Will Hutton has written: ‘Constitutional practice and 

time-honoured custom mean that civil servants remain unshakeable in their belief that their 

duties are solely to ministers rather than the public.’ This skews the strategy and focus of the 

large fiefdoms they control and militates against a genuine commitment to delivery downwards 

as opposed to managing upwards’ (Attwood et al., 2003).


… and targets 

This helps explain the second, institutional factor that has hindered the cause of public sector 

reform: the proliferation of targets, regulators and auditing regimes. Summing up, the 

Government is putting all its targets in one basket, a shift from lack of performance to too 

many targets. 

It’s hard to calculate the number of targets that the public sector is subject to. At national level 

the Public Service Agreements that departments and agencies conclude with the Treasury 

comprise around 125, on the Delivery Unit’s own admission (Barber, 2003). The NHS alone has 

at least 60. These are subdivided into many more at the point of delivery. One estimate is that 

local government has more than 600 targets to meet. 

Sometimes new sets of targets are overlaid on older ones, resulting in ‘an uneasy and perhaps 

incompatible mix of messages, drawn from different paradigms’ (West Mercia Police, 2003). At 

the same time, the advent of Best Value, a policy framework intended to promote continuous 

improvement with local best-value authorities in charge of their own improvement strategy, 

seems to have made the situation worse rather than better. ‘Best value seems to have been 

perceived as yet another central directive rather than an empowering framework’ (West Mercia 

Police, 2003). 

Meanwhile, when the LSE investigated what Professor Michael Power has termed ‘the audit 

society’ in 1997, it uncovered around 150 regulators, ombudsmen, auditors, inspectorates and 

watchdogs, employing around 20,000 people and costing around £1 billion to run (not 

counting the considerable costs for the organisation being audited). Ironically, the fastestgrowing 

part of the public sector is not a ‘doing’ agency but an ‘observing’ one. Since then, 

regulation has continued to grow apace. The university access regulator is just the latest 

addition to the list. 

What’s important is not the precise numbers, however (except that each one adds another 

layer of non-value-adding cost); it’s what they represent. Highly specified, centrally determined 

targets and standards enforced by close monitoring are symptomatic of Taylorist, massproduction 

systems in which management is separate from the work; managers plan and 

workers execute. Employees have little scope for initiative and no margin for error. Inevitably, 

they end up ‘facing the wrong way’, focusing on what their managers want (the targets) 

rather than what the customer or citizen wants. 

Customer choice, by the same token, is tightly constrained to what the target-setter says it is. 

These constraints describe a low-trust, low-discretion, low-ambition organisation, which may 

have been adequate for a simple world operating with few variables, but is the exact opposite 

of that required for a complex, shifting environment where all organisations are ‘joined up’ to 

many others. It is also regrettably consistent with what is too often today’s public sector reality 

as Attwood et al explore:


‘Given the inspection regimes that operate now, [the American W.E. Deming, who introduced 

the idea of quality to Japanese manufacturers in the 1950s] would have predicted the 

increased costs, poor quality, increased fear, lack of trust and pride in work, the sub-optimising 

of individual effort to the detriment of the “whole” and the low morale, poor staff retention 

and culture of blame and retribution that characterises so many workplaces’. 

The target obsession placed on top of a public sector tradition of hierarchy and bureaucracy 

thus creates acute dangers and difficulties for the public sector. 

Resolving the contradictions through people management 

We would argue that this management framework is in direct contradiction with the 

Government’s own goals for the public sector and one of the most serious impediments to 

their achievement. It is inconsistent with the principles of high-performance working. 

Conversely, the quickest way to service improvement is to increase the autonomy of all 

organisations, not just the successful ones – in fact, it is precisely the failing ones which would 

be expected to benefit most – using advanced people management techniques to release 

individual initiative, build human and organisational capital and maintain accountability; in 

other words, to form a new management and employee involvement model for a world-class 

public sector. 

As we will argue in subsequent sections, by putting people management and human resources 

management (HRM) practices at the centre of service improvement, Government has the 

opportunity to resolve the current contradictions. For the vicious circle of detailed target-setting 

and audit leading to declining trust and demoralisation it would substitute a benevolent one in 

which good people management assists improving performance, reducing the perceived need 

for close monitoring and boosting morale. As the following case studies demonstrate, this is 

the way to world-class public services; as both providers and consumers, people deserve nothing less.


SELLY PARK 

TECHNOLOGY 

COLLEGE 

Modernisation dimensions 

This case study concerns a key outcome, a step-change in the educational attainment of 

children in a school that was threatened with closure. It particularly focuses on the importance 

assigned to the development of teaching capability within the school and the way that 

management and development contributed to this. 

Introduction 

Wendy Davies joined Selly Park School as its head in September 1986. The school’s fortunes 

had reached a low ebb, and it had recently been designated for closure by Birmingham 

Education Authority. Birmingham then had the reputation of being one of the worst education 

authorities in the country, and the inner city schools were to be configured in order to try to 

improve standards. The number of pupils in the school had fallen to 350 and standards were 

extremely poor. 

Today, Wendy is still in post and the turnaround is startling, as the following achievements show: 

• The number of pupils has risen to 710. 

• Sixty-two per cent of last year’s Year 11 pupils attained at least five grade A–C GCSEs. 

• Between 80 and 90 per cent of pupils go on to further or higher education. 

• In 2002, the school achieved 'beacon school' status, which shows that it has achieved the 

highest standards of excellence. The head is now responsible for working with partnership 

schools in the area to share best practice. 

• Awarding the school 'technology college' status gave the school extra funding and brought 

in a number of directors of public companies to sit on the governing body. 

The context 

In the early 1990s, Birmingham City Council appointed Professor Tim Brighouse as Chief 

Education Officer, whose personal philosophy and leadership style is somewhat at odds with 

the main direction of government policy on improving standards in schools. 

His personal style is compelling. He arrives at meetings in a flurry of disorganisation, but it is 

clear that this self-presentation is a well-designed attempt to disarm people with hierarchical 

expectations of what a chief education officer ought to be. 

When he starts to speak, he continues to turn expectations on their head, reframing issues so 

that they are no longer blockages but possibilities for change. He does this in a way that is 

deeply rooted in the actuality of life in schools and has enormous credibility in doing so. 

During the day, most of his time is spent out of the office, almost all of it in schools, trying to 

‘catch them doing it right’, being around to encourage heads and other staff in handling their 

problems and to celebrate their achievements. Improving the classroom experience of children is 

seen as the key to improved standards. That can only be done by ensuring that teachers feel 

supported and, in turn, that heads who do the same feel supported themselves. This is the very 

opposite of establishing the blame culture. In Brighouse’s view, naming and shaming does not 

lead to an improved experience for children. 

