Cross purposes
Jane Simms explains why private-sector managers who think that moving into the public services would be a safe, boring option are sorely mistaken
Date:
09 April 2009
Source:
Guide to recruitment consultancies
Page:
17
When I told my colleagues at Capital One Financial Services that I was leaving for a job in the public sector, one of them replied: ‘What on Earth are you doing?’” recalls Siobhan Sheridan, HR director at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
As she says, people who have spent their careers in the private sector often have a jaundiced view of what the public sector is really like. Some common perceptions are that it is a low-paying bureaucracy that’s beset by Byzantine decision-making processes, hamstrung by trade unions and staffed by people with no work ethic. On the other hand, it is seen as offering good benefits and working conditions – and as providing a safer employment alternative to the more cut-throat private sector, particularly in a recession.
The two cultures are undoubtedly different, but not necessarily in the ways that most people might think, explains Sheridan, who left her role as HR director of UK cards at the bank for Defra in 2007.
“Having spent 20 years in financial services, I wanted to move to the public sector as a conscious career development step,” she says. “It’s easy to get complacent when you’re working in the same environment for a long time, so I wanted a new challenge.”
She wasn’t disappointed. “Government is a great place in which to develop your skills. The sheer brain power of some of the people here, not to mention their strong morals and ideals, makes it a real privilege to work among them. It really pushes you out of your comfort zone. What greater HR challenge could you face than, say, workforce planning at the Ministry of Defence? You also get to work on some of the biggest societal and environmental challenges facing us globally – climate change, for example.”
Yet in some senses the differences between the sectors are less pronounced than you might expect, according to Sheridan. Defra wanted her mainly because of her experience in areas such as performance management and flexible staffing – developments that the department’s permanent secretary, Helen Ghosh, was looking to introduce. But in other areas the public services could teach business a thing or two, she says.
“In the public sector you’re dealing with many different stakeholders, which presents an interesting intellectual challenge to someone coming in from the outside. But even the private sector is being forced to balance its traditional focus on investors with factors such as corporate social responsibility and the environment,” Sheridan points out.
She admits to having a few “moments” of culture shock. “For example, when Gordon Brown did a Cabinet reshuffle and created the Department of Energy and Climate Change in October, we heard about it just before the staff did. So your whole approach to change management goes out of the window. Ironically, civil servants are much more flexible in such situations, because they are used to it.”
Sheridan’s transition was eased by having good mentors and a wide network of people to turn to for advice. But, for every successful move into the public sector, there are many more unsuccessful attempts, according to Rebecca Beardwell, associate director in the HR practice at Morgan Law.
“We are seeing increasing numbers of private-sector HR people who are interested in moving across, but they need to consider their motivation carefully, because that will be tested at interview stage and also, if they get through that, once they’re in the job,” Beardwell says. “Public-sector employers want to see your commitment to a values-based approach – manifested, for example, by voluntary work such as serving on the board of a not-for-profit organisation.”
Beardwell takes pains to explain to candidates what they will be up against. While its employment practices tend to be attractive – offering flexible working, family-friendly policies, good hours and generous holidays, for instance – there’s little scope for negotiation on what are still rigid salary bands.
“Also, because of the culture of accountability, decision-making processes are much more consultative and therefore time-consuming, which some people find frustrating,” she adds. “You also require strong influencing skills, because you need a broad range of stakeholders to back any changes you might want to make. You can’t simply tell people what to do.”
But Steve White, manager of the HR recruitment team at Badenoch & Clark, points out that the amount of red tape varies among the various types of public body. “It’s arguably harder to make a successful transition to local government, the housing sector or the NHS than it is to enter central government, because these do tend to be more bureaucratic, political and slow-moving,” he says. “Patience really is a virtue.”
The trick here is to understand what you can and can’t change, and to be able to “tolerate ambiguity”, says Jo Blissett, a director of Interim Performers.
It’s a trick that Graham White, HR director at Westminster City Council, learnt soon after he quit his job as head of HR at Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland and joined Surrey County Council in 2002.
“I was scared rigid about how I could bring in ‘added-value HR’,” he admits. “But the council’s CEO got me to stop the taps dripping – sort out things such as people getting the wrong pay. Once we’d got that right, we outsourced a lot of it and started focusing on adding value.”
White proceeded to cut the size of the HR team from 400 to 40 people in four years. Although he describes this as “a feat”, it was a means to an end, not an end in itself. “In local government you must realise that you have no future unless you’re playing a part in delivering improved services to customers – the public,” he explains. “I judge my success in terms of there being fewer children at risk, for instance. I have a direct impact on such things. When I used to work in the textile industry, I made carpets.”
The job satisfaction may be greater, but White works a lot harder than he did in the private sector. “I get the 5.52am train, I’m in the office by 6.30am and I count myself lucky if I’m out by 6.30pm,” he says.
But what he found to be “the biggest and most staggering difference” between the private and public sector was that the latter “had no appreciation of job insecurity, which made for a very different employment relationship. The concept of performance and continuous improvement was difficult to embed”.
He did embed it, driven by the public-sector imperative of delivering more and better services with less money, but he couldn’t do it using traditional private-sector methods. “The values orientation of the public sector means that you can’t simply squeeze things dry. You have to try to find a better, smarter way to deliver a service. This is intellectually challenging, but highly rewarding when you achieve it.”
Other changes can be implemented surprisingly quickly. “At Westminster I have simply thrown out the concept of incremental pay rises based on tenure,” White says.
For the right person, the public sector can be a great career move. As Blissett points out, the challenges posed by the operational efficiency programme, which is seeking £30 billion in savings across the public sector by 2012, combined with the ongoing requirement to improve services, offers a great chance to apply HR practices honed in the private sector to excellent effect. But it’s not for the faint-hearted.
“If you think it’s a cushy number”, she says, “think again.”