You telling me your local authorities are run well... the NHS?? I'm sure we all know lots of horror stories about these organisations.
It's not a myth at all. Lots of them are run awfully. Don't get me wrong and you'd have seen in my first post, I'd like them nationalised, but only if they don't waste billions of pounds.
Absolute money drains.
Agreed. I always find it interesting that when people talk about public sector pay they're happy to bring up nurses, teachers and firemen but you very rarely hear about the people behind desks at the local council. I don't think anyone minds nurses etc getting more money but some of the others are still overpaid, even after ten years of limited pay rises.
I worked for a council in London until the end of last year and the laziness, incompetence and/or disinterest among staff was staggering. You could see people come through the door with, perhaps not fiery enthusiasm, but at least some sort of interest. Then over a period of months you'd see the life sucked out of them. There was one relatively young, bright guy who'd worked there for over 10 years and become totally institutionalised. He'd seen problems side-stepped, passed on or ignored for years and worked alongside people who couldn't or wouldn't do their job to an acceptable standard but had been employed for decades and he'd ended up losing all interest. He'd set up a business selling art prints online and by the time I left he'd bring his own personal laptop into the office most days, set it up on his desk and spend most of the day working on his own designs and/or business admin rather than doing his actual job. Nobody seemed to care and when a project manager I knew from another department asked if this guy could be spared to assist with one of their projects they were told he was "too busy".
Two other people have joined my new company from the public sector in the last month or so and both have said similar things. Deadlines pass, jobs go well over budget, incorrect information is given to the public and so on and (generally speaking) nobody does anything about it. There are good staff who try and meet deadlines and so on but they end up getting very stressed covering for others. Then they're asked the following sort of questions by their colleagues: "You don't need to do that. Why are you bothering?" "Do you get paid more for doing that?" "Why do you let things get to you?" Some are openly mocked by others and called "teachers pet" or whatever because they're prepared to do extra things when asked to by their manager. Again, I've experienced all of this (or very similar) myself.
I think there's a major problem with the HR processes in the public sector, both in terms of hiring and discipline/performance. I remember being told very early on in my time that the nature of council interviews often means they don't result in the best candidate getting a job. Once you're employed the HR processes are incredibly time-consuming and convoluted and a manager who tries to deal with an under-performing member of staff is often (usually?) accused of bullying or similar and ends up going through hell themselves. So they frequently don't bother. I found this blog posting a year or two ago and I'd say it's pretty accurate:
https://welovelocalgovernment.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/not-getting-sacked/ I think I've spoken on here before about the guy who took a job with council I worked for, complained about the early start time on his first day, called in sick on his second day, regularly came in late after that, was found asleep in his van while he should have been working and claimed 5 days off work for jury service when he was only needed for 3 or 4. Even then it took 6 months and a large pile of paperwork for his manager to get rid of him (and of course he resigned just before his disciplinary hearing so he technically didn't get sacked).
Also worth adding that making a profit isn't necessarily a sign of efficiency. That's true of any organisation. I went on a training course about a year ago and the trainer told some of us about his work history during a break. He started working in the car industry where they insist on efficiency and ironing out any problems at all in the business. Whenever there's any sort of problem they do a full analysis of why it happened and do whatever is necessary to stop it happening again. He loved it there but was offered a massive pay rise to go a work for (I doubt there'd be a problem naming them but let's just say...) a large high street pharmacy. They had no interest at all in what he did and in his words* "They had 12 people doing the work of 4 and weren't interested in changing that because they made such easy profits - it costs 20p to manufacture a packet of paracetamol and you can then sell it for £3."
* Can't remember the prices exactly. They may not be 100% accurate but are about right.
