Just as human error is usually a cause of car accidents, so the same applies to failing councils, say Robin Hooper and Norman Perry, who emphasise that competency to do a job has to be a paramount consideration in staff selection.
It is sometimes said that there is no such thing as a car ‘accident'. There is almost always an avoidable cause – often, human error.
The same could be true of failing councils. Most often, failure or lack of success happens because people are not competent in the jobs they hold.
This can be equally true at political and officer levels. It is not a counsel of perfection to say that an organisation should constantly analyse its weaknesses, work to identify them, and put mitigating actions in place. It just doesn't happen very often.
Here is a recent set of events that we have come across, and they provide an evidential basis for our view that competency to do the job should be the overriding consideration in employment selection.
A person was appointed to a job. He was not shown how to do it. He was not introduced to the current operating systems.
He was not told when employment and other relevant council policies changed – his senior manager felt that access to the intranet covered all eventualities.
The senior manager did not carry out regular appraisals or check how things were going. After a time, the post-holder was dismissed – for failing to comply with policies about which he had never been told; for failing to comply with policies which he did know about, but which were commonly ignored within the council; and for failure to comply with policies about which he had been told, but where compliance had never been monitored.
The post-holder may or may not have been competent to do the job he was appointed to, but no-one really tested this, pre-appointment.
It is quite usual for ‘person specification', ‘job description' and ‘assessment centre' to be drawn up and administered remote from the realities of the actual job. By the time someone is appointed, thousands of pounds have been invested in the process. By the time a post-holder is judged ‘not fit for purpose', the costs to the taxpayer could run into millions, depending on salary, length of service and severance arrangements, quite apart from the cost of poor service to the public.
If national politicians are looking for ‘waste' to manage out of the system, it is there. Although many commentators deplore so-called ‘simplistic' answers, the reality is not always complicated.
We have managed within several public bodies at senior and chief executive level, and two issues keep re-occurring, in our experience. Do you really need a particular job to be done? And if you do, how do you ensure that someone who is genuinely competent is appointed?
First, is there a need for a post to exist? We know – we think – that the days of empire-building and big-is-better staff numbers are long gone.
But how many councils or other public bodies are any good at job sizing and process control? How often do we still create unnecessary middle-management – or even senior – posts just so that someone can get a pay rise?
How often do we resist the introduction of industry-based systems approaches, because ‘public service is different'? Interestingly, many of these questions are now being asked at shire district level, under the pressures for joint working, shared services and ‘virtual amalgamations'.
Second, how does an organisation staff up with competent people. This can be a chicken-and-egg question, since competency issues can arise at any level, including those at which appointments of others are made, and in the regulatory and governmental bodies which set legislative and other mandatory requirements.
Too many ‘council failures' can be traced back to nonsense in the national policy and regulatory frameworks. We have found a commitment to ‘competency assessment' rather than ‘person specification' in recruiting for posts is more likely to work.
We like HR departments which do just a little less ‘equality and human rights', and a little more on providing frontline services with people who can be trained, supervised and motivated effectively, and are rigorous in championing organisational effectiveness. Good HR is not a ‘cost' when done properly, but an invaluable resource. Attention to detail also needs to extend to the political operation of councils.