He sees people as ‘energy creators’ who will solve problems and make change happen. His 

approach involves focusing energy on the key things that matter and will make a difference, 

and cutting out as much of the rest as possible with three underpinning key values: 

• an unswerving belief that the school’s pupils have the ability to do really well and the right 

to succeed in life 

• a strong sense of the importance of self-esteem and respecting achievement 

• an unremitting focus on the pupil’s experience in the classroom and its crucial contribution 

to improved outcomes.


Recruitment and retention 

The head sees high-quality and appropriate leadership at head-of-department level as a crucial 

factor in improving standards of outcome. The classroom subject teacher is likely to need 

guidance, support and direction in order to achieve those outcomes, but there has been a 

tradition of appointing heads of department on a seniority basis. 

The heads of department are selected on whether they have the necessary competencies, not 

on how long they have been doing the job. The generous early retirement scheme available to 

teachers was used to the full to ease unsuitable people out of head-of-department roles and to 

fill those positions with staff, many recruited in from outside, who could provide the right 

leadership. Sometimes this meant very young people being appointed, but … 

'… if they are good enough, they are old enough.’ 

Removing non-performing staff from those positions was done in a way that is consistent with 

the values. They were recognised as multi-talented people who had either been put in the 

wrong job, or in the right job but without adequate training. No one was sacked, but new roles 

were found with important titles. 

The highest priority in selecting new staff was whether or not the quality of classroom teaching 

was up to standard, in spite of any other admirable competencies. 

The main problem now however is hanging on to good staff. To counter this, the school delays 

departure as long as possible by ensuring that the total reward package is sufficiently attractive 

– pay at the maximum level available, additional responsibilities, and opportunities for 

developmental leadership activities. 

Changing professional practice 

Meeting the needs of each individual pupil is the secret of success in this school, as is 

convincing the teachers that each individual child is able to achieve – easier than in the past, 

now that the record proves it. 

When the school was at its low point, its curriculum was very old-fashioned – even before the 

days of the national curriculum – and did not meet the needs or choices of individuals. 

Much work was undertaken in the early period to develop and extend the curriculum offered 

by the school. When the school was given 'technology college' status in 1995, science and 

technology resources began to flow in, with the local education authority providing capital for a 

new science block and senior private sector managers offering advice and support as members 

of the governing body. The school now has good provision of IT and science facilities. 

Departmental heads along with the senior management group give high priority to helping 

teachers achieve ‘differentiation’ - the ability to teach a class of pupils at a level suitable for each 

individual. This is a highly developed professional skill and not one that beginners usually have. 

Regarding new teachers as on a journey of continuing professional development, and ensuring 

that they have the opportunity to learn from ‘master craftsmen’ is a crucial part of this recipe. 

Since teaching is seen as a craft rather than a science, this informs the strategy for continuing 

professional training. Most training is undertaken in the school setting and provided to more 

junior professionals by the more senior. Where training outside the school is agreed, this is only 

after weighing up the benefits against classroom disruption. 

The same priority assigned to the classroom experience of pupils is seen in the approach to 

providing cover for teachers who are absent. Experience of the supply teacher system prompted 

the senior management team to negotiate a local agreement with their staff whereby they 

provide cover for each other, provided that free periods are retained. This has the advantage 

that children are taught by substitutes who are known to them and it also releases resources 

for other purposes, including paying a little over the odds on salaries.


Other innovations include: 

• offering more one-to-one teaching 

• wake-up calls to pupils on Saturdays (and on occasion fetching the pupil who has failed to 

turn up) 

• supervised homework sessions after school 

• an Easter holiday revision club 

• revision tutorials instead of study leave for Year 11 pupils 

• running revision lessons right through the examination period. 

Effective management 

Recently, the school has put a great deal of emphasis on a more effective behaviour 

management system, which emerged as an issue from discussion with staff across the school. 

The aim is to improve conditions for pupils and increase opportunities for teaching and learning 

by creating the right atmosphere in the school. All the school's staff were represented on the 

working party that developed the new system, which is led and co-ordinated by one of the 

deputy heads. The emphasis is on clear routines for pupils, greater involvement in the system 

through the school council, and the appointment of prefects to operate a system of rewards 

and sanctions. The school recognised how important it was for all those affected to be involved 

in the design and running of the system. 

Leadership 

Wendy Davies has transformational leader written all over her. The cheerful passion she brings 

to her working life is infectious. 

What comes through strongly is a commitment to treating people with respect and humanity. In 

picking a failing school up, she clearly needed to make personnel changes. But she did so in a 

way that respected the contribution that people had made in the past, and by finding ways to 

enable them to continue to make a contribution, developing new roles that could be taken on. 

The final point about her personal leadership is her willingness to devote a substantial 

proportion of her working life to this school. The long-term commitment fits with her approach 

of building capability and is diametrically opposed to an approach to managing change based 

on ‘slash and burn’ strategies. Implicit in her leadership is a belief that there are few short-term 

‘magic bullet’ solutions and that what is needed is continuing development over time. Her 

loyalty to the project also conveys the implicit message of valuing the pupils and their futures. 

The emphasis on securing additional funding and providing extra tuition have provided the 

means to further develop facilities and the teaching experience at the school. Central to this 

has been the process of setting increasingly ambitious targets for the school. But this has been 

done with the full participation of staff in the science, maths and ICT areas, with them offering 

ideas to continue the innovation required within the scheme.


Lessons from the case study: 

• Have the right enabling context for improving standards. For this school it was a city 

council and its education chief who provided leadership in improving standards, making 

sure both that the head felt supported and valued and also that she was helped through 

the bureaucratic hoops of application for special funding. 

• Gain and maintain the head’s personal long-term commitment to the project. This and 

her nurturing leadership style have built a firm foundation which will be sustained when 

she eventually retires. 

• Ensure that the leadership team has the right mix of competencies. The team should be 

made up of some with transactional skills and others with transformational skills. Few 

people are really good at both of these. 

• Understand the key factor in the strategy for improvement – improving the learning 

experience of the children in the classroom – and prioritise this above all other 

factors. A new initiative in the school is judged on the degree to which it contributes to 

this goal. 

• Take professional leadership seriously and assist the less experienced and less skilled 

members of the profession to improve their performance and capability. 

• Take advantage of opportunities to boost the resource support to the school through 

carefully considered participation in nationally funded programmes. 

THE NATIONAL BLOOD 

SERVICE 

Context 

Before 1994, each regional health authority was responsible for its own blood transfusion 

service, and there was an assumption of self-sufficiency in blood supply to each region. With 

the abolition of regional health authorities, there were implications for the regionalised 

structure of the service and a decision was made to create a National Blood Service and 

establish it as a special health authority. 

The changes were perceived as a ‘cuts’ exercise, so the new national service was born amid a 

fairly widespread sense of disaffection and low morale among staff. 

The service had a shaky start. The internal structure was a compromise between the functional 

structure needed for the backroom aspects of the service, such as research and development, 

and support to the mobile collection units who work with blood donors. Three zones were set 

up, based at Leeds, Bristol and Colindale. 

