Reasons to be cheerful

Staff morale improves at Lancashire County Council

The Authors

Blair McPherson, Director of Community Services, Lancashire County Council, Preston, UK

Abstract

Purpose – The paper focuses on ways of tackling low staff morale in a large public-sector organization.

Design/methodology/approach – The author argues that the quality of leadership and the people-management skills of line managers affect employee morale, yet people can feel positive about the work of their team or service but negative about the organization they work for. The paper reveals that, in addition to factors outside the organization's control, effective communications, a skilled workforce, clarity of roles and responsibilities, and a performance-orientated culture where success is measured against targets and progress is informed by best practice, can all help to improve staff morale.

Findings – Lancashire County Council, where the author is Director of Community Services, put its efforts into process reengineering – reducing paperwork, streamlining processes and delegating decisions closer to the front line, developing managers' people-management skills and establishing a safe environment where staff had the opportunity and confidence to say what they were really thinking.

Practical implications – The author advances the view that organizations introducing major change should spend more time and effort explaining why change is necessary and create more opportunities for staff to influence how changes are implemented.

Originality/value – The paper provides an insider's perspective on ways of improving employee morale in a large public-sector organization.

Article Type:

Case study

Keyword(s):

Morale; Employee attitudes; Leadership; Process management; Local authorities.

Journal:

Human Resource Management International Digest

Volume:

16

Number:

6

Year:

2008

pp:

10-13

Copyright ©

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:

0967-0734

Performance is improving, the organization has moved up the league table and gained an improved star rating, other agencies are saying nice things about you, staffing vacancies are low, as is staff turnover, and absenteeism is very slowly reducing. Staff acknowledge the efforts to improve communication through the use of electronic newsletters, the intranet and the director's blog. The staff focus groups set up in response to last year's annual staff survey continue to be active and the whole organization was recently successful in gaining Investors in People accreditation. Even the budget position is better than predicted. So why do staff continue to report that morale is low? How can morale not improve when everything else seems to be getting better? Does it matter that morale is low if performance continues to improve?

This was the situation in Lancashire County Council, UK. Everything was getting better, much better, except staff morale. In the annual staff survey, staff satisfaction rates continued to remain stubbornly low. Admittedly, less than half the staff returned the questionnaire, but we could not assume this was just those with an ax to grind as managers also reported low staff morale and senior managers, fronting meetings about changes in human resource processes, experienced high levels of cynicism. There were also small but persistent murmurings about management bullying and unfair treatment. When these were followed up, they were either too vague to pursue formally or very specific cases that had already been investigated and not substantiated.

Does it matter if morale is low?

Morale is low in the teaching profession as teachers complain salaries have not kept pace with inflation and head teachers report that league tables put them under too much pressure. Morale is low in the National Health Service as a result of staff feeling undervalued and unsafe. Morale is low among social workers, who feel that budget cuts and pressure to meet targets undermine professional values. Does it matter? Does low morale affect the quality of service?

Morale in the public sector will be affected by constant changes imposed by an impatient central government and whether budgets allow for growth or require cut backs. I have worked in organizations where the budget has allowed for growth and the service has been held in high regard but morale has been low. I have worked in places where services were being cut to the bone and where criticism in the local press and from local MPs was relentless, yet staff morale remained high. Two facts seemed to influence morale:

1. the quality of leadership within the organization; and
2. the people-management skills of line managers.

Yet in both sets of circumstances there was no direct relationship I could find between the level of morale and the individual's commitment to doing a good job for the service user. This seems to be because people's commitment in the public sector is to the client/service user rather than the organization. They do not pull out all the stops for the organization's reputation, to hit government targets or to make senior management look good, they do it to make a difference to an individual's life. They can be fed up with the way the profession is treated and feel undervalued and unappreciated by the organization, but they will still do their best to help the individual because that is why they joined the profession in the first place. Or at least, this has been my experience in the past.

I am less sure this will always be the case. It's not just about the gradual erosion of goodwill over many years; rather it is recognition that, as professions have broadened their intake, we can no longer assume that the prime motivation of everyone in the profession is to make a difference. Increasingly, people come to work as nurses, teachers and social workers not as a vocation but because these professions are considered good careers with a certain amount of social status. Such individuals will be keen to see the status and rewards maintained.

In general, people who work in the public sector are proud of what they do. People can feel very positive about the work of their team or service but negative about the organization they work for. This often comes to light when organizations prepare for Investors in People accreditation. The senior managers fret over what staff will say to the assessors in the light of budget cuts and management reorganizations but staff are asked about what they do and they are invariably positive about their own work and that of their team.

People who work in parts of the public sector are highly motivated by the prospect of helping people and making a difference to an individual's life. If they get on with their line manager, trust him or her, feel valued and that their efforts are recognized, then what is happening outside their team/establishment has limited impact on their morale. This works both ways as, if there is conflict within the team, if there is a lack of trust in the manager, then any additional pressure caused by staffing vacancies, service cuts or changes in the way work is organized will result in people feeling unhappy at work, looking for other jobs and complaining about their lot.

