While a number of local authorities are introducing performance-related pay structures across their workforces, it appears that front line management will need to improve if staff are to see the benefits.
According to a report by the Local Government Chronicle, Camden London Borough Council and both Essex and Kent County Councils are among a group of local authorities that have decided to broaden PRP policies beyond simply senior managers.
While it is a route that a few councils have taken already, many more are expected to follow suit over the year ahead as they attempt to deal with straitened financial circumstances. Such moves result in the scrapping of annual incremental pay rises to be replaced with yearly percentage increased based on appraisal ratings.
According to a recent report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), however, poor people management skills within the public sector are currently leading to high absentee rates and an inability to tackle poor performance.
For example, average employee absence rates in the public sector currently stand at 9.7 days per year compared with 6.4 days in the private sector. But if the gap were halved some £350 million could be saved annually.
Conflict management results in 12 lost days per annum in both sectors, meanwhile, but public sector managers appear to fight shy of taking formal disciplinary action. While they initiate cases against only one staff member in every 364, the private sector is more bullish, hauling one employee in every 199 over the coals.
Such activity also takes longer once started upon. While public sector managers spend 21 days on each disciplinary incident and 12 on every grievance, the private sector assigns only 12 and seven days respectively.
Ben Willmott, the CIPD’s senior public policy advisor, said: “While there are excellent managers and examples of great performance in the public sector, capacity to effectively manage change, absence and performance management generally, the sector is in urgent need of improvement.”
Front-line managers needed to be equipped with better people management skills, he added, while senior managers needed to give their workforce “greater opportunities to understand and buy in to change”.
The CIPD’s findings were backed up by a report from recruitment chain, Hays. A recent survey among 1,200 public sector personnel found that 35% of managers thought their leadership training was inadequate.
A mere 16% of managers and 12% of staff also believed that their organisation had the resources available to manage a reduced budget in the year ahead, while 13% of management felt that there was no clear strategy in place to provide more services with less resources.
