Public Service Needs Repair

Auditor General

[Editor’s note: Building a Strong Public Service, a new report released Feb. 3 by the B.C. Auditor General, documents the challenging work environment faced by public employees, almost 90 per cent of whom enjoy serving their clients and want to do more than required to help them. The following is an edited excerpt of the reports opening remarks.] 

In 2002, we examined the quality of the work environment in the British Columbia public service and concluded that the state of the work environment was putting the delivery of quality service and the achievement of government’s objectives at risk.

This conclusion was based primarily on the result of a government-wide employee survey we conducted starting in December 2000 of over 6,000 public service employees. In November 2003, we conducted the survey again to assess the current state of the work environment in the province’s public service, to determine how the situation has changed and to compare the results to high-performing organizations.

I decided to conduct this audit because I believe a healthy work environment is critical to a well-performing government. Government relies on the public service to deliver a wide range of services to its citizens. To hold government accountable, legislators and the public need to know whether or not the work environment provides the support employees need to deliver these services successfully.

Research in the private sector has shown that a healthy work environment leads to satisfied customers and greater profits—and in the public sector, that satisfied customers leads to greater citizen confidence in the institutions of government.

Culture matters, citizens count

Therefore, just as we did previously, we looked to see whether the British Columbia public service has four key elements that help to create a healthy work environment: strong executive leadership, an organizational culture that is citizen-centred, good organizational performance management and reporting practices, and employees who are engaged in their work. All of these elements are interrelated, but our research suggests that leadership has the strongest influence on the others.

The first element, strong executive leadership, sets the tone for organizations. Strong leaders establish a vision and inspire and enable employees to achieve it. Such leaders build trust and confidence with their employees by communicating frequently and honestly and by modeling and rewarding the behaviours they expect others to demonstrate.

The findings and conclusions presented in this report relate only to public service executives (that is deputy ministers and assistant deputy ministers). We did not ask employees about their views of the leadership provided by their elected leaders.
recognize and reward others

The second element, a citizen-centred organizational culture, encourages employees to keep the interests of citizens at the forefront of their thoughts. Such employees strive to satisfy the needs of their clients, and look for new and better ways to deliver services. They feel free to question policies and practices and communicate suggestions for improvement to their managers without fear of reprisal.

The third element is good organizational performance management and reporting. Organizations that practice good performance management and reporting make it clear … what they’re trying to achieve, how they plan to achieve it and how they will know if they are successful. They also ensure that employee efforts are directed to meeting organizational objectives, by aligning employee development and performance with those objectives and by holding employees accountable for their performance.

Engaged employees serve well

The fourth element is highly engaged employees. Such employees are passionate about their organization and recommend it to potential clients and employees. They put in extra effort to ensure the success of their organization, and they have an intense desire to remain a member of that organization. Research has shown that when organizations have engaged employees the result is increased client satisfaction and loyalty, which ultimately leads to better organizational performance.

As part of our analysis, we were able to identify four work environment areas that provide the best opportunities to improve employee engagement in British Columbia’s public service.

Although our survey results this time around showed a slight improvement from the results of our 2001 survey, we concluded that the state of the public service work environment is still putting the delivery of quality service to British Columbians at risk. While all meaningful shifts in the results have been positive, there remains a large gap between the province's results and leading organizations.

Cutbacks challenged workers

We found that employees want to serve the public, but are struggling to do so in an environment full of dramatic changes but in need of stronger leadership and support. Over the last three years, almost all employees have witnessed … workplace restructuring or reductions in staff and budgets. This was particularly the case in the two years leading p to the November 2003 initiation of our survey. We found that employees who had experienced reductions in staff in the last 12 months were also the least satisfied with all aspects of their work environment.

During times of tremendous change like this, employees need strong leaders who they trust to show them the way and support them in getting there. Instead, we found that British Columbia public service employees continue to lack trust and confidence in their executive leaders. The result, we believe, is an organizational culture that remains largely risk-averse—focused more on self-preservation than innovation—and employees who are significantly less engaged in their work than employees in the high-performing organizations we used as our comparison group.