How to improve staff morale

Perhaps the first mistake is to believe that, as a senior manager, you can improve staff morale. So many factors influence whether an individual is happy at work. Many of them are outside of work, such as people's personal relationships, family and friends. No doubt there are many organizations in Manchester that are benefiting from a happy workforce as a result of Manchester United Football Club's success, just as productivity went up following England winning the World Cup. But there are things that organizations would want to do to improve the way they operate, which would certainly contribute to a positive work environment. They include effective communications, a skilled workforce, clarity of roles and responsibilities, and a performance-orientated culture where success is measured against targets and progress is informed by best practice. People are happier if they know what is expected of them and they feel they are equipped with the skills, knowledge and resources to deliver.

Improving morale in the public sector is initially about not putting obstacles in the way of staff's efforts to help people. Secondly, it is about good people-management skills. Thirdly, it is about developing an organizational culture that takes care over the way it manages major change.

We put our efforts into process reengineering – reducing paperwork, streamlining processes and delegating decisions closer to the front line, developing managers' people-management skills and establishing a safe environment where staff had the opportunity and confidence to say what they were really thinking.

Most organizations do not think about how policies and procedures, designed to be fair, consistent and transparent to the customer/service user, may be making it harder for staff to help people. This is often referred to as the bureaucracy of the organization, or how difficult it is to get things done. A good example is how some organizations have responded to the Data Protection Act. I witnessed a police officer's attempts to find a missing person. He telephoned the individual's bank to find out if the individual had made a withdrawal from a cash machine since being reported missing 24 hours earlier. The officer explained that the individual was in a vulnerable state of mind and that it would be a good indication he was still alive if the bank could confirm whether cash had been withdrawn. The response was to state that the Data Protection Act meant this information could not be provided over the telephone. The procedure required a form to be completed and authorized by a senior officer and then e-mailed to the bank's headquarters. How long would this process take? Days.

Social workers complain about paperwork, which these days is completing forms on-screen. They also complain that processes are finance-driven rather than practice-led. We used a process reengineering approach to identifying all the stages from an individual asking for help to him or her receiving help. The resulting map was a powerful visual message. Over the years additional stages had been put into the process, perhaps in response to a critical audit report on financial controls, the need to tighten the rationing procedures, protect the organization from complaints or meet requirements to provide performance information. The more purposes the process was adapted to serve, the greater the number of parts of the organization that had an interest in it, the greater the resistance to streamlining. The whole process is now likely to be replaced by self-assessment and giving eligible individuals the money to spend as they see fit.

Organizations traditionally focused on the financial competencies of managers, as opposed to developing their people-management skills. We addressed this by introducing executive coaching for all senior managers. This took the form of a management consultant observing a senior manager in a range of work-related situations and providing feedback. This information was used alongside 360-degree evaluations to help senior managers better to understand the impact their behavior had on their colleagues and those they managed. These insights were then built on using mentoring and problem-solving surgeries. This approach is now being extended to all managers.

Some organizations are careless in the way they introduce major change, spending too little time and effort explaining why change is necessary and creating too few opportunities for staff to influence how changes are implemented – whether that is how it introduces a non-smoking policy or how it implements an equal pay review. Consultation on the big, one-off changes is essential, but if dialog is not a regular feature of the day-to-day organization it will feel a little forced and may be seen as tokenistic. I think that is why HR colleagues say an organization gets the trade union it deserves. In other words, unless you are working at your relationships with staff representatives on an ongoing basis you will meet only when you are in conflict. These days less than half the workforce is in a trade union, so maintaining a comprehensive network of staff focus groups is essential to establishing a dialog with all sections of the workforce.

This dialog involves senior managers being accessible, whether via a blog and electronic notice board or through membership of project groups, attendance at training events or just going walkabout. In Lancashire County Council senior managers have made a commitment to being accessible. The challenge has been to talk about values rather than strategies or polices and convince people this is a discussion, not a lecture.

Does it matter if staff morale is low? At a team level it will certainly affect whether people enjoy coming to work and the extent of teamwork. At an organizational level it will determine levels of co-operation in, or antagonism to, major change, and at a national level if teachers, nurses and social workers feel undervalued their professions will become less attractive to new entrants, with adverse consequences for the public sector as a whole.

Has morale improved?

Has morale improved? In general, yes. But the annual staff survey is a blunt instrument for measuring staff morale and improved performance does not necessarily mean happier staff. Simply asking staff to rate their level of satisfaction is not enough. Other measures are required in order to determine the extent to which staff feel engaged with the organization. How much confidence and trust do they have in their line manager? How much confidence do they have in the organization's process for dealing with complaints against managers? How much faith do they have in the organization's commitment to equal opportunity? How safe do they feel in expressing dissenting views? Are relationships such that where staff do not agree with senior-management decisions they nevertheless acknowledge the reasons behind those decisions? Are staff prepared to come up with ways of making things work rather than putting their energy into criticizing the decisions and those who made them?

Using these criteria, Lancashire County Council can be shown to be improving staff morale.