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Attractor has been working with an NHS client to support its work deploying  Supervisor Self-Service – part of the Electronic Staff Record (ESR), the national HR and Payroll solution used by almost all NHS organisations in England and Wales.

Following effective change management and process review action, the Trust has now completed the pilot phase, proving business processes work and assessing the extent to which new working practices are both fit for purpose and beneficial.

At the end of the pilot phase, managers using the system have reported real benefits for them in terms of time saving, more effective working practices, access to vital staffing information and greater empowerment with the ability to act quickly on timely information.

Subject to Project Board sign-off, Self-Service will be made available to managers across the organisation in a accelerated launch phase, alongside which the functionality in Manager Self Service will be piloted.

In 2011, public sector cuts are a universal phenomenon and it seems the anticipated reductions in NHS staffing levels would result in an overall reduction from 1,432,000 to somewhere around 1,380,000 by 2015. As the Telegraph’s David Hughes point out, a reduction of 50,000 jobs does sound high, but is a relatively small proportion (3.5%) of the NHS workforce and will be managed over a number of years.

The Telegraph article needs one, small, correction. At this new, lower staffing level would become the world’s fourth largest employer behind Wal-Mart, the Chines Army and Indian State Railways – having been temporarily ahead of the Indian Army for around a decade.

David Hughes is correct in suggesting it would be possible to manage the anticipated scale of moves through “natural wastage”. Managing the required change in this way sounds good in principle but is only possible if the cuts happen to be in the same places as people moving on.

Experience suggests real life is rarely that simple and there are, now, thousands of people at risk of redundancy – a position that might and that position is likely to remain constant for about 2 years.

When reading the Telegraph article, it is interesting to contrast its “matter of fact”  tone with the more alarmist one in another article in the Telegraph just a year earlier when similar challenges were being considered by a government of a different political persuasion – though it’s fair to reflect the article discussed the possibility of a 10% reduction in staffing.

Organisations facing these pressures will need to be far more proactive in delivering the changes needed.

Photo: bcmom, Flickr

At the end of 2010, Attractor commented on early reports of proposals to introduce a freeze on incremental pay progression for NHS employees in return for a guarantee of no compulory redundancies. Details of the offer for a “National Enabling Framework on Pay” were well covered in the the Guardian and the NHS Employers site provides access to many documents which describe the detail, context and background for the offer.

In his regular blog, Gerry Bolger comments on the fact many of the leaders who have publicly supported the offer are earning more than the Prime Minister, highlighting the cost of the senior managers in relation to clinical teams.

While many will agree, the comparison with the Prime Minister’s pay follows an avenue laid by the Conservative Party in their bashing of public sector organisations throughout 2010. In fact the comparison is not particularly valid and Attractor has made earlier comments on this matter.

An organisation facing greater than average financial constraints and where QIPP efforts are slow in materialising will face stronger pressures to agree a pay freeze than one where there is a successful and positive programme of reform and service reorganisation. Where there is a sound case for significant reorganisation, agreeing such a deal might tie the hands of management and prevent sensible reform – and result in more people losing out than necessary.

Looking at the offer in details – there seem to be more challenges and problems than there are signficant benefits for employees. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo:Jenny Downing, Flickr

The Coalition Government has published it’s Decentralisation and Localism Bill. In the Essential Guide to the Bill, the government rejects the idea that decentralisation is simply a smkokescreen for cuts. It also rejects suggestion that local people are incapable of effectively managing public resources. It reflects that central government has a history of waste and inefficiency and has no right to lecture local government or communities.

It also highlights the potential for local solutions to be more innovative, agile and resilient than monlithic programmes, which it says have to wait “… for the apparatus of government to creak into action.”

Responding to concerns about a “postcode lottery”, the government response is that decentralisation will allow communities to do different things in different ways to meet local needs, increasing variety in service provision based on choice by local people rather than nationally-imposed “one-size-fits-all” policies.

In press breifings, the Government suggests the legislation will help build the Big Society by radically transforming the relationships between central government, local government, communities and individuals.

The Bill reflect the original statement in the Coalition Agreement -

“We share a conviction that the days of big government are over; that centralisation and top-down control have proved a failure. We believe that the time has come to disperse power more widely in Britain today; to recognise that we will only make progress if we help people to come together to make life better. In short, it is our ambition to distribute power and opportunity to people rather than hoarding authority within government.”

Using the phrase “a gold standard for decentralisation, the Government describes six essential actions which is will drive centrally to deliver decentralisation down through every level of government “to every citizen” – Read the rest of this entry →

Human Resources practitioners are a self-critical bunch, exhibiting regular doubts and self-criticism. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)  campaign to make HR a more attractive career opportunity sparked a bout of critical comment from practitioners. In the HRZone there has been a popular discussion thread where HR practitioners discuss what they would change about the profession.

Front-line managers and business commentators often express doubts about the specialism, suggesting good people management is just common sense.

