Are you a Killer Manager?

Any manager with a ’killer’ work ethic should realise that a happy workforce is a productive one. Having a productive workforce may go some way towards keeping the accountants happy however; the manager who pushes too hard and ignores the health and welfare of his/her employees does so at the peril of their organisation. And hopefully their own career…

I recently highlighted the dangers of driving whilst tired for police officers (amongst others), an issue that probably impacts more upon shift workers than many others. But tiredness is (hopefully) only a relatively minor factor when you consider all the remaining health issues resulting from working shifts and excessive hours.

Many of the negative health impacts that result from shifts and working excessive hours have long been understood, both by the medical ‘experts’ and those who are required to work in this way. In recent years there have been numerous studies and reports to evidence many of the previous suppositions.

In 2005 the BBC reported that; “Employees working split shifts could be harming their health” as a result of research carried out by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The results of another study by a team from University College London, carried out over an 11-year period, highlighted the fact; working for more than 11 hours a day markedly increases heart disease risk. It pointed out that the magnitude of risk goes up by 67% for people who work long hours (see here).

This study might make us think twice about the old adage ‘hard work won’t kill you’ (Professor Stephen Holgate - Medical Research Council)

The lead researcher of the latter report, Professor Mika Kivimäki, suggested this should be “a wake-up call for people who overwork themselves, especially if they already have other risk factors” – I would agree however; many of those workers are ‘overworked’ because of the methods employed by their managers and not from any personal choice.

A further study in the European Heart Journal in 2008, focusing on more than 10,000 British civil servants showed that “a stressful job has a direct biological impact on the body, raising the risk of heart disease” (see here