A chief executive was brought in from the private sector. One of his early decisions was to 

abandon the existing structure and move towards a truly national system. The national structure 

would be functionally based rather than geographically, with a national executive under the 

new chief executive. 

The prospect of more radical change after the earlier experience was daunting, but was felt to 

be necessary. This time the organisation was better equipped with skilled and knowledgeable 

human resources professionals who were able to design and change the process so that the 

effect was less explosive than before. 

They championed an approach based on the principles of organisational development. It 

focused on facilitating the staff of the organisation to develop its own solutions to problems, 

rather than imposing solutions developed either by senior management or by external experts.


Listening to staff 

NHS policy requires health bodies to undertake staff surveys. In order to create legitimacy for 

the survey and its results, a joint working group of management and staff was set up to design 

the questionnaire – to ensure that the concerns of both staff and management were reflected 

in it. The survey was analysed by an organisation called Pay and Workforce Research, because 

staff did not at that stage trust management with the information on the questionnaires. 

The results were as expected – poor. Directors were thought not to be interested either in staff 

views or staff well-being and stress was not dealt with effectively. Above all, there was a high 

degree of scepticism about whether the NBS would do anything to address these concerns. 

However, the executive had already begun work on developing the mission of the organisation, 

– to save and improve lives by meeting patients' needs for blood, blood products, tissues and 

related services. 

The following statement of key values was articulated: 

• The donors will be understood, valued and cared for. 

• Needs of patients and those who treat them will be in the centre of all that we do. 

• All our staff are one team, respecting each other’s skills and knowledge. We listen to and 

communicate with one another and encourage an enthusiastic, empowered and flexible 

approach to our common purpose. 

• The safety of all our products and services, of our staff and of all affected by our operation, 

is of the highest priority. 

• We organise and operate in a manner that ensures the provision of high-quality products 

and services to patients. 

Having decided on the core purpose and values, the next step was to begin a significant 

process of organisational development, which aimed to have the staff diagnose problems and 

propose solutions and, by involving them, win their support for the organisation’s purpose and 

values. 

A majority felt disaffected by the management process. So a focus group exercise was 

undertaken to help create a sense of common endeavour. 

Focus groups 

The main task was to take the top ten negative findings from the staff survey, explore the roots 

of the problems and propose solutions to recommend to the NBS executive. Three hundred 

staff were drawn from across the different functions and services, localities, grades and 

professional backgrounds and asked to form 18 focus groups. An external consultancy was 

employed to give professional facilitation to the focus groups and HR staff were attached to the 

groups to facilitate skills transfer from the consultants to the organisation. 

A focus group participant: 

‘The focus groups demonstrated that people with diverse problems, under the right leadership 

and given the same vision, can think, work and pull together in the same direction in order to 

speak with one voice and influence change.’ 

There was some opposition to the focus groups from the unions, who were suspicious that it 

would interfere with the normal consultative machinery, but there too the experience won over 

the doubters. 

Unison official, Merseyside: 

‘Early meetings did not bode well … we didn't seem to agree on much. But the focus groups 

were a wholly positive experience. We learnt new skills, learnt to listen to each other and to 

respect each other’s view, to separate the wheat from the chaff to focus.’


Messages to management 

Each of the 18 groups nominated two people to present their findings. The 36 people were 

taken to a hotel and given intensive guidance and support to help to bring the messages out 

clearly. 

Four broad themes emerged from the findings: 

• health and safety 

• management and leadership 

• training and development 

• pay and reward 

Making progress 

The staff attitudes survey conducted in 2001, showed an overall improvement in attitudes 

among staff. In particular, it showed that people felt senior management had taken note of 

the earlier results, cared about them and had taken action as a result. 

Extending the focus groups 

The focus groups continued in 2001, 2002 and 2003, with cross-functional groups being set up 

to deal with three business areas: donors, patients, and to examine the operation of the blood 

supply chain. These are being conducted on a corporate rather than functional basis and will 

contribute further to breaking down the ‘silos’ across the service. 


• The process of organisational development will be most effective where staff can be 

closely involved to diagnose problems and identify solutions. 

• If this process is to be effective, the groups of staff involved need to be well 

supported and facilitated and resources need to be devoted to ensuring they are 

equipped with the skills they need in order to be effective in that role. 

• People at the top of the organisation need to listen to and act on the ideas of staff. 

A positive response from management to staff ideas sets this process apart from others 

conducted before. 

• This change of culture can be strengthened if changes to HR systems and processes 

support and reinforce the new behaviour that is required.


WEST MERCIA POLICE 

Introduction 

This case study relates to a police force which has undertaken a strategic shift in its activities, 

recognising clearly the multi-stranded nature of policing in a rural setting and the need to work 

flexibly and adaptively with others to achieve outcomes. In order to be effective in this changing 

environment, police forces need organisational cultures which enable front line officers to act 

on their own initiative within a strategic framework which they accept and which provide a 

governing template for their actions. This represents a big shift in the traditional police culture, 

and West Mercia's move in that direction presents important lessons. 

Context 

West Mercia covers a large geographical area - from Redditch in the east to Herefordshire in the 

west, from Shropshire in the north to the Wye Valley in the south. At 75 crimes per 1000 

population, it is well below the national average of 101 and the average among similar areas of 

78 per 1000 population. The British Crime Survey found that despite the national fall in crime 

between 1998 and 2000, the level of concern about crime has remained relatively stable. This is 

also true in West Mercia. Despite relatively low crime figures, anxiety and fear of crime remain 

high and thus have a blighting effect on the lives of many people. West Mercia has the second 

lowest level of funding per head of population in the country. 

It is in this context that a new strategy was developed in West Mercia and published in 1999. 

The mission statement that emerged from this process is: 

To help secure a safe and just society in which the rights and responsibilities of individuals, 

families and communities are properly balanced. 

The key elements of the vision are 'together - working for safety and justice'. The three terms 

are elaborated as follows: 

• Together - all staff work as one team, with each other and in partnership with other 

organisations and the public. 

• Safety - West Mercia to be recognised as being one of the safest places in which to 

grow up, live and play. It is a place where businesses feel confident to invest and where 

isolated groups and individuals feel included. 

• Justice - All human rights are respected. The rights of victims, witnesses and suspects to 

be treated fairly and properly are respected. Taxpayers rights are protected through the 

provision of an economical, efficient and effective service, conducted in an ethical manner. 

Given tight funding and a population which feels unsafe, whatever the objective situation, the 

police undertook a fundamental rethink of its strategy. A key feature of this strategy was to 

differentiate between the types of service provided by the police and work through the kinds 

of capability needed to achieve each of these elements successfully. Four Tracks of Policing is 

the term used for this analysis. The four tracks are: 

• local policing 

• partnership policing 

• targeted policing 

• responsive policing. 

Local policing 

The emphasis here is on community-centred problem-solving, with local involvement in and 

ownership of the issue of policing. This involves working through identifiable individuals, and 

not just amorphous organisations, which might have little public involvement. 