There is also regular criticism, especially in the public sector, that HR policy and procedures are over-complex, presenting too many barriers to managers who want to run effective businesses. Facing this critique, perhaps it’s natural the profession appears somewhat defensive and this might also explain why the profession has been striving to demonstrate it’s value and contribution to business.

But just how valuable is the HR function to business? Is it a vital function or does it just make business harder to do? Read the rest of this entry →

More adverse comment has arisen about failings in public sector management as well as suggestions that public servants are lazy and inefficient.

Comments made by Tony McGuirk, the Chief Fire Officer of Merseyside at a Reform thinktank event in June were circulated at the recent TUC conference.

His words have been roundly condemned by some, called “a withering attack” by unions and used by others to support predictable criticismof public sevices, suggesting they are “crammed to the rafters” with lazy employees who can’t be sacked.

Supporting the view it was possible to overhaul public services, improving performance while saving money, Mr McGuirk explained managers should develop or ultimately sack people showing  poor performance – some of whom he said were “bone idle” – and raised concerns that managers often lacked sufficient “muscle”. In fact, he has recently apologised for using “inappropriate language” when talking about the need to confront poor performance and an epidemic of sickness absence.

Is the public sector prone to idleness? Read the rest of this entry →

When the coalition government came to power it was given credit for the protection it offered to health services by ringfencing NHS budgets. The Coalition Government has come under pressure to reverse its pledge to ring-fence health spending in order to protect other services but as yet has not backed down.

It was also assumed, from the Conservative Party manifesto, the NHS would experience a period of stability. Even with known financial pressures, it was anticipated the same level of difficult choices facing other public services would not be required in healthcare organisations.

The publication of the NHS White Paper turned all this on it’s head.  With many national health agencies and the regional infrastructure being dismantled, plus the commissioning arrangements being fundamaentally re-drawn, the NHS is now anticipating the most turbulent period in living memory.

It should come as no surprise the NHS is under pressure to be more productive – after more than a decade of significant investment in both facilities and staff.

But delivering this improvement will be hard at a time when the NHS is being asked to plan savings totalling £20bn to be able to live within its means, the entire structure of the health service is being shuffled.

So what progress is being made? Read the rest of this entry →

Image : jinho.jung, Flickr

When organisations refer to their “shared services” projects, they are not all talking about identical solutions. Different experiences and variations in savings will reflect the nature of changes being made and the approach to implementation.

For some organisations, implementing shared services brings together a number of activities which were managed within local business units – creating a single, centralised solution.

Instead of each business unit controlling its own local service, they all share a single internal service delivered from a central location.

For other organisations shared services involves seeking to buy-in services from another corporate body – perhaps a parent organisation, a similar neighbour or a commercial partner. In this case, challenges of reorganising services and delivering service levels are multiplied by issues of finding the right partners, procurement and contracts.

In some very ambitous cases, organisations might be seeking to both centralise and buy-in services in one swift act which makes projects especially challenging. In all cases the service outcomes will be judged on the basis of how they work for customers and how much they cost. These judgements will be determined by how they set up their business and approach investment and improvement action. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo: Sam and Ian, Flickr

The Guardian’s recent stories on privatisation, the opportunities for private health providers and private sector job opportunities for key civil servants should surprise nobody.

It’s hard to accept suggestions the implications of “The Big Society” could not have been foreseen.

People preparing to cast their votes only had to look to see evidence of a different approach to government.

Over the next five years, the coalition government will change the way public services are delivered – using a wide range of providers, public, private and social enterprises.

It may be fair to criticise politicians for a failure of openness during the 2010 general election campaign, but there were plenty of signs of what was coming.

The Conservative party preference for private provision is historic, pre-dating this financial crisis. The credit crunch seems only to have raised the bar as more stories highlighted how they wished to transform the UK – Channel 4 (2001) the NHS (2009), government bureacracies (2009), delivering public services (2009), municipal entrepreneurship (2009) and the Post Office (2010). Even the Liberal Democrats are no strangers to the idea of using private sector organisations in areas like the Royal Mint.

It is hard to envision, however attractive, mutual, social enterprise and voluntary sector providers matching the potentially deep pockets of established rival PLCs. If solutions can be found though, increasing diversity and choice can only be positive.

The coalition, with a need for huge savings, is naturally going to look to the private sector for solutions. The indications are the Labour government was considering similar plans – though they would certainly have been less wide-ranging and ambitious. Read the rest of this entry →

A great deal of concern has been expressed over the impact of the Internet and social technology in the workplace, with fears employees are wasting enormous amount of “paid time” playing with new technological toys.

In Social Networking – Challenges in the Workplace, Attractor discussed the concerns which led some councils to ban Facebook and set this in the context of broader impacts on productivity.

Cath Everett reports at the HRZone a summary of a poll of 1,546 employees by HireScores.com revealing the average UK worker spent over an hour each day talking to colleagues about non-work issues.

While 8% admitted to a massive 3 hours of chatting, clearly excessive, the average figure still represents lost productivity of around 13%, taking a 43.2 hour working week (ONS 2003) and assuming people are not working while chatting. Read the rest of this entry →