'Making a difference', team work and influencing the community are often significant motivating factors among public sector staff
In 1999, after being classified as a "failing" service, the EastRiding of Yorkshire Council benefits department realised something had to be done.
Employees were not motivated and retaining them was proving a losing battle, with 35 per cent annual staff turnover - all of which was having a serious impact on the delivery of benefits. At its worst, the department took more than three months to assess new claims.
The council decided to take action. Among the initiatives introduced were policies aimed at giving staff more flexibility. A home-working scheme was put in place and two additional benefits centres were established, allowing many staff to move to locations nearer their homes.
Two years later it was clear the initiative had paid off: staff turnover had come down to an annual rate of just over 8 per cent and the time taken to assess a new benefit claim was just 26 days.
Initiatives such as flexible working hours, as well as efforts to promote a diverse workforce, are key cards in the public sector's hand. Indeed, because policy initiatives are closely followed in employment practices throughout the sector, government organisations are often ahead of the private sector in these areas.
In a workforce where money is not always the key issue, such tools are crucial in motivating and retaining staffs - particularly as public sector employers do not have at hand the bonuses and stock options used by the private sector to sweeten the employment package.
However, most public sector workers are not driven by financial concerns - "making a difference" is the biggest motivator, according to an Audit Commission survey in which 42 per cent of public sector workers cited this as the main or secondary reason for choosing their job.
But civil servants, who today are required to meet increasingly ambitious targets on tight budgets, often tend to feel overstretched. Sixty-five per cent of those surveyed by the Audit Commission said that having too much work was an important reason for leaving.
Poor management is another issue. One of the points to emerge from the survey was that staff feel the present transformation of the public sector is not being sufficiently well managed. "Too many currently experience the public service reform agenda as a bureaucratic diversion from what really matters," it said.
"We're at a time when we're going through a lot of change," says Andrew Hooke of PA Consulting's government and public services practice. "Someone who joined for public service reasons and now has a delivery agenda that's serious, might feel that their place of work is changing."
And change is often a big demotivator in the public sector, particularly for people who joined the sector for the stability it offered. Jeremy Webster, head of public sector consultancy at Penna Consulting, believes that as part of a more modern approach towards the management of civil servants, emphasis should not just be placed on retaining people and improving pay and conditions. "It's about taking a complete view of the people issues," he says.
Another issue for public sector workers is the way they often appear to be judged by the press and politicians. Frustration at what are perceived to be failing services such as transport and the healthcare is often reflected in press reports.
"That visibility of performance is definitely a feature," says Rob Brown from PA Consulting's government and public services practice. "Social workers on the front line know that it's only one mistake and you're a headline. The story about saving a family never gets into the newspapers."
Shrewd organisations are recognising that it is these issues, rather than pay, that often affects decisions to leave a job. But in order to tackle the issues, planners have to know what the real issues are.
A central plank of Camden council's recruitment and retention policy, for example, is an extensive employee survey conducted every two years for the council by the Work Foundation.
"The survey is a very important part of the strategy, otherwise you're just working on anecdotal evidence," says Tracey Dennison, assistant chief executive of personnel at Camden.
The surveys, she says, reveal that what people care most about are things such as the professional environment, working as a team, opportunities for personal development and a feeling of making a difference.
"It's about enhancing the things you know people do value and dealing with the negative responses," she says. "And that's quite a subtle game to play."
However, the issue of staff motivation and retention is mixed throughout the public sector. Indeed, in some areas of government, the difficulty is in getting people to go - particularly older middle managers that want to hang on to their generous pension entitlements and job security. For departments or agencies trying to modernise their operations, the problem then is that positions they want filled by new recruits are blocked by employees who may not want to leave for another 10 years.
When it comes to senior level executives, the picture is often very different. "Over the past few years, things have been changing," says Mr Hooke. "People you might consider at the top within the private sector are now coming to the public sector because they see there's a big challenge for them."
