States must move its staff to best roles

The opportunities for misinterpretation, misapplication and just plain mischief by mid-level managers and staff are legion.

The States has tried recruitment freezes before. The reaction by departments in previous years was to hire a lot of private sub-contractors in place of permanent staff. In many cases, the cost of providing the service went up, not down, and the policy was eventually reversed.

While it was understandable that the States hit the brakes as Covid-19 slashed revenues and sent its costs spiralling it was inevitable that such a rapid shift in direction would cause some services to veer off the road.

The short-lived plan to cut Swim School classes rather than recruit was an accident waiting to happen.

It meant that one of the few profitable parts of the public sector – and one which ticks a lot of strategy boxes such as childhood obesity and safety – was to be cut for no good reason.

To its credit, once the situation became clear and the anger of parents started to break over Education, Sport & Culture, the committee acted quickly and decisively.

It sat down with managers at Beau Sejour and hammered out a solution. Crucially, this included a promise that Swim School would be back in full operation from September.

Problem solved.

But the broader issue of public sector staffing remains. Why was the first inclination of managers deprived (seemingly) of the ability to recruit to close down the service, not to improvise?

How hard did they look within their ranks at the leisure centre for alternatives?

And, more fundamentally, did they seek permission to draw from the labour pool of thousands within the public sector? There was every chance, for example, that someone already working for the States could be repurposed from a role that Covid-19 has made less viable.

If the States’ hefty wage bill is to shrink it must learn to switch staff and roles across its ranks, not be confined to thinking only in terms of departmental silos.