Ethos Public Relations Manchester

New figures show that HMRC is the worst place to work in government – Department for Education the best

by Ethos public relations

As Government steps up plans to give its employees a right to run their own services as mutuals, new data released by Co-operatives UK at the Public Servant Annual Conference in London on Thursday 9 December reveals high levels of staff disengagement across current public services.

The Staff Engagement League Table, compiled from freedom of information requests to supplement published data, names Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) as the worst place to work across government, followed by the Ministry of Justice. The Department for Education comes top.

The basis for the data is the 2009 People’s Survey, which tracked 340,000 civil servants across 96 organisations of government. While most results have been published openly, Co-operatives UK has had to submit freedom of information requests in order to get some departments, including HMRC, the lowest scorer, and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which has published material encouraging businesses to promote employee engagement, to publish their overall engagement scores.

Ed Mayo, Secretary General of Co-operatives UK, is launching the league table at the Public Servant Annual Conference, entitled, ‘Think Big: Opening up Government and Public Services’, and comments that:

“The core idea of forming public sector mutuals is that you can get better results by giving freedom and ownership to staff.  Our analysis backs this up, but also suggests the need for a more co-operative culture right across public services.

“Previous thinking has focused on staff commitment, but this fails to recognise that employment at its best is a two-way, co-operative process, based on mutual obligations and not just a formal contract.

“The survey is in the process of being repeated, and in the context of cuts, it is not clear that the overall results will be any better.”

Previous research has suggested that, when it comes to staff engagement, the UK performs poorly overall compared to other countries (with 23% of staff disengaged in their workplace compared to 16% for the USA and 15% for Germany).  Co-operatives UK has estimated the annual economic cost of this failure for the UK at around £36bn.

“There is a spectrum of co-operation,” comments Ed Mayo. “It is not that every business or government agency should be a co-operative or mutual. But every organisation can benefit by being more co-operative.”

Co-operatives UK, together with the Employee Ownership Association and Local Partnerships, is running the Mutuals Information Service - 020 7296 6705 – to advise public sector staff on options around mutual forms for delivery.

Posted at 9^th December 2010