The local government talent challenge is often framed as a recruitment one. In recent years we have seen specialist and professional teams face acute shortages, reliance on temporary staffing has grown and there is ongoing difficulty in recruiting young people into the sector.
In this context, initiatives such as the Local Government Association's recent campaign to promote careers in local government are exactly the kind of collaborative effort we need.
But recruitment is only one side of the talent equation. The other is whether our organisations are creating enough opportunities to retain, develop and grow our people so they can become the managers and leaders we will need in the future.
With fewer than 5% of the workforce under 25 and around two-thirds aged 40-64, our workforce profile continues to change and tells us some important facts.
Every organisation is considering what it will need from its future workforce and as they do that, each needs to be clear that organisations cannot be successfully redesigned for the future without designing the right structures to continuously attract, develop and retain talent.
On the positive side, local government continues to benefit from a deep well of knowledgeable, experienced managers and leaders who have spent years developing the skills needed to lead complex services under sustained pressure. We are grateful for those experienced colleagues. However, the figures also tell us that we are not developing enough people to sustain our organisations in the future.
Between local government reorganisation and transformation, these days there is barely a council untouched by structural change.
Every organisation is considering what it will need from its future workforce and as they do that, each needs to be clear that organisations cannot be successfully redesigned for the future without designing the right structures to continuously attract, develop and retain talent.
Here are the parts of the talent system we need to address.
First, we should build organisations that enable movement rather than permanence.
We need to develop people through breadth of experience, not simply through time served. To achieve this, organisations should deliberately create opportunities for secondments, project leadership, rotations between services and temporary assignments rather than leaving development to chance.
That movement should extend beyond the organisation itself. Experience gained in another authority, the NHS, a combined authority or another public service partner develops skills, judgement and perspective in ways that remaining in the same organisation often cannot.
Second, we should design for progression as diligently as we design for efficiency. As we design new organisations, we should ask not only how many layers we need, but where tomorrow's heads of service and directors will gain the experience their future roles demand. Every organisation needs to provide opportunities through which people can lead beyond their current role before they are promoted into the next one.
Third, we should recruit for the organisation we are trying to become, not simply a repeat of the organisation we left behind. Every senior appointment made during reorganisation is a design decision about the capability the organisation will need over the next five years. That question should shape the job description before it shapes the interview.
Recruitment panels should also ask themselves whether they are looking only at proven candidates moving sideways, or if someone is genuinely ready to step up.
If we continue to define experience only by whether someone has already held the title, we should not be surprised when the same pool of candidates continues to circulate around the sector.
Finally, we should make talent development an explicit leadership accountability.
Succession should not sit solely with HR or appear only in workforce strategies. Every director should be expected to demonstrate who is being developed within their service – who is being given stretch opportunities and who could realistically step into more senior leadership over the next few years.
We already expect leaders to account for budgets, performance and service delivery. Building future capability deserves to sit alongside them.
In years to come, local government reorganisation and transformation will not be judged simply by the structures created. Its lasting legacy will be the managers and leaders developed by those new structures.
Recruitment is only one side of the talent equation and the task before us is much bigger than filling vacancies. We must build organisations capable of continually renewing their own leadership, as that may well prove to be the most valuable legacy of this period of change.
Sandra Farquharson is president of the Public Services People Managers Association (PPMA) and director, HR and organisational development, at Hackney LBC
