Get the loyal staff you deserve by treating them with respect

During his nephew’s amazing solo rendition of Be Still For The Presence Of The Lord, my mind wandered away to when I worked with Mike 25 years ago and I felt grateful that I had the benefit of his presence in my life. I do not mean it disrespectfully or irreligiously, but ‘Lord’ Mike played a huge part in my life and in so many other States members and their staff. He was, and will always be, regarded as one of Guernsey’s great statesmen.

But this isn’t a personal eulogy to ‘Big Mike’ – though I will get back to him later.

There’s been much coverage in the Guernsey Press recently about the state of local politics and the need to overhaul the system that we, the people, have been responsible for – bringing us the ‘government which we deserve’ – to coin an old adage. Maybe even the ‘worst States ever’.

But from time to time the criticism extends to the machinery that is responsible for bringing the decisions of the States into operation – the public services. The single largest employer in the island.

While we are allowed the opportunity to vote into power those which make the decisions which we often find difficult to accept – and even sometimes difficult to understand – those 38 deputies can be replaced every four years. We, the people, have the opportunity to settle old grudges and vote in those ‘new brooms’ whose manifestos we like and hope that they can make the difference that we wish of them. Sadly, that is rarely the case.

But it is the other 5,000 or so ‘servants’ of the public that are responsible for enacting those decisions that are often unfairly criticised for just doing their job. Why do I say unfairly? It is because just as we get the government we deserve, we also get the public and civil servants we deserve.

There are a number of detractors of the public services, calling it bloated, over-paid, unnecessary, but very few who have the knowledge to make those criticisms from a position of direct experience. A few brave but highly regarded, retired senior civil servants have stood for election in recent years. These have been able to speak from direct experience of the inner workings of government and have been able to have significant effect when on the other side of the desk. But they are rare – why is that?

Let’s go back to the start of their career as civil servants. I believe there are basically two types of people that enter the hallowed portals of Frossard House.

The first group are those who have decided to make their career the service of the States. My father once counselled me that if I applied for a job in the States it was a safe job for life, and though the pay wasn’t much you got a good pension and security. All sorts of people made that step. Some of them straight out of school, some as graduate officers after leaving university with good degrees and some who entered at later stages in their lives, perhaps having had bad experiences in their earlier career choices in the private sector.

The one thing they probably shared was a sense of loyalty to this community and the security of the position outweighed the lack of excitement in what they were responsible for. They understood that they weren’t there to make a name for themselves or court publicity – in fact they were cautioned against it – that was for the politicians to enjoy.

The second and much smaller group were those who were recruited ‘to do a job’ – special projects or tasks that have increasingly become short-term time-limited roles. These were contract posts requiring specialist knowledge or skills and were expected to make a difference. Then, such normally senior appointees moved on, often back into the private sector. These officers were more often the risk-takers that were used to making decisions and, more often than not, found themselves frustrated and suffocated by the bureaucracy. They probably found the end of their contracts a welcome relief.

They were not the much-vilified consultants that the States are criticised for wasting public funds on, but genuinely committed individuals that wanted their service to be effective and useful.

I was one of these. I didn’t listen to my father and initially chose the private sector. But I did complete two contracts with the States for a total of 12 years. My other 26 years I spent working in the private sector in the UK, internationally and in Guernsey.

So I feel that I have sufficient breadth of experience to make the claim that Guernsey gets the quality of public servants that it deserves. The people I worked alongside during those two contracts were the most well-meaning people that I ever met. Some of them were happy to do the less exciting tasks that meant that they could go home and feel that they had done a job to the best of their ability and could sleep at night. They were not shirkers or work-shy, though maybe one or two had been promoted beyond their capabilities.

Others ‘lived’ their work and suffered personal and professional challenges and stress that kept them awake at night and often led to early ends to their career. There are fine individuals who are in-post now who I am proud to still call my friends, even though I retired 12 years ago. Many were relatively junior during my time there, but they are now senior civil servants who carry the weight of the trials that are laid on their shoulders by the people of Guernsey and the politicians who now direct their actions.

So let me now return to Big Mike.

I worked alongside him for seven years. I have flown to foreign lands sitting alongside him and spent hours in his company on a one-to-one basis and I can honestly say that I have never heard a bad word come out of his mouth about his staff despite some very difficult decisions that had to be made. He trusted them, he respected them and never did he criticise them.

It wasn’t their fault, it was the fault of the situation. They couldn’t answer back criticism from outside – he did.

They responded by giving him their support and loyalty and he was truly a man of the people, be they ones who voted for him in St Martin’s, or the ones whose lives and careers he had to make difficult decisions about. Policemen, postmen, prison officers et al.

So my prayer to the States members for the next few months till the election and from then on is to stop taking public servants names in vain. Stop demeaning what they do in meetings or the media. Defend them when the unknowing criticise them – be it for policy matters or even just road-closure issues. You

will get the loyal servants that you deserve – just like Big Mike did. Please don’t wait till your big day before finding out where your staff’s loyalty lies.

Richard Brache

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