We also found that, although the government has established a sound framework for planning and monitoring the achievement of its human resource goals, it is still in the early stages of implementing this framework and has yet to report its progress to the Legislative Assembly and to the public….

Few employees trust leaders

[W]e found that most employees in British Columbia’s public service still do not trust or have confidence in their executive leaders. This result again permeated all of our findings and stood out overwhelmingly as the area in most critical need of improvement. Until this is changed, the work environment in the public service will remain inadequate. Results have improved slightly since 2001 (which is somewhat surprising given the downsizing that was underway), but there is still a sizeable gap between the province’s public service results and those of high-performing organizations.

Since our 2001 survey, the provincial government established a number of programs and initiatives to address its leadership issue. However, given that most of these programs were just getting started at the time of our survey—and that downsizing was still happening then—we did not expect to see considerable improvements in the leadership results between our 2004 survey and the previous one. We know that such improvements will take time. We encourage government to continue to provide these various programs and to monitor their effectiveness along the way, making changes as necessary to strengthen its executive leadership. …

We found that employees in British Columbia’s public service want to provide high-quality service to citizens, but desire additional management support and more efficient systems. Almost 90% of the province’s public service employees said that they enjoyed working for their clients and doing more than required to help them. However, only 38% have received training in client service, and even fewer […] believe employees are given recognition for providing high-quality client service. Many employees also believe the business processes in their workplace hinder their ability to serve their clients. While 52% of employees agreed that their workplace processes allow them to be as productive as possible, this does not compare favourably to the 70% of employees from our comparison group of excellent organizations.

Public service risk-averse

We also found that, despite the government’s emphasis on innovation, British Columbia’s public service is still largely risk-averse. While the vast majority of employees are comfortable questioning a policy or practice with their co-workers or immediate supervisors, less than half believe they can do the same with senior managers (that is, managers at the director level or above) without being criticized or penalized. Lack of trust in senior managers likely explains why employees continue to feel uncomfortable challenging the status quo. …

We are … concerned with the lack of public reporting on the overall quality of the work environment.  The strength of the work environment is a key part of an organization’s capacity to deliver on its objectives. As such, we expected to find both government-wide and ministry public reporting on the work environment.  What we found, however, is inconsistent reporting across the ministries and no public reporting on the government-wide strategies and performance measures identified in the corporate human resource plan. 

We found that, compared to employees in our benchmark group of 50 top companies, British Columbia’s public service employees are only moderately engaged in their work. That is, they are just as dedicated to serving their clients, but are not as proud of where they work or as committed to staying. While they are satisfied with their relationships with their co-workers and direct supervisors and believe their work is interesting and challenging, only 45% would recommend their organization, and only 25% believe their ministry’s reputation helps them attract the best employees (compared to over 80% of the employees from our benchmark group).

Recruiting will be challenging

We believe these findings should be of serious concern to the government. Given the aging population, the reputation of the public service as a high-quality employer will need to be improved if it is going to compete successfully for the dwindling pool of talented employees. …

I believe that prompt and sustained action is necessary to strengthen the work environment in the British Columbia public service. Failure to do so puts the capacity of government to achieve its goals and objectives at risk.

[We] recommended that government develop a strategy to manage its human resources, that it carefully plan and manage the downsizing that was occurring, and that it measure, as well as publicly report on, the strength of the work environment and quality of service it provides.

In conducting this audit, we were encouraged to see that all of these recommendations were being substantially or partially addressed. Nonetheless, we still found a large gap between the quality of the work environment in the British Columbia public service and the high-performing organizations we looked at. We believe that, over time, full implementation of our recommendations will have a more positive impact on the strength of the work environment.

Wayne Strelioff was appointed Auditor General in May 2000 for a six-year term.