Managing Health and Wellbeing in the Public Sector

A Guide to Best Practice

Cary L. Cooper, Ian Hesketh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317399872
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

As governments throughout the world experience increasing fiscal challenges, the pressures on public sectors to streamline services and harness technological advances is unprecedented. Many have undergone huge budgetary cuts as a result, but what are the effects of this intense organisational change on such a large and varied workforce? And how can managers within the public sector meet the challenge of delivering services whilst maintaining the health and wellbeing of staff tasked with carrying out the work?

Managing Health and WellBeing in the Public Sector: A Guide to Best Practice is the ideal companion to any manager in these challenging times. Exploring the realities of working in the public sector, and those factors which can add meaning and purpose to working life, the book provides managers with a practical toolkit for creating the best working environment, as well as nurturing resilience and motivation within their staff.

Written by two authors with a lifetime of experience in the field, the book also examines why promoting occupational health and wellbeing is beneficial to organizations, drawing on a wealth of international research to support this argument. It concludes with a series of case studies in which an international range of public sector managers discuss initiatives they have implemented, and how successful they have been.

This is the ideal companion for any manager working in the public sector. It will also be instructive reading for students or researchers of occupational or organizational psychology, as well as HRM.

1

CONTEXT

Introduction

The aim of this first chapter is to illustrate how the political and economic landscape is incomparable with that of just five years previously. Although we are both based in the UK, these challenges are faced globally, in equal measure, and our aim is to set out the impact this landscape has on workplace wellbeing. Furthermore, society is changing as a result of globalisation and other factors, leading to changing expectations of public services, declining deference to authority, greater social and economic polarisation within societies, and other factors which place greater demands on all public services. Demand for these services is a reflection of the current society that they serve, so these essential political, economic, social and technological shifts are fundamental to the tasks and roles of public services. They also have significant consequences for the education and training within these services; both up-skilling and reskilling are very often required.

The objectives of the chapter will be to deal with the reality of those changes, and what they mean in practical terms for managers and those charged with providing Human Resource Management (HRM), Learning and Development (L&D) and Occupational Health Services (OHS). We concede there may be various names for these functions throughout organisations, but we do not intend to list the many descriptions here.

Public services have been faced with an imperative to make wholesale changes on an unprecedented scale, to re-imagine as one commentator put it (Thornton, 2015). This involves both getting the right outcome for the public this sector serves and taking the employees within the sector on a transformational journey.

The burgeoning interest in social media in the sphere of wellbeing will also be explored, challenging how this both helps and hinders our projections of what working life may look like in 2020 and beyond. We relate our extensive use of social media as a global engagement tool to illustrate future scenarios for the workplace, and how it is both possible and quite probable that this will change radically from the status quo. Digitisation and fiscal pressures bear down heavily on the public sector and have a direct impact on workplace wellbeing, so the question may well be: can we keep up?

Political landscape for public services

The landscape of public sector work is changing quickly and dramatically, and managing the workforce in the current environment has never been more challenging. This management includes a focus on cost effectiveness, cultural changes, the use of technology and the rationalising of estate, and all this whilst remaining accountable to the public and juggling political needs which occasionally conflict with working requirements. For example, in the UK the majority of public sector organisations are experiencing unprecedented budgetary cuts, which demand significant down-sizing in all areas of business. This is at a time when there are radical changes to working practices such as flexible, remote and virtual working aimed at maximising productivity, creating a diverse workforce and championing equality. These elements take their toll on the workforce in ways not yet experienced in the public sector. Alongside this, managers who ‘survive’ in this new world have the almost impossible task of inspiring and motivating those who remain. Unlike in the private sector, these are not necessarily the people of choice, for a variety of reasons, such as the likelihood of getting equivalent employment elsewhere, being tied into a pension scheme or having domestic responsibilities, such as caring, that restrict their options. This is very often conducted against a backdrop of political change, election campaigning and so on. These considerations don’t necessarily impact as hard on private sector organisations, whose direction may not be as politically driven and is more focused on profitability and market share.