The approach involves finding out what communities want and expect and understanding 

communities’ needs. It involves identifying alternative options to address problems and then 

actually providing a response and intervention. Throughout this process, the police service will 

provide feedback, and both explanation and reassurance.


Partnership policing 

Joined-up working with individuals and organisations with shared values to deliver mutually 

agreed outcomes is essential to service delivery The key additional benefit is the learning from 

other organisations with different cultures that accompanies this partnership approach. 

The approach involves developing long-term relationships, addressing long and short-term 

problems and working together in effective and evaluated action, sharing information, 

resources and building, the latter being a key aspect of providing a full service in a sparsely 

populated area. 

Responsive policing 

In the past, this has been the dominant mode of operating. It is still necessary but must in future 

be kept in balance with the other roles. This should involve resolving public demand intelligently, 

providing a prompt and appropriate response – consistently achieving agreed targets. 

The new strategy was clear and marked a change with the past. Given the pressure on 

resources and the geographical spread of this rural area, it was not possible to police in 

primarily ‘responsive’ mode, and yet that had been the dominant model in the past. 

Additionally, the array of national targets set by the Home Office was primarily about the 

responsive mode of operation. Although new targets had been set, such as reducing crime, 

these tended to co-exist with rather than replace the output targets previously in place; an 

uneasy and perhaps incompatible mix of messages, drawn from different paradigms. 

The advent of Best Value, a policy framework intended to promote continuous improvement, 

with local best value authorities in charge of their own improvement strategy, seems to have 

been perceived as yet another central directive, rather than an empowering framework. 

The difficulty of assessing whether best value has actually been about more central control or 

more local empowerment says a lot about the way in which new initiatives are actually shaped 

in practice by existing competencies and expectations, both at central and local level. Senior 

officers in West Mercia feel that their understanding of what is needed to deliver better 

outcomes in their force area is not helped by the existing regime of targets set in Whitehall. 

'Four Tracks of Policing' is West Mercia’s statement about the mix of activities needed to deliver 

effective outcomes in that locality. It calls into question much existing practice and sets out a 

differentiated and intelligent picture of how the service needs to operate in the future. The next 

step was to lead a process of cultural change, and this provides the material for this case study. 

Cultural change in West Mercia 

A staff survey was conducted to analyse the existing culture. In June 1999 all 3,500 staff within 

the West Mercia force – police, civilians and the special constabulary – received a survey 

questionnaire asking for their opinions on the culture and the way it operated. 

The key findings concluded that: 

• The majority of employees considered that, at organisational level, too much emphasis was 

placed on performance measurement. 

• The majority of employees agreed that their training and development needs were identified. 

However, only one-third agreed that they received training when they needed it. 

• Two-thirds of employees agreed that they received feedback from their line managers. 

Slightly more considered that their line manager was supportive of their ideas and was open, 

honest and competent. 

• Four in ten employees considered that they had confidence in West Mercia’s managers. 

• Less than a third felt well informed about how other agencies can help with problem-solving.


The picture that emerges is one of good working relations, within immediate teams, with line 

managers getting a good report from their staff; but with little connection in the minds of staff 

between what they do on the ground and the direction and strategy of the force as a whole. 

Judgements on how the force operates indicate both that the majority of staff did not think 

that the force made the best use of its resources and also that they did not have a clear picture 

of how the force might operate in the future. 

Strong messages came out of the survey for senior management of the force, expressed in 

some rather pungent comments extracted from the questionnaires: 

'Is this just another survey, or are the management actually going to take note of its contents?' 

Peter Hampson, the new chief constable, responded positively to the above question. As a first 

step to developing a culture capable of supporting the 'Four Tracks of Policing' approach, he 

committed a large amount of time to making direct contact with staff, providing visible 

leadership by talking and listening directly to frontline staff, which included: 

• giving a presentation that comprised organisational values, service delivery values and 

personal values 

• meeting with over 200 police officers and 1,200 civilians. 

The amount of time devoted by the chief constable to this process indicates the significance he 

gave to it. 

Important as the chief constable’s presentation was, however, it was not as important as the 

symbolic messages conveyed about listening, bridging the gap between the top and the 

frontline, and the common purpose shared by all ranks and by the civilian employees. 

A key part of these meetings was listening. Those who attended the meetings were asked to 

make comments, ask questions and make suggestions as to how the force might better 

organise itself to achieve its purpose. 

The issues were passed on to the appropriate point in the management structure, with 

feedback required by the chief constable on how they were being dealt with – including 

evidence of changes in system and process that would provide a better link to the strategy. 

The chief constable made other symbolic changes such as abandoning hierarchical symbols of 

ranking. Such changes reflected the move away from a command-and-control system towards 

a responsive, flat and problem-solving approach that is consistent with the 'Four Tracks of 

Policing'. Instant obedience to a senior officer is important in an emergency, but it prevents the 

development of capability in the kinds of local, targeted and partnership policing that is the key 

to success for West Mercia. 

A new form of public involvement 

Traditionally, police forces have often placed large amounts of resources into public meetings at 

which only a small band of committed members of the public turn up. 

West Mercia has introduced a new model where public consultation is an integral part of the 

everyday job. People are not asked to come to special meetings, but experienced beat officers 

make time to talk to the public during the normal course of the day, explaining issues and 

listening to what they say. 

Particular emphasis has been placed on improving the quality of local consultation and 

communication, recognising that the issue in the different communities across West Mercia varies


considerably – contrast the rural community in Malvern with the large Afro-Caribbean population 

in Redditch for instance. This has included setting up a series of standing focus groups in the 

different communities charged with concentrating on crime issues peculiar to each locality. 

The contacts are a source of intelligence and general informal assistance in crime reduction. 

The reform of the organisation has continued with the introduction of a programme of fiveyear 

strategies to better integrate and align human resources, finance, IT, and operational 

policies based on the compatibility of values, operational, principles, organisation and systems. 

West Mercia has invested considerable time building a critical path for the implementation of 

these strategies over a five-year period rather than attempting to do too much too soon. 


• In the context of change, it is critical for those at the top of the organisation to engage 

with and understand the concerns of people across the whole of the organisation. This 

means connecting with as many people as possible and really listening to them. It also 

means that they build a connection with what the organisation as a whole is trying to 

achieve – beyond the strong ties that already exist with the team or local division. 

• Linked to this is the importance of a bedrock of values which impact on the way 

individuals behave, how the organisation operates internally and how its people work 

with the community they serve. In the process of change in West Mercia, these values 

were highlighted and shared among all the employees of the organisation, with the 

personal involvement of the chief constable. 

• West Mercia has also demonstrated how an organisation covering a wide range of 

differentcommunities needs to build means of communication and consultation that tap 

into the heart of the community and recognise the real differences, needs and approaches 

required to serve each one. 

