A preview of what the new research tells us about the challenges facing the public sector
Managing change is particularly challenging for the Public sector where 79% of respondents reported it was an issue – almost double the number who reported it as an issue in Private Services.
Roffey Park has just completed its annual Management Agenda research for 2008 and it will make grim reading for Public sector organisations. Ahead of its official publication later this month, report authors Annette Sinclair and Gemma Robertson-Smith give a preview of what the new research tells us about the challenges facing the Public sector.
Roffey Park’s Management Agenda research sets out to explore the organisational and personnel challenges facing Private, Not-for-profit and Public sector organisations. This year, it has uncovered a level of discontent and failure to tackle underperformance in the Public sector that should give practitioners in this area some cause for concern. There are several well-defined areas in which Public sector organisations perform significantly worse than their Private Service sector counterparts. Here, we look at these areas and ask how the Public sector can change for the better in 2008.
Reputation
Board reputation – both internal and external – is critical to achieving employee buy-in and aligning them with wider corporate values. While Private companies enjoy a relatively high reputation with their employees – despite several widely reported high profile corporate scandals – Public sector respondents are the most negative regarding the reputation of their most senior Boards. Close to half of Public sector respondents rate the internal reputation of the Board as negative or very negative compared to only a quarter in Private Services. Public sector respondents are also the most negative regarding the external reputation of their Boards.
Values
Many organisations have a clear mission and vision statement and commonly these are linked to statements about the values of the organisation. These values may be used as a uniting guide for behaviour and decision-making within the organisation, in line with fundamental beliefs about the way
work should be done. However, Roffey Park’s previous Management Agenda research has demonstrated that the stated ‘values’ of an organisation are frequently seen as little more than a PR exercise. Although this remains to be the case, the latest Management Agenda shows a reduction in cynicism over the past two years, except in the public sector where there is an increase in cynicism.
Performance
As with previous years, underperformance – and dealing with it – remains an issue for organisations; few respondents think it is tackled adequately while a sizeable minority feel it is not tackled at all. Again, the public sector reports markedly poorer results than the others with only 4% of respondents thinking underperformance is tackled very well within their organisations. The clichéd inability of Public sector managers to motivate teams and deal with poor performance appears to reflect reality. Having said that, the Public sector scores significantly higher when it comes to work-life balance.
Office politics
It is a long acknowledged fact that internal politics can have a negative effect on morale and performance but the Management Agenda shows that this problem is much more entrenched in the Public sector. Around three quarters of respondents from the Public sector say political behaviour has increased in their organisation in recent years, compared to half of those from the Private Services. In addition, over half of Public sector respondents report that political behaviour is one of the main factors causing conflict within their organisations. The research also shows that competition for resources is a particular cause of conflict in the Public sector.
Challenges ahead
As in the previous four years, the most commonly reported challenge facing organisations is managing change. Managing change is particularly challenging for the Public sector where 79% of respondents reported it was an issue – almost double the number who reported it as an issue in Private Services.
Skills shortages also appear to be a particular challenge in the Public sector, with 10% more reports than in Private Service firms. This perhaps relates to the aging workforce which stood out as most challenging for the Public sector – over three times as many respondents quoted it as an issue than those in the Private sector. Unsurprisingly, the external political environment is a significant factor for most Public sector respondents, over five times as many of them cited it as an issue compared to their Private sector counterparts.
Conclusion
There are clearly some challenges ahead for the Public sector, but what else can we read from this, at times, unflattering account from the people at the front line? Is the Public sector genuinely plagued with internal politics, poor reputation, failures to tackle underperformance and a lack of congruence between real and stated values? And if so, how can this be tackled; are there lessons to be learnt from Private Service and Not-for profit organisations?