Culture change is a key to correcting worker shortages. Culture change is a key to reducing benefit dependency. Culture change is a key to underperformance in the public and private sectors. These ideas are briefly explored below.
Ministers in charge of Government Departments must be properly held to account when they fail to deliver on promises. But perhaps the obsessive focus of critics and media on Government and political failings when things are not going well may be obscuring and diverting attention from addressing more fundamental problems. After all, Ministers come and go regularly but executives and cultures live on.
Recent press commentaries highlight three core areas of dysfunctionality. The Sunday Times article on 5 February headlined “ Millions of Workers Missing in Action”. The Daily Telegraph article on 23 January headlined “Over half get more in benefits than they pay in taxes”. The Times article on 11 January headlined “ Taxman taken to task by MPs after failing to collect £42 billion “.
WHERE ARE THE WORKERS?
In recent commentaries on the UK’s economic performance and prospects, a major impediment to progress is the shortage of workers plus a mismatch of workers with the right skills for the jobs available. The UK seems to be unique among developed countries for the failure of people to return to full time work post pandemic, the workforce being about 700,000 smaller than pre-pandemic. According to the Sunday Times article referenced, there are 2.2million long-term sick or disabled, 1.4million jobseekers, 700,000 parents with children under 4, and 3.5million older people (aged 50-64) who are economically inactive. There were, according to official numbers, 1,161,000 job vacancies in December 2022.
Journalists refer to a “workshy”, or equivalent epithet, Britain. The Sunday Telegraph for example on 5 February in a Jeremy Warner article refers to “ Britain…sinking simply into a sort of soporific ill-health and malingering idleness”.
As to older workers, it appears that large numbers, having experienced extensive leisure during lockdowns, prefer that to their jobs, presumably willing to take a pay cut. For many it seems the realisation that they did not enjoy work, leading to a decision to retire from it, is a sad indictment of the perception of work: there is evidently a culture growing where people do not see the intrinsic value of work, contributing to society. Instead of retiring why not reskill and find enjoyable work? Is it idleness? Is it tiredness? Is it lack of aspiration? Perhaps a mix. But to what extent are these early retirees expecting to live off benefits? If they expect to live for say another 25 years, how will they pay for it? How will they spend their time? Early retirement could prove a fatal mistake for some who realise that they need to return to work for a reasonable lifestyle, only to discover the difficulty of finding a new enjoyable job, with pensions and savings not going as far as they would like, especially if inflation accelerates, as it often does.
There is reported to be an increasing number of people taking part time work, with tax credit benefits as their addons.
With home working particularly more acceptable, perhaps the 2.2 million long term sick or disabled can be enticed to be productive rather than inactive. Do they need enticing? They should perhaps prefer to work at least a little to being dependent on the State. Apparently, the number in this category has doubled in the past year. Mental health issues are the order of the day for so many, but could it be that this categorisation is being overused – the dividing line between a serious issue and normal every day torments to be absorbed and endured is perhaps conveniently undefined and blurred. And then what percentage of jobseekers have little enthusiasm for work? A survey in December 2022 concluded that some 250,000 young people, 16-24, intend never to work. There is evidently some demoralisation among the young, but the number in the category of not in work, education or training is not abnormally high.
That jobs are unsatisfying can be changed: managers and workers need perhaps to work together on building a culture of can-do and enjoyment at work. A leisure lust, perhaps combined with a culture of apathy about getting fatter and less fit, expecting handouts for not working, and taking pride in getting paid for as little work as possible, may be taking root in some quarters. Full recognition must go to the millions of people who simply get on with things and decry the idea of dependency on others. But there perhaps needs to be plain speaking about work apathy and most important a cultural commitment positively to end it.
BROKEN BENEFITS SYSTEM?
That over 54% of people receive more in benefits and benefits in kind than they pay in taxes shouts out as a major dependency issue. Is it surprising that when asked whether more money should go to public services including benefits by raising taxes, apparently a “majority” say yes, when a majority pay little or no tax? See Spending Taxpayer’s Money of 4 May 2022 in these pages. Is it a sensible state of affairs that a typical household earning £34k before tax and benefits in fact earns £37,600 after tax and benefits? One might have expected the sum to have gone down not up. ONS data for 2020-2021 evidences a big rise in State dependency. 83% of all income tax is now paid by 40% of British adults. It shows that the top 20% of households paid on average £35,399 more in taxes than they receive in benefits, and the lowest 20% receive £17,648 more in benefits than they paid in taxes. As concluded by Sherbhert in its article of 4 May 2022, if more public services are to be funded out of taxes, the sensible way is to establish more higher earning households, not bleeding existing hard working taxpayers. That will require many serious actions, such as training and a change in attitudes to working perhaps: cultural change.