1 THE IMPACT OF 

GOOD PEOPLE 

MANAGEMENT ON 

PUBLIC SECTOR 

PERFORMANCE 

The way that human effort is managed, nurtured and combined with investment in technology 

and organisational processes is a key determinant of any organisation’s performance. And 

people’s ability, opportunity and motivation to participate in that effort is directly related to the 

HR policies and practices that recruit, train, manage and reward them.This is conceptualised in 

the figure 1. 

This knowledge-management-based model should replace ‘Tayloristic’ task management – 

which was suited to the era of standardised production when many jobs involved nothing but 

routine and when time-and-motion exercises were all the rage as a route to higher productivity. 

The latter seeks to be cost-efficient by developing an organisation’s people assets, unlike the 

former which views labour as a cost to be minimised’ (CIPD, 2002b).


Training and 

development 

Performance 

appraisal 

Career 

opportunity 

Job security 

Recruitment/ 

selection 

Pay satisfaction 

Work-life balance 

Job challenge/ 

job autonomy 

Ability and skill 

–––––––––––––––– 

Motivation 

and incentive 

–––––––––––––––– 

Opportunity 

to participate 

Front line management 

– Implementing 

– Enacting 

– Leading 

– Controlling 

Organisation 

commitment 

–––––––––––––––––– 

Motivation 

–––––––––––––––––– 

Job satisfaction 

Teamworking 

Involvement 

Discretionary 

behaviour 

Communication 

Performance 

outcomes + 

Figure 1 People and performance model 

There is an increasing amount of evidence in recent years to show that good people 

management plays a significant part in: 

• catalysing or ‘turbo-charging’ other management practices – good people management is 

the ‘x-factor’ that leverages investment in new technology (which may have something to do 

with the so-called US productivity miracle); bad people management ensures that it does not 

reach its full potential 

• boosting organisations’ financial, operating and service performance – research shows, for 

instance, that people management has a bigger effect on organisational performance than 

research and development (CIPD, 2001) 

• ensuring the success of large-scale change programmes – the CIPD’s Organising for Success 

in the 21st century research highlights the problems that arise when large-scale organisation 

redesign fails to pay enough attention to implementation, considerations and related 

development processes. Where there is no involvement of human resource professionals, only 

a quarter of cases lead to improvement. This figure rises to around 40 per cent when an HR 

professional is included in the steering group. The perception among many public sector 

workers is of a relentless programme of change – described often as ‘too many initiatives’. 

This reflects a strong desire for stability and clarity of purpose among the workforce. 

• building a trusted and positive psychological contract that underpins employee commitment 

and satisfaction, themselves powerful contributors to performance 

• developing distributed leadership as the only sustainable means of responding flexibly to 

rapidly changing customer and other stakeholder demand at the point of delivery 

• operating performance management systems, with the onus on line managers to monitor 

the achievement of objectives and targets as a key driver to front-end delivery


• working smarter, not harder, with employees taking more ownership and accountability for 

their own performance and improvements 

• achieving clear lines of accountability – an essential corollary of devolution and flexible 

response to the front line 

All these are particularly relevant to service and public sector organisations where the quality of 

delivery depends critically on employees’ discretionary effort. For instance, death rates and quality of 

care in the NHS are improved where an effective basket of HR practices are in place (West, 2002). 

More broadly, case studies in a recent report on public service delivery demonstrate that change 

is most successfully achieved where people are motivated as a team by setting a clear goal to 

focus and energise them (Beaton and Vere, 2003). 

In all the cases highlighted in the report, leadership is shown to be key in helping to set 

direction, create the climate, model the future and recognise success. The importance of all 

these factors is amplified in a public sector which is struggling to come to terms with change 

on several different levels. These include increasing demands from all stakeholders, whether 

customers, employees or paymasters; the need to do more with less; embracing new 

technology; and most importantly, moving from a centrally driven, highly specified regime 

concentrating on inputs to a flexible, customer-focused, output-oriented regime. The principles 

of good people management are particularly valuable for customer-facing services. 

What are these principles? Good people management is based on policies for security of 

employment, careful recruitment, decentralisation and teamwork, pay with an incentive 

element, extensive training, systematic communication and high employee involvement. It also 

favours flat structures and workforce diversity. These translate into a number of practices which 

aim to develop involvement with the work; skills and motivation; and trust and commitment to 

the organisation. Tailored to the needs of each organisation and its employees and thus varying 

according to setting, they nonetheless include:


2 PRODUCTIVITY AND 

PERFORMANCE IN THE 

PUBLIC SECTOR 

• work organisation 

– self-managed teams, with interdepartmental working where appropriate 

– broad and flexible job descriptions within flat organisational structures 

– employee involvement and consultation programmes such as improvement teams 

– responsibility for own quality 

– job rotation and multi-skilling 

• information and consultation 

– effective information and communications procedures, such as briefing groups, which are 

open to all employees 

• training and development 

– appraisal 

– personal development plans 

– career development 

– ongoing learning both on and off-the-job 

• other HR programmes 

– sophisticated recruitment techniques 

– contribution-related rewards (whether skills- or performance-related) 

– support for a diverse workforce and balanced lifestyle 

– formal grievance procedures. 

Involvement, communication, teamwork and performance management emerge as particularly 

important elements affecting employee commitment and satisfaction in the public sector in 

CIPD research. It is a given in all this that quality of leadership is critical. The study, 

Understanding the People and Performance Link: Unlocking the Black Box, published in May 

2003, confirms the powerful relationships between HR practices, employee commitment and 

operating performance. It shows that where effective HR practices are not in place, levels of 

employee commitment are up to 90 per cent lower.


Overall productivity in the public sector is hard to measure, and attempts to do so systematically 

are still in their infancy (Office for National Statistics, 2002). In their absence, current estimates 

are crude and often politicised. 

However, while the Government claims progress towards some of its targets (Barber, 2003), 

there is general agreement that overall performance needs to be improved. There is no reason 

to think that the public sector is an exception to the UK’s well-documented productivity gap in 

relation to other advanced economies. Indeed, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has 

estimated that added value per employee in the public sector is £10,000 less than in the private 

sector (CBI, 2002). The Government’s mantra that ‘investment is conditional on reform’ says 

eloquently enough what it believes. 

People are only one of many variables affecting productivity, and they do so in many different 

ways: educational level, skills, motivation, willingness to innovate and diversity all influence 

overall performance. But people are particularly important because they knit the others 

together. The more motivated and skilled the workforce, and the better it is organised and 

managed, the more it can get out of other investment in machinery and technology. ‘People 

management is … the essential “X-factor” – the catalytic condition that combines 

improvements in plant, machinery and skills etc. into a formula for raising production,’ as the 

CIPD has put it (CIPD, 2002b). Better people management may be one reason why investment 

in IT seems to be more productive in the US than in the UK, for example. 