Indeed, across the globe we see unprecedented events impacting on public sector workloads, for example the UK referendum result indicating a preference to leave the European Union, and all the planning and extra work (and workforce) that will need to be put in place to facilitate this. Not to mention that the referendum plunged the government political parties into near chaos, with both major UK political parties undertaking radical reform, including the installation of a new prime minister. In France and the UK we have witnessed horrifying scenes of terrorism across the country, with incomparable scenes of murderous acts requiring public service responses at unprecedented levels. In Turkey we have witnessed an attempted coup, plunging that country into a state of tension and public unrest, again causing immense stress and strain on many public services. The presidential elections in the USA have been less than cordial and caused much unrest. Still in the US, there have been numerous police shootings in Dallas, and there is the ongoing problem of marauding gunmen in a variety of US states. The seemingly never ending unrest in the Middle East, the civil war in Syria and the resultant migration crisis facing Europe all require public servants’ dedicated attention in serving their respective publics. This work is far from easy and challenges the very heart of public service around the globe. At the time of going to press the UK has also been subject to horrific terrorist attacks in the city of Manchester, in the north of the UK, and on two occasions in the capital, London. These attacks have seen public services, particularly first responders, stretched to their limits. This has effectively forced a rethink about a whole host of issues that impact on the wellbeing of employees and their current working landscape.

Changing face of working life

As we will see, the public now expect to read, hear and see how their money is being spent, and have an expectation that it is done effectively, efficiently, fairly and justly. This brings in to play notions of social responsibility, fair procurement, ethical working practices and wider human rights considerations, largely centred on the workforce. We hear of legitimacy in the language of public services. One of the many crossovers we see with the private sector is illustrated in this respect, with blurred boundaries between public and private sector working practices. As we see more outsourcing, shared or integrated services, collaboration, joint ventures and so on, there is an expectation that private outsourced work will adhere to public sector ethical standards. This has caused some consternation, and there are many examples of private contracts being unable to sustain these standards over time, and contracts being handed back to the public sector. One particularly stark example played out in the security contract for the UK London Olympics in 2012.

However, what both the public and private sector share is the notion that there needs to be a strong psychological contract between the employer and employees, and the relationship is better being built on a long-term commitment from both sides to do right by each other. The long term we are referring to here is the length of contract of employment, the term of the relationship. For both to have a healthy psychological contract there needs to be mutual respect and the notion of fairness on both sides. There is also the notion that, as well as being fair, there needs to be good work. We will look deeper into engagement, discretionary effort and work–life integration later in the book, but when we look at the changing face of work, retaining levels of what may be considered good work can be quite challenging. And, as we will see later, as work becomes more technology focused, the boundaries of what is good work can get blurred. What one employee perceives as autonomy and being trusted to get on with the job, working remotely and flexibly, another may view as being isolated, lonely and uncared for, and so one needs to be careful.

A further issue to consider in terms of the changing face of working life is that, with jobs becoming increasingly capable of being carried out virtually, the pool of people able to carry out the work is opened much wider, potentially globally. The consequences of this can be viewed in a number of ways, and although public servants are traditionally drawn from the locality, or at least the same country, this may not be so in the future? Private sector companies have been bold in outsourcing work overseas, to a far cheaper labour market. This seems to have had a wide variety of success, largely dependent on cultural barriers and the ability of the organisation to maintain healthy relations with its customers. This can have what seem to be fairly obvious outcomes, for example the product or service becoming available at a much-reduced cost to the end customer or user. However, issues such as language differences, interpretation, quality of product and so on have driven some organisations to backtrack and return to employing in the locality, or the same country at least.

