YOU just can’t sack the help these days. More than three quarters of senior civil servants believe that Whitehall departments do not manage poor performance effectively, according to a survey reported in Personnel Today (June 13).
Officials in the Treasury were the least negative, with 32 per cent saying that their department dealt with poor performance effectively; bottom of the table was the Department for Transport, where only 5 per cent of mandarins thought it was handled well. Also criticised were the efficiency of performance appraisal systems and leaders’ abilities to deliver results.
The results, from an internal staff survey, aren’t all bad. They indicate that senior civil servants are confident of their own ability to get their jobs done and are positive about the way that they treat staff; their support of teamworking; and the opportunity for training and development.
Nick Pearce, the director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, says that the Civil Service needs systemic reform. “It will never achieve consistently high performance without external accountability and effective performance management.”
Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, seems to agree that the Civil Service is not living up to all expectations. “Some aspects of performance must and will improve, and soon,” he says in People Management (June 15).
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When it comes to assessing departments — rather than those who run them — an external regulator is the way to go, says Sir Michael Bichard, a former permanent secretary. “External accountability is continually used by the Government to assess other public services, so I see no reason why departmental capability reviews should not be handed over to an inspectorate that is independent of Whitehall,” he says on www.publicfinance.co.uk.