While it is now accepted that advanced HRM is associated with superior performance 

outcomes, within that overall generalisation it is also clear that one size doesn’t fit all. Strategic 

HRM is the idea that people management is not just a matter of applying a set number of 

practices to any kind of organisation – some degree of ‘fit’ is necessary. Each organisation 

comes from a different place, with a different history, different people, different customers and 

different relationships. To be effective at raising performance and sustaining it over time, 

practices need to fit together, reinforce each other, and be consistent with the organisation’s 

architecture and performance goals – they need to support the business case. 

For the public services, today’s ‘business case’ is above all about delivery. Like other 

organisations, they need to adapt to changing demand. But in the case of the public sector the 

shift is much greater both organisationally and psychologically: from single monolithic produceroriented 

provider of standard offerings to diverse, personalised deliverer of customised service, 

sometimes 24/7. Think, for example, of the cultural wrench involved in moving the police from 

an essentially military command-and-control model to a customer-facing, problem-solving one. 

Meanwhile, standards of living and consumer choice are inexorably rising. More complex, 

interlinked social and personal problems (for example, drugs, homelessness, mental health) 

present themselves to the public sector for solution. Technological progress is unremitting, 

bringing upward pressure on costs. 

In an era of ‘high-spec/high-touch’ delivery, it is only people that can make the difference by 

delivering the personal touch at the public interface. Quality outcomes do not emerge 

automatically. Organisations need to develop their management and workforce capacity to 

meet present and future demand by cultivating flexibility and the ability to respond rapidly to


3 PEOPLE 

MANAGEMENT AND 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL 

CONTRACT 

changing customer demand. While a challenge, however, the new focus on outcomes presents 

a real opportunity for the changing public sector to re-energise the workforce and reinforce 

performance management: ‘It represents for many a return to the “real” goal of public service, 

the ethos that led many people to join the public services in the first place. Clarity of outcomes 

means a real sense of purpose and direction for staff as well as providing a sharper focus for 

performance evaluation and process improvement’ (Beaton and Vere, 2002). 

Fortunately, as well as the motivation we now have architecture for delivering this flexible 

response in the shape of the high-performance or high-commitment workplace, which 

combines integrated people management practices of the type outlined in the previous section 

with a performance culture and continuous improvement against clear measurements set by 

the customer. High-performance working involves management and workers acting together in 

pursuit of common strategic goals, facilitated by flatter, cross-functional working systems and 

the promotion of strong leadership, continuous learning and teamwork. 

At the heart of the high-performance model is flexibility across several different dimensions. 

Responsive organisations: 

• flex their costs, including wage costs, in line with changing external conditions and to match 

internal performance variations 

• are functionally and occupationally flexible, allowing workers to move between different 

tasks and steadily mount the skills ladder, benefiting both them and the organisation 

• are flexible in management mindset, enabling them to make the most of all the available 

talent. This requires employers to embrace workplace diversity in all its forms and adopt 

working patterns that maintain a balance between work and domestic responsibilities. It also 

requires them to adapt to the value-shift in the labour force by which job seekers increasingly 

look for meaning and values in their work, just as they do in consumer brands. 

One of the key problems with all of this is that governments have consistently imposed a 

uniform model and ignored the importance of fit. For instance, the current model of individual 

performance pay exists across different types and sizes of organisations in different parts of 

the UK. 

As delivery becomes paramount, these flexibilities become important not just in themselves but 

in self-reinforcing combination. They are all of a piece. The shift of focus from control of 

finance and administrative process (inputs) to flexible delivery (outputs) can only be made real 

by management that encourages the workforce to respond directly to customers, not 

intermediate targets. The aim is to arrive at a system that increases its cost-effectiveness not by 

being driven to work harder but by developing the people assets – the human capital – and this 

allows it to learn and work smarter.


Along with consistent organisation and strategic fit, also critical to a high-performing 

organisation is the psychological contract – the unwritten expectations that workers and 

employers have of each other that influence and underpin discretionary effort. A positive 

psychological contract is associated with higher levels of motivation, commitment and 

acceptance of change on the part of the workforce. It is also linked to lower stress. Conversely, 

people management is unlikely to be effective if confidence in the employer is low. 

The psychological contract is particularly important in the context of discussions about public 

service improvement. This is because, unlike in repetitive production work, the delivery of faceto-face 

service depends on discretionary behaviour that employers find hard to specify and 

monitor – for instance, friendliness of response, willingness to listen or to suggest alternatives, 

or, internally, to share knowledge with colleagues. These aspects of performance can’t be 

commanded by the employer, only given by the employee: ‘One way or the other, the 

employee chooses how conscientiously to undertake the job’ (CIPD, 2002d). Central to the 

people and performance model outlined in Section 1 is the proposition that discretionary 

behaviour is decisively conditioned by job satisfaction and a sense of commitment to the 

organisation – in other words, the psychological contract, which is thus key to the employment 

relationship. 

The evidence here from the CIPD’s research is that the psychological contract is more variable in 

the public than in the private sector. Levels of satisfaction, trust and commitment are all lower 

in the public sector. This is especially true of central government, where only 7 per cent of 

workers believe strongly that ‘the organisation cares about my opinions’; while two out of five 

feel fairly treated by their managers and supervisors compared with more than half in other 

sectors. 

Meanwhile, public sector workers, particularly in central government and the NHS, are subject 

to large amounts of change and stress. Fifty-two per cent of all workers say their performance 

is being measured all the time, and 27 per cent that they are under constant observation. Those 

reporting higher levels of monitoring and tight control – a feature of many public services – are 

‘much more likely to be dissatisfied and under stress than other workers’ (Guest and Conway, 

2002). As many as 38 per cent of NHS workers and 30 per cent of local government workers 

find their work very stressful, with nurses, doctors and teachers highest on the list. 

Employees say that the main causes of stress are high workload and long hours, which have 

contributed to the long-term decline in satisfaction among public sector workers. This negative 

picture of the state of morale in the public sector is reinforced by a number of other reports 

suggesting that front-line public-sector workers continue to suffer high levels of work-related 

stress, as underlined last year by the Audit Commission (Audit Commission, 2002). It doesn’t 

help that many potential younger recruits view the public sector as relatively unattractive and 

dull. Improving the implementation of HR practices together with engendering high levels of 

trust between employers and workers are two of the key routes to improving the image of 

public sector organisations.


4 RECRUITMENT, 

RETENTION AND 

REWARD 

What are the causes behind the damaged state of the public sector psychological contract? In 

central government, lack of managerial autonomy, political pressures and changes of 

government policy probably play a part. We have already argued that a regime of tight targets 

and monitoring is inconsistent with the rhetoric of reform. Another important factor is the 

quality of management. While the Workplace Employee Relations Survey and other research 

has found that the public sector is in theory committed to progressive HR policies in a 

commendable number of areas (often by central mandate), in local practice their 

implementation is variable. Diversity is a good example: in April 2001 only 2.4 per cent of 

senior civil servants were from ethnic minorities and only 24.2 per cent were women, compared 

with 50.5 per cent of all civil servants. This creates a damaging gap between the rhetoric and 

reality of people’s experience which means that even well-meaning initiatives subsequently 

misfire. How the practices are implemented is as important for the psychological contract as 

which ones. 

