The public service reform agenda is focused on the need to collaborate to integrate. Putting aside the challenges of realising those two concepts, we tend to understand this as a process of getting various professions, services and public sectors working more closely and seamlessly together to reduce frictions and deliver patient-/service user-focused care.
However, last week, I had the good fortune of meeting, separately, with two senior leaders in their fields, and reflecting on these discussions throws up questions about how far and wide we could be scoping solutions to improvements.
One was a primary care Director, leading a progressive and innovative approach to the development of neighbourhood care, an approach that has garnered widespread national attention. The other was a senior leader in a well-known international corporation interested in delivering improvements in the workplace experience.
My two conversations with these leaders highlighted the significant commonalities across the public and private sector ‘divide’. The private sector may view public services as a place of ‘comfort’ for employees, where employers can’t easily ‘sack poorly performing staff’. But exploring this perceived difference, it became clear that the tensions in both sectors are very similar, if with differing drivers.
Both workforces experience insecurity and vulnerability. While private sector employers are, of course, subject to established HR laws and regulations, they do appear to have greater flexibility in how they hire and fire. The source of insecurity and vulnerability in public services, however, tends to be in just how over-worked staff are, and the resultant propensity to burnout and poor well-being. Both of these drivers can lead to greater levels of staff turnover than any of us would like.
Neither public nor private sector employers want to see high rates of turnover, for whatever reason. This is an inefficient drain on limited resources, damages performance, and negatively impacts those accessing services.
Both these leaders are keen on finding solutions to supporting people, both within, and as a result, without, to feel valued and valuable as a way of creating positive, collaborative and engaging cultures. Both these leaders recognise that human interaction is a primary source of well-being and purpose. Both these leaders recognise that they can’t simply will these improvements into being and that conscious efforts and choices are required to deliver the cultures needed to help people thrive.
I’ll be working with these two leaders and their organisations to help them realise their ambitions for improvements in staff wellbeing and performance, primarily through my approaches to communications and leadership development.
It may also be possible to bring them together to develop one conversation, share knowledge and experience, and bring new thinking into the ongoing discourse around essential public service reform. Not because the private sector has all the answers, but because through interaction, we create new thinking.
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