British Rants

I work for a local authority that specialises in ruling from the top. 

It is a common misconception amongst the general public that local government is over-funded and wasteful. From my experience I can assure you that this is no longer the case. 10 years ago we were rolling in money, you’d get business trips paid for, your workload wasn't as high and most meetings you went to included lunch - now you’re lucky to get water provided! 

During the last five years Britain has been hammered by the recession. One of the first things central government began to cut was funding to local authorities and as such they had to find new ways of working to save money. 

One of the ways they began saving money was by moving all “non-technical” staff into a generic support service. The view was to use Matrix Management and - somehow - this was going to save money.... by adding in a further layer of management...

So, off they went. Instead of reviewing staff roles and deciding if they were technical or not, they simply used a one size fits all approach. Anyone who was paid below a certain point was instantly non-technical and moved over to this new support service. Everyone got new job titles and job descriptions which were generic and told you nothing about the role. 

Some staff that were of a higher pay grade were given the option to either become managers of the lower paid staff, or take a pay cut and be the lower paid staff. So, this forced people with no management experience and no desire to manage into management positions because they couldn't afford to take a pay cut. The people who had become management went one of two ways, either they were timid and ineffective, or they became jumped up, insecure and horrible to work for. This left staff at all levels feeling unsupported and angry. 

Higher management on the other hand choose to totally ignore any negative comments or opinions on the new service. If you ask them, they genuinely believe its the best thing that ever happened. They all tout the lines of “open door policy”, however, in practice they ignore emails for months before sending a reply that only addresses the positives and fails to recognise the negatives. 

The most interesting part is, this has apparently saved us money.

In the old system, you had one manager. Your manager was the person who you worked with every day, knew your job inside out and knew the priorities of the service you supported.

In the new system, you have one manager who belongs to the generic service. They probably manage 25 other staff from all different departments. They don't know enough about any of the departments to actually relate to the job that their staff do, but yet they feel they can dictate how you perform and what your priorities should be. 

In summary, the only things that this new generic service has succeeded in doing is making staff on the ground feel less supported, added another layer of management, reduced the support to service areas and de-skilled the workforce.