In other words, the Government has bought the ‘hard’ programme side of high-performance 

HR practices and implemented a number of these – appraisal, performance-related pay etc. in a 

uniform, top-down manner. It has not generally recognised, however, the importance of 

‘bottom-up’ engagement and commitment, allowing people the input and freedom to commit 

and deliver at the local level. 

Management is thus key to closing the gap and reinvigorating the psychological contract. CIPD 

research shows that intrinsic motivation in the public sector generally remains quite strong; 

efforts to switch off extrinsic demotivators such as excessive paperwork, poor work–life balance 

and working conditions will be important. On the positive side, since the aim is to increase 

innovation and initiatives to meet real customer demand, measures to build trust – generally 

under-emphasised in UK workplaces – will need to take priority to move away from the culture 

of blame and ‘managing upwards’. 

Not surprisingly, good people management is also important in handling the human side of 

restructuring. Restructuring has immediate knock-on effects for the size and composition of the 

workforce, its skills, training, retention and pay – all key HR issues. Findings from the CIPD 

project, Organising for Success in the 21st Century, demonstrate that restructuring is more 

likely to succeed if HR professionals are involved at every stage to ensure that people issues do 

not get marginalised or forgotten in the process. As the psychological contract research 

underlines, this is particularly relevant to the public sector which shows that public sector 

workers experience high levels of change and feel more negative as a result.


Recruitment and retention of the right people are critical issues for the public sector. Although 

it has relatively low labour turnover overall, demand for public service staff exceeds supply, and 

there are chronic shortages in some geographical and occupational areas. What’s more, it’s not 

just a matter of maintaining the status quo: as the Audit Commission notes, the NHS Plan sets 

targets for the recruitment of 35,000 more nurses, midwives and health visitors, 15,000 more 

consultants and GPs and 30,000 more therapists and scientists by 2008, while the Department 

for Education and Skills plans to have an extra 10,000 teachers, 20,000 non-teaching staff and 

1,000 bursars by 2006. Meanwhile, the Home Office has increased funding to boost police 

recruitment by 9,000 by 2003. ‘Other areas do not have formal recruitment targets set, but will 

clearly need more staff if delivery targets are to be met. For example, the number of childcare 

workers must increase significantly in order to meet the target of a pre-school place being 

available for every four-year-old by 2005’ (Audit Commission, 2002). 

Surveys show that public sector organisations have far greater difficulty in recruiting staff with 

the desired combination of experience and skills than the private sector. Half of public sector 

respondents in the 2002 CIPD recruitment and retention survey complained of a lack of any 

applicants, double the proportion for the private sector (CIPD, 2002c). Pay levels aren’t 

particularly attractive, being on average 5 per cent lower than in the private sector. 

Opportunities for development and promotion are fewer, while the bureaucratic and dowdy 

image of some of the public services is also an off-putting factor. 

The CIPD argues that changes are required in recruitment and selection criteria to place greater 

emphasis on attitudes, values and behaviours than the traditional skills and experience. The 

need to align these criteria with the goals and values of the organisation is also becoming 

increasingly important. 

The public sector emerges reasonably well from comparison with the private sector in labour 

turnover. For example, turnover in health and education is 13.1 per cent and 17.5 per cent 

respectively, against an average for all sectors of 18.2 per cent (CIPD, 2002a). Nevertheless, 

turnover is a matter of concern for most organisations, which can conversely damage 

performance by being too low. This may be the case in the public sector, although the high 

cost associated with labour turnover (£3,462 for all leavers and £5,500 for managers and 

professionals) should not be ignored. 

Because of the difficulties of recruitment and the negative effects of staff turnover, retention 

issues are everywhere growing in importance. On its survey evidence the Audit Commission 

concluded that the balance between what people want from their work and what they are 

getting is still not right. ‘Too many public sector workers feel that they cannot really make a 

difference in practice.’ The most important factor causing people to leave the public sector, it 

reported, was the feeling of being overwhelmed by bureaucracy and paperwork. Although pay 

was an issue for some, it came well below insufficient resources (perhaps because of the 

paperwork), lack of autonomy and feeling undervalued.


How can public sector retention be improved? The Audit Commission points out that the 

factors it has identified ‘are not primarily “pull” factors relating to compelling alternative work 

or life options. They are “push” factors, influenced by the negative experiences that people are 

having in their public sector roles. Push factors are inherently more controllable than pull 

factors, so successful local action is possible’ (Audit Commission, 2002). 

This means, above all, taking steps to understand staff motivation for both leaving and staying 

and to create and sustain a working environment in which people can make a difference – in 

other words, high-performance work arrangements as outlined in earlier sections. There is 

evidence of change and success though, including the examples of the London Ambulance 

Service and Metropolitan Police recruitment advertising campaigns. 

Although the clear finding is that all these elements need to be considered together to manage 

recruitment and retention, special attention needs to be given to reward. CIPD research shows 

that a combination of individual and collective contribution-related pay structures are associated 

with high-performing workplaces. Yet pay is the trickiest and often the most controversial 

component of people management, particularly in the public sector. For example, while in the 

Audit Commission survey pay ranked only eighth in the list of reasons for leaving, better pay was 

top of the factors that might have induced leavers to stay. This indicates that pay can in some 

instances compensate for shortcomings in other areas, but for that very reason it is a palliative 

that is dangerous to rely on. The other demotivators will need to be addressed at some stage. In 

general, too much may be expected of pay strategies. They cannot be equally effective for the 

very different objectives of recruitment, motivation and retention, and attempts to make them so 

end up becoming over-complicated and hard to understand – another demotivator. 

Pay is especially controversial as a motivator. Many on the receiving end in the public sector, 

such as teachers and nurses, argue strongly that individual performance-related rewards 

promote competition at the expense of teamwork. There are also dangers of perverse 

consequences if they are linked indirectly to targets. Incentives work best for simple tasks where 

there is a straight line-of-sight from effort to results. For more complicated jobs where results 

are required on many dimensions, and where they depend on the efforts of many people, 

incentives are much harder to align. Team-based pay, which the Civil Service is piloting, may 

have a part to play here, although this too should not be considered a panacea — there is a 

significant issue in ‘free-riding’, for example. 

The 2003 CIPD reward management survey demonstrates a positive shift towards rewarding 

contribution, with almost 40 per cent of organisations heading in this direction. Rather than 

linking pay to crude targets, this recognises the broader performance, competence and 

development of staff in many ways, of which pay is only one. As the Audit Commission (2000) 

notes, the generally good pensions arrangements in the public sector should be communicated 

effectively so that these are not ignored or underestimated, particularly given the problems in 

the general occupational pensions environment in the UK at present.


