Why staff (people) deserve better (part 2)
I started my career in 1994 as an SGB2. That won’t mean much to most people but it’s a low grade in the civil service, a level below an Admin Assistant (AA) and two grades below an Administration Officer (AO). For me it was an entry job into the ‘real’ workplace after being in the catch 22 position of not having any office experience and needing to become ‘grown up’.
Within two years I had reached the dizzy heights of an Executive Officer (EO), which outside of HQ is quite a responsibility. My peers were people with shoulder pads, double breasted suits and briefcases (none of which I ever possessed). The next grade up, Higher Executive Office (HEO) and you might even have your own office. Senior Executive Officer (SEO) and you were too important to know people’s names. Grade 7 to Grade 6, they tidied the office before a visit.
So I have a clear memory, as someone that was probably a whippersnapper, of managing teams with people older than me just as a new IT case management system was being implemented.
In the vein of corporate wisdom, they had just offered voluntary redundancies to pave the way for the new dawn, and many of the most experienced people skipped into the sunset with very generous packages and pensions that most people would only dream of these days.
The new system came in, with new dummy terminals at great expense. Out with the carbon and headed paper and instead we had happy floorwalkers showing us how the new system worked.
A few months in, with huge backlogs of work, phones ringing constantly with irate customers, I had to manage the personal side. There were people on my teams exhausted, people older than my parents crying as they were so fed up and let down. The new system was worse than useless, it took longer, it didn’t even merge a record to Wordperfect. And the HQ people had banned anything handwritten going out to customers.
What I learnt the most was that people really care about their jobs and take pride in what they do. They don’t want to moan or be negative. In my case I had to support them and having customers shouting all day isn’t enjoyable.
In HQ lots of people were being promoted and consolidating themselves as the next generation of leaders based on the project being delivered. They were celebrating their success, staff had been trained, the suppliers got paid, outputs were done, onto the next project.
I’m not sure things ever really improved after that. The numbers of staff never increased as the new IT contracts had to be paid for. Customers had to pay more as well so were even angrier, and no real changes were made to the system. When I left the operations in 1999 the promised upgrade was two years behind and well over budget.
Now that I work on the other side I feel an obligation to do better for staff. So next time you are getting frustrated at waiting for someone to answer your query, for their screen to refresh or tutting whilst they try to find the hidden bit of data they need, save your outrage for the leaders that didn’t give their staff the right tools.
As we now know the places where staff have the right tools and environment also provide the best service. But it’s not as simple as costs. The services have to be designed around the users, change has to be focused on outcomes and the people doing (and leading) the delivery have to care.
Thankfully, I’m now lucky enough to work in Digital and lead work that does deliver as was promised years ago. There’s a lot to fix but there’s a growing recognition that staff deserve better. Part 1 covers some of this work which is supported and delivered by lots of very good people that want to make things better https://medium.com/@jdosreme/staff-deserve-better-c0d0c1e95c9. Thanks for reading.