Would not most people perhaps agree that, apart from the most physically or mentally incapable, or those seriously stopped from paid work because they are carers, each adult is responsible for providing for themselves and at least their non-adult children? The State is a sensible insurer against short-term hiccups. Today however it seems to assume a role of everybody’s financial nanny, using taxpayers’ money. That perhaps is not just eroding but wrecking personal responsibility and the essential culture of hard work. The Sunday Times of 5 February described how, when a parent in a family got a promotion and more pay, all child benefit was lost so his family was worse off. That may seem an anomaly and an absurdity. But in fact should not the fact of no longer being subsidised by child benefit be a source of pride , and an ambition for independence fulfilled. But there seems to be a culture of acceptance that receiving welfare hand-outs is a proper and good source of income. Surely the country would be better served by an opposite culture?
Perhaps education is the main answer. Embedding a culture where able bodied adults despise receiving benefits, that is hand outs from other citizens who work hard and pay taxes, rather than accept handouts as a decent norm, would quickly reduce the benefits bill and make the country more productive.
A CULTURE WHICH ACCEPTS AND REWARDS FAILURE
Is there a culture in the UK which accepts non-performance, fails to criticise mistakes and is too slow to change its ways? All people make mistakes, and normally should be given the chance to learn from them, and so improve. Equally, persistent non-performance means something needs to change.
The Commons Parliamentary Audit Committee has criticised HMRC for failing to collect £42 billion in unpaid taxes. Also, the accounts of the Department for Health and Social Care for 2020-21 were described by the National Audit Office as “challenging”. Their records of condition and location of kit, such as PPE, were described as inadequate. The pandemic, it is reported, saw £10 billion of PPE written off as not fit for purpose or over-priced. Defence procurement year after year is shown to waste billions, exemplified by annual wastages and recently the spend of billions on a new armoured vehicle, Ajax, which is still defective and not usable, see Can Fixing The Downing Street Ship Trigger Wider Transformation in these pages. All such wastages are the fault of somebody, and it is normally the case that senior management executives take responsibility for major financial failings, and sometimes resign.
But not it seems if they are senior civil servants or executives in the public sector. There is perhaps an apparent culture of carelessness for taxpayers’ money. Ministers allocate money and rely on executives to deliver value and so often they do not, but remain unaccountable: a bad and damaging culture. And, in the Civil Service, the culture of groupthink and inability to adapt was highlighted by Kate Bingham in relation to the vaccine story in the pandemic.
The NHS is the outstanding example. Non-performance by people in the NHS is not mentionable for fear of outcry by people who abuse it for their own politics or by its sworn faithful, but it is rife. At the macro level the HIV blood infection scandal, the nationwide acknowledged inadequacy of maternity care, the Tavistock trans disaster are all examples of terrible performance. PPE procurement is really the responsibility of the healthcare bodies, and at times in the pandemic they failed badly. Since then public confidence in the NHS is on a downward spiral. But hardly ever do the Senior Executives of the various healthcare institutions, like Public Health England, publicly speak or take responsibility or explain a solution, except to demand more money. There is perhaps a culture of letting them off the hook. And, let’s be honest, a great many hospitals and GP surgeries are good but a great many are less than good. The same is true of doctors and nurses. The law of averages alone makes that inevitable.
Labour’s Shadow health minister has made the point that money will not fix the NHS – at least acknowledging a fix is needed. General Sir Gordon Messenger in 2022 completed a report on NHS leadership, and it was a bit of a damp squib. See Healthcare is the UK’s Rock Of Sisyphus in these pages. However, on 6 February he is reported as saying in a major interview that, for effective use of public money and good patient care, an important component is “a well-led, well motivated, valued, resilient workforce, which comes from the culture, and the right attitude to leadership. I found an inadequate focus on that….” Without such a workforce “the sand is slipping through your fingers, however much you keep topping it up”. He said “in the NHS talent management is almost non existent” and that all NHS managers should be asked to achieve competence standards. Surely there should have been competence standards for years? Is that not a complete dereliction on the part of senior executives? He describes senior leadership in the health sector as a “transfer market”. Is it not the case that in both business and public services the task of leaders is to recruit, retain and motivate the best talents which feeds down the chain to the coalface? The NHS is the biggest employer in the UK and, it seems, has failing leaders, but nobody says so. Gordon Messenger pointed to a “blame culture” and “responsibility avoidance in the NHS”. Is perhaps the biggest problem in the NHS its culture, which can only be changed with acceptance first and then active redirection from the top. Does that not mean a complete reimagination of its leadership?
The private sector too has leadership and culture problems. How many organisations have cultures where non-performing managers are not weeded out but allowed to continue with a “boss” mentality which demotivates workers, who as a result are not productive. Older workers becoming economically inactive too early could be evidence of that.
RIGHT CULTURE IS KEY TO SUCCESS
Is there an entitlements culture in the UK? Is there an attitude which commonly sees work as something to be minimised not embraced? Is there a culture of addiction to benefits? Is there a culture of accepting non performance and not taking responsibility? To the extent there is, then without changes to these cultures, and whatever taxpayer money the State throws at the problems, important progress which improves everybody’s lives will be severely prejudiced.