LEADERSHIP AND 

CHANGE 

We welcome current aspects of the Civil Service reform which promote experiments with: 

• delegating pay decisions, including performance pay 

• piloting team and collective pay and bonuses 

• clarifying management accountability, including the power to set local pay. 

It is important to learn from these initiatives. Pay concerns can seriously undermine the shared 

vision that is at the centre of high-performance working. Getting reward structures right is one 

of the most important ways that people management can help to galvanise the public sector. 

The CIPD has recently drawn together some examples of outstanding change across all sections 

of the public sector (Beaton and Vere, 2003). While many of the ideas common to all the 

examples are set out in this paper, the report singles out the following qualities required to lead 

effectively in today’s public service context: 

• visible and real personal commitment to the process and its results 

• active engagement by top managers in directly leading, facilitating and participating in the 

goal-forming process, as well as endorsing the results of this organisation-wide process 

• real listening to the people in the organisation – this is active listening: showing 

understanding of the issues, empathising with people offering ideas, clarifying understanding 

and acting on ideas. 

CONCLUSION 

As the head of the No. 10 Office of Public Sector Reform has put it, this is ‘a defining moment 

for public services in the UK’ (Thomson, 2003). Ambitions are high, and many laudable 

initiatives are producing significant results at all levels. For example, in the NHS the Cancer 

Services and Primary Care Collaboratives have spread to become among the largest healthcare 

improvement programmes in the world. This is what ‘reform’ is – the result of implementing 

initiatives to improve service to customers on the ground, at the point of delivery, not of 

abstract restructuring imposed from above. In the same way, the cultural changes needed to 

sustain improvement grow out of a myriad of small-scale initiatives and experiments – they are 

a consequence, not a cause, and come from within, not from outside. 

Yet these efforts are being held back by the inconsistencies of public sector people 

management. Even though the public sector offers a range of HR benefits, the practices remain 

patchy and uncoordinated. At its sharpest, there is a fatal gap between the rhetoric of 

responsive public services and the reality of unforgiving centralised targets. Devolution and 

decentralisation can’t be used to shift accountabilities downwards to the front line while senior 

managers continue to face only upwards, as before. As illustrated by the research on the 

psychological contract, these inconsistencies breed cynicism and resentment, which in turn 

contribute to recruitment difficulties and slow improvement efforts. ‘Why should a young 

graduate become a social worker or teacher if, with lower pay, they are expected to work 

under the same organisational regimes as in the private sector? Public sector organisations 

cannot have it both ways – appealing to the ethics of professionalism, then imposing business 

models that treat their staff as instrumental, uncommitted employees’ (Scase, 2002).


What is needed – and what is proving so difficult – is a shift from traditional command-andcontrol 

styles of management to a high-performance model based on autonomy and trust. You 

can’t have local initiative and individual empowerment without letting go; transformation, by 

definition, includes the top as well as the bottom. Unfortunately, the Government’s current 

approach shows remarkable consistency in not letting go, in that control will be relinquished 

and autonomy allowed only to the highest-performing public sector organisations, ie the ones 

that need it least. 

We believe that this is not the way to spread excellence rapidly and widely across the public 

sector. On the contrary, it will slow change down. Instead, the next step in public sector reform 

is the Government’s. It has to close the damaging gap between public service rhetoric and 

reality by: 

• putting people rather than processes at the heart of Civil Service and public sector reform 

• adopting best people management and high-performance practice 

• allowing public sector organisations the autonomy to develop their own routes to 

excellence. This may well require them to switch off official targets which say nothing about 

real demand or how to meet it and move to using scorecards and a framework to guide 

performance requirements and objectives, rather than imposing top-down a myriad 

of targets. 

Developing world-class UK public services involves a shift from managerialism to leadership topdown 

and bottom-up. But that can only happen if the Government shows the way.


REFERENCES 

ATTWOOD, M., PEDLER, M., PRITCHARD, S. and WILKINSON, D. (2003). Leading Change. 

Policy Press. 

AUDIT COMMISSION (2002). Recruitment and retention: a public sector workforce for the 

21st century. Public Sector Briefing. 

BARBER, M. (Chief Adviser, Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit) (2003). Evidence to the Select 

Committee on Public Administration, 27 February. 

CBI (2002). Recommendations for the 2002 Government Spending Review. Confederation of 

British Industry. 

CIPD (2001). People Management and Business Performance. Chartered Institute of Personnel 

and Development. 

CIPD (2002). Developing managers for business performance. Chartered Institute of Personnel 

and Development. 

CIPD (2002). Labour turnover 2002. CIPD Survey Report. Chartered Institute of Personnel and 

Development. 

CIPD (2002). Productivity and people management. Perspectives. Chartered Institute of 

Personnel and Development. 

CIPD (2002). Recruitment and retention 2002. CIPD Survey Report. Chartered Institute of 


CIPD (2002). Sustaining success in difficult times. Research Summary. Chartered Institute of 


CIPD (2003). Organising for Success in the 21st century. Chartered Institute of Personnel and 

Development. 

COUNCIL FOR EXCELLENCE IN MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP (2002). Managers and 

leaders: raising the game. Council for Excellence in Management & Leadership. 

THE ECONOMIST (2002). ‘Should try harder’. 25 September. 

GUEST, D. and CONWAY, N. (2002), Pressure at Work and the Psychological Contract. 

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. 

HM TREASURY (2002). Pre-Budget Report 2002. 

INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT (2001). Leadership: the challenge for all? Institute of Management. 

KEEP, E. and WESTWOOD, A. (2003) Can the UK Learn to Manage? SKOPE/The Work 

Foundation. 

OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS (2002). ‘Measuring productivity change in the provision of 

public services’. Economic Trends 582. May. 

SCASE, R. (2002). ‘End of the affair with USA Inc.’. Observer. 31 March. 

THOMSON, W. (2003). ‘UK experience of reform: a model to follow?. Speech at The 

Economist Conference, 29–30 January. 

VERE, D. and BEATON, L. (2003), Public Service Delivery. The Change Agenda. Chartered 

Institute of Personnel and Development. 

WORKPLACE EMPLOYEE RELATIONS SURVEY (1998). Department of Trade and Industry. 

WEST, M. (2002). The link between the management of employees and patient mortality in 

acute hospitals. 

WEST MERCIA POLICE (2003), CIPD conference presentation case study.

The CIPD explores leading-edge people management and development issues at a strategic 

level. Our aim is to share knowledge by making connections between knowledge and 

practice, and to increase learning and understanding. We produce a range of think pieces in 

the Change Agenda series. For a complete list visit www.cipd.co.uk/changeagendas 

This Change Agenda was written by Simon Caulkin Management Editor/The Observer 

Issued: July 2003 Reference: 2776 

Chartered Institute 

of Personnel and 

Development 

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Tel: 020 8971 9000 Fax: 020 8263 3333 

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© Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development 2003

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