So, there are currently 2,318 vacancies related to Brexit that the civil service have failed to fill having ‘hoped to achieve “full staffing” by December 14’. That’s today and given this worrying statistic was highlighted by Jim Pickard and Peter Foster only 2 days ago in the Financial Times I trust the number is still correct.
This is as unbelievable as it is avoidable and it’s possibly a shame that Boris didn’t have me on his wider team this time. He did back in the day when he was Mayor of London and I was part of the fantastic team at the Met Police where I was setting up award winning Strategic Workforce Planning (partially covered in the book ‘The Power of People’ if you’re interested to find out more). We delivered exactly (well, virtually) the target number of 31,957 police officers - 13 officers short as we had to fill the full class of 16 and that would have taken us +3 over, a judgement call I am still happy to have taken. We hired 5,000 officers in less than 18 months. With this in mind I can say, without hesitation, this could have been done because similar challenges have been met before - with a clear strategy, direction, process, team and the systems to support.
So, why wasn’t it done this time? At a distance I can’t say for sure. What I can share are some thoughts on why they didn’t and propose what factors could have made all the difference - looking at it from a Why, What and How perspective.
Why are we in this situation? Brexit was voted for over 4 years ago now and has meant that many things will need to be done differently post the UK’s exit from the EU. This is akin to the strategic direction you get from your corporate board.
What do we need to do? The civil service needs to be ready to handle a smooth transition from 31st December and, moving forward, its post Brexit responsibilities. Obviously, there is more to unpack regarding the capabilities needed to deal with the changes and meet these new demands. And this is workforce alignment. When aligned we should model how much more (or less) work we need to do by each capability, or segment of the workforce, especially those we need to focus on.
Challenges at this stage: Strategy and direction need to be clear. The leader must have shared her leader’s intent, and this is an important part of the total internal documentation that helps keep everyone on the right road. Perhaps it is worth recognising at this point that there is still debate about whether Brexit is the right direction for the UK. Imagine if you will, a Corporate Board which decides on one clear mission (think Whole Foods Market with a long term shareholder value creation strategy) but which still has individual Directors saying it is the wrong thing to do (rather believing in a short term, high risk strategy such as Enron and Lehman Brothers maybe) - who do you support? Well, if we revert back to politics we know this is not an arena where there is a natural inclination to ‘kill the unchosen alternative’ even though this can very much help with agreement to one clear direction.
Given Brexit has continued to be debated we can see why we have confusion already at the Why level. Mike Clancy from the Prospect union comments in the FT “…Brexit has been on the horizon for four years so there really is no excuse.” I think understanding the reluctance to commit to Brexit is part of the reason why the current high number of vacancies has arisen. Brexit has only ever been on the horizon, something that may happen in the future.
Even though we know Brexit is happening do we really know the specifics - will we have a deal and if so what kind of deal or will it be no deal? Implications for the capabilities needed by the workforce and the volume of output required can vary significantly between these different options / outcomes. Consideration of the date by which to deliver further complicates matters – given it is so imperative to manage but with a fluid milestone.
When direction is ambiguous, it hinders success. Leadership sets the direction but the organisation accountable for delivery should be strong enough to challenge back when leadership is not leading well enough. Any organisation in imbalance with its leadership is going to be less effective unless the ability to challenge in the ‘lower ranks’ has been developed. I certainly expect scenarios to have been done by the civil service team but teams cannot deliver to 4 scenarios simultaneously. They must pick one and then deliver it.
But knowing the ‘task to deliver by when’ is only the beginning, and the start of the hard; sometimes tedious; always important; work of execution. This leads us into the final question of How - How are we going to do what we need to do?
Too often this area is not linked well enough as I found out when I trained one of the biggest government departments in Strategic Workforce Planning. Getting the practical elements right really is a task that should not be underestimated and is best delivered by a combination of well-working processes run by knowledgeable people and enabled by delivery focused systems. Bringing all of this together, as I do when I introduce or improve Workforce Planning as part of Strategic Workforce Planning (the way it is best delivered in my experience), is absolutely critical. When it works as it should organisations are sure they will hit their targets 12-18 months in advance and the inevitable adjustments can be done whilst on the road to the delivery milestone with minimal impact overall. Clearly small adjustments are so much easier to handle than a shortage of 2,318 staff in the month before the biggest changeover for a generation.
Who’s fault is it then in this instance? Well, it’s not that easy to say unless you want to score political points. Although, I trust all parties have done what they individually think is the best from their perspective - everyone can be seen to be at fault. Pick who you like and start landing punches on the other team, be it the government, the mandarins, the civil servants, the opposition:
Politicians in general (to remove any hint of political bias this includes the government as well as the opposition) who have failed to support one strong direction and deadline - ruining the chances of certainty / having one clear strategy for delivery teams
Processes I am unsure about the “…civil service constantly reviews its capabilities and allocation of resources” as reported in the FT. Whilst this sounds good it is not an approach that would bring you to a shortage of 2,318 staff if executed well. The process I implement doesn’t allow for this level of understaffing to ever be tolerated. Can it be that the Strategic Workforce Planning process (which should own this) does not exist or is not functioning effectively?
The People working in the system - I hope the Civil Service haven’t done what I saw in a FTSE 100 organisation where the CEO set the focus on Strategic Workforce Planning and yet the organisation set a placement student onto the task of delivering key activities. How’s that for walking the talk or balance and strategic focus? It certainly doesn’t allow for much challenge up the chain - even great individuals won’t be effective if they are not in the appropriate role hierarchically or supported by a great knowledge solution.
For the Systems we know we shouldn’t rely on Excel, although I did use a decade old 2003 version after it was out of normal support from Microsoft to deliver the Metropolitan Police’s nearly 50,000 officers and staff; winning external and internal awards. Still, using something more appropriate than spreadsheets is certainly advisable and it will save you hours of work too.
For all the shortfalls of the stakeholders in this case, I think that coherent ‘governance’, which enables great delivery, was sorely lacking. But to be clear the failure is not a single point, however much different sides try to play politics with the current challenge. The whole orchestra seems to be playing to different sheet music and their overall solution feels out of kilter. Organisations need to clearly understand the Why, and the What to align goals with the workforce and enable planning for How to do it successfully.
And remember this is an ongoing process that happens all the time. It’s called Strategic Workforce Planning and includes monthly workforce planning activities. It plays an essential role in organisations and without it you can end up 2,318 staff short.
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