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) outlined what is regarded as a fundamental approach to helping organisations through radical change programmes with minimum disruption and the notion of permanence. This is not a new theory, but as it has stood the test of time it would seem there is merit in much of his stance. Lewin floated the notion of workers creating their own goals to improve workplace performance. He effectively had workers researching themselves (participatory action research) and the way they carried out their roles, and advocated work as a ‘life-value’, congruent with suggestions of meaningful work. Taking an active part in their own work regime appeared to have the effect of linking motivation to action. In the model he developed is a notion of unfreezing, moving to a new paradigm and then refreezing (Lewin, 1947). Incidentally, Lewin carried out research in German textile mills, a wallpaper factory and in America at a pyjama factory (Harwood Plant). What most contemporary public service workers will identify with is the unfreezing and moving aspect. We would hazard a guess that these days most would not recognise the bit referring to the refreezing? And fundamentally herein lies the problem. As tenured, and now mostly democratically elected, governments change across the globe, and technology bears down in more intricate ways, the pace and change of life seem relentless. Yet within this fast-paced paradigm, the human body and its mechanisms to cope have changed very little. What there is, however, is a plethora of advice and guidance indicating, based on our genetic make-up, some assumptions of what our capacity to deal with all this may be. It is then left to us to decide how we process and utilise this information and knowledge in our working lives.

We were fortunate enough to watch Professor Eddie Obeng relate this to an audience a year or two ago at one of the superb ‘Good Day at Work’ events. With his own particular style he managed to drive it home that there is so much, literally too much, information out there for us to consume, or even process, and therefore we are left with choices. Even within these choices we sometimes have to make choices about choices. By way of example, 20 or so years ago researching for a dissertation would involve hours in a university library hunting down fitting material to include in your thesis. These days, it is a matter of an online search, yielding thousands upon thousands of results that need sifting out, via whatever mechanisms seem appropriate, to get to some sort of list that is small enough to make up a relevant discussion for your work. And even then you could be wide of the mark. Casey described us living and operating in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, the so-called VUCA world (Casey, 2014). Although he was speaking in the context of the US military, this certainly now appears to be an appropriate description of the world faced by public servants. With all this in mind, how do public sector staff cope in the workplace, how do they integrate work and private life, if at all? How does all this change affect health and wellbeing?

Working practices 2020 and beyond

This next section looks to the future and what the impact of contemporary ways of working may be. Will the majority of public service work be done remotely? Is homeworking or remote, virtual and flexible practice going to be the standard way of doing things in the public arena in the future? Rigid clocking on and clocking off, booking worked hours, what are worked hours, when are we at work, what bit of a conversation can be ‘booked’ as work with all this informality? These are all considerations for future practice. One of the challenges for this future working paradigm may be how we account for time. In public services, how we describe ‘the job’ may be particularly challenging. Will it be public service, as we know it now, or something entirely different? For example, when the public contact their public services, how will this be done? With the availability of media such as Facetime, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Messenger and so on facilitating face to face interaction, will it be done from an office space, from a home setting or whilst on the move? And what will constitute a ‘unit of chargeable work’? More issues for service providers come into play around the nature of recruiting the right people for such posts: will this be done in the traditional way, i.e. an advertisement, a selection process and a contract of employment being drawn up and worked to? With the global nature of work, will these people be sited in the home country or overseas? How will employment be regulated? All these questions combine to make it a very interesting future for agile public services, and it may be a little too ambitious to resolve them all in one publication. We can however make some headway!

We could begin by looking at the work of the public sector, as an alternative to the private, although as we have already mentioned the boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred. However, we can still try to think about why people take this (public sector) route into working life. We can say, broadly speaking, that work can be viewed through three lenses. First, it can be seen as a transaction for money. But, in terms of public service, the fiscal rewards have never been on a par with those in the private sector. However, traditionally it has always been viewed as infinitely more secure, so economically minded pragmatists could argue that over a lifetime, in terms of secure regular pay, public service trumps the private sector. This has of late become a somewhat out of fashion view, with public service work now seen as relatively short term compared to what it once was, especially in relation to pensions and the ubiquitous gold clock. The final salary pension scheme has all but disappeared in the UK landscape, in both public and private sector; for example, not a single FTSE 100 company now offers one. Instead, defined contribution schemes are the offer, with employees transferring pension risk from one company to another as they progress through their working life. This has the overall effect of people not having the same attachment to an organisation, and so the once-valued job for life no longer exists. Many would argue this is a good thing, but for managers this fragile psychological contract is not easy to balance, which in itself can be a source of workplace stress. But does this paradigm shift alter the view of public servants? In terms of angst, it appears many still cling on to this view of public sector life with almost helpless abandon. Yet we know that employees will be less willing to offer to retire due to financial insecurity that previous pension arrangements (mainly in the public sector) largely negated. We note that this transactional landscape is changing radically; however, the message may be falling on deaf ears?

The second way of looking at working life is through the vocational lens. Occupations such as nursing, policing and fire fighting have often been the preserve of the public-spirited Samaritan with a lifetime of public good at heart. However, it seems increasingly unlikely, for some of the pension reasons mentioned above, that these roles will be seen as ‘jobs for life’ in the future vision for public services. This could be due to the uncertain nature of public sector work, the financial offering and technological impact or simply because they are seen as unattractive to the new-age entrants to the job market. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland modern apprenticeships are seen as on a par with university education, which seems to offer a modern day approach through which to view a vocation. Although not a new concept, apprenticeships are now used outside what was once the preserve of manually skilled professions, for example in engineering. The UK government has indicated it would consider apprenticeship schemes in future state-awarded contracts and has committed to support three million apprenticeships by 2020. We also see an increase in accredited schemes, such as the Chartered Management Institute degree apprenticeship scheme that projects it will have over 10,000 schemes in train by 2020, and universities being offered attractive (UK) government funding to promote and deliver such schemes. In terms of wellbeing, apprenticeships, in educational terms, have now begun to include habits of the mind, along with the craftsmanship elements of the trade or profession. These habits, grounded in positive psychology, include elements of self-belief, self-control, perseverance, resilience, curiosity, empathy and creativity, and of course craftsmanship. These habits of the mind are all known to impact positively on wellbeing and are a welcome addition to the apprenticeship offering. Such new entry points into working life are significant and should be on the radar of all who have an interest in this book.

A further consideration, and one of the blurred boundaries of the vocational approach to working life, is the seamless merging of private sector contracts into public services. But as we have described, these are not always straightforward and can be confusing to the employees that potentially serve two masters with very different working assumptions. We would suggest here that confusion is not good for one’s wellbeing! The current trend of non-financial objectives amongst private sector organisations, predicated on positive social impact, has gone some way to make the workplace even more mysterious to the majority trying to earn a crust.

The third classification of work is what we may view as a calling. Although one might be drawn to a religious interpretation, we may view charitable work or volunteer work through this lens too. What drives a person to view work in this way has a very strong connection with meaning and purpose, which are in turn both very closely associated with workplace wellbeing. If work is viewed as a calling, there is very high engagement and a psychological contract, and the recipient can expect maximum discretionary effort to be given. These attributes are very appealing, and for the first time we can see how having effective workplace wellbeing can deliver peak performance from a satisfied and loyal workforce. It is easy to see how the stars can align here: well-organised work, good training, a well-educated workforce that view work as a calling and a worthwhile cause all conspire to deliver the perfect setting. Is it really that simple? As Nita Clarke often says, ‘it’s the people stupid!’, with reference to the seminal ‘Engage for Success’ work in the UK (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009).

Managing an ageing workforce

The first person to live to be 150 years old has already been born. Reaching 50 years of age traditionally signalled the later years of employ, but now this may not even signal the halfway point of working life. The Government Office for Science (UK) predicts that 12.5 million people will retire from work between 2012 and 2022, and there will be only seven million available to fill those posts, based on birth rate data, and an additional two million jobs being created (Government Office for Science, 2016). Successful management of the future could well be primarily assessed on one’s ability to manage constant change, a different workforce demographic, downsizing and fiscal pr...