I recently read an interesting article by Hamish McCrae in The Independent newspaper which discussed the growing chasm between the public and private sectors. The author claims that it is now at its widest since the 1970s – jobs are being lost daily in the private sector (e.g. Total, LDV Vans, C&G), while we have seen strikes and pay disputes rather than redundancies in the public sector.
The key point was that a major divide between the sectors can hardly be good for the UK’s economic recovery. ‘Resources and productivity’ are cited as two key areas of difference, but three others are also highlighted – pensions, pay and job security. In terms of both pay and pensions the private sector has been hit harder but, as demonstrated by the examples above, it is job security that is perhaps the area where we see the biggest differences between the two sectors. This caught my attention because of the likely impact on the well-being and engagement of staff.
Hamish McCrae makes the point ‘the entire burden of recession in terms of job losses has been carried by the private sector’. In principle, creating and safeguarding public sector jobs during an economic crisis seems sensible (it’s certainly Obama’s chosen approach to recovery), but if this is at the expense of the sector where the vast majority of UK workers earn a living (23,596,000 vs. 5,783,000 in the public sector) the recovery of the whole economy may be at risk.
From a psychological perspective, perceiving that your job is secure is one of the nine major determinants of employee well-being and engagement. It stands to reason that if the majority of the UK’s workers feel that the security of their jobs is under threat, there will be a negative impact on their well-being, and by extension, their productivity & performance. The government has had to make tough choices over the last 18 months, but this may be just one of several unfortunate and unintentionally divisive side-effects. It’s true to say that the government can’t be expected to ensure that we all feel secure in our jobs the whole of the time, but they do create the economic playing field for business and have a responsibility for keeping it relatively level. That said, private sector organisations also have to take responsibility for keeping well-being and motivation levels up during these uncertain times – looking after those that remain after redundancies.
Of course, this could all switch around if the private sector starts to recover and public sector budgets are slashed in order to recover the money that was required to stem the financial crisis. Perceptions of job security could swing from one extreme to another in both sectors, and that would hardly bode well for creating a stable new economy characterised by productive and trusting relationships between the sectors. This situation may need to be actively managed as the next 18 months unfold.
Perhaps another aspect of insecurity (and stress thereof) is the effect it can have on the way some executives might *think* & *act* as postulated by Boylan’s popular book from a decade ago ‘The Power to Get In’.
This effectively dealt with how to exploit the executive whose main MO is to do only that which is most likely to save his own skin.
Boylan approached this from the perspective of a company outsider seeking to communicate with a key executive, but it almost certainly applies to internal situations also.
His hypothesis is that executives under pressure and feeling insecure don’t care so much about being right, but they are certainly petrified about being wrong.
Essentially Boylan claims they feel it’s safer to say “no” to incoming ideas (read ‘YOU’ and/or ‘change’) as in the extreme they might feel they can never be wrong if they simply zap all incoming new ideas.
There may be a little more to this simplistic claim, with communication overload playing some role, and more involved and complex mechanics at work as one might expect with most human behaviours.
However, it seems communications directed towards target executives that play up on their fears of being wrong, can achieve greater penetration than those which don’t harness this powerful emotion.
Boylan’s book talks about creating a ‘circle of leverage’ whereby you let several key executives in your target firm know you have notified other executives in the same company, and letting them all know you have an incoming new idea.
Furthermore, you also set about informing them of their competitor companies you are also approaching with this idea.. of course you’re sophisticated and subtle with all of these communications that are now flying around, but you create ‘mass awareness’ and put your target under the microscope.
The intent is to trigger your target from an ‘I must not respond’ state to a ‘must respond’ (and often quickly) out of fear of loss, and the possibility that they could be making a widely perceived mistake.
The above is only a microcosm of the entire workforce, but from an individual psychological perspective perhaps there is not a great difference between the public and private sectors, and how insecurity may stymie an individual’s performance.
From a number of perspectives there could be wide-ranging ramifications for both organisations and individuals, all hinging around perceived job insecurity, individual risk perception, and communications.
I’ll leave the UK macroeconomic analysis of this to the economists, although I have fond memories of this from my time at UMIST – it’s not as much in my area of self-interest these days. After a little hopping around Europe & Asia I’m now resident in the US and looking to penetrate some of the largest companies on the planet, while still doing my bit to decrease the UK’s balance of trade deficit!
Is it wise to encourage people to see their job as secure?
Shouldn’t we rather be stimulating debate about how to reskill repeatedly?
How should we understand the concept of a 3 yr degree when the knowledge taught in yr 1 may be out of date by yr 3?
How do we fund the continous reskilling?
How do we support people during the intermittent reskilling?
How do we organize all of this?
Won’t our sense of security come from a collective agreement that we committed to a sense of security of each and everyone of us but that to achieve that security we may have to have continous public debate about where to invest and how to cover losses when we jump the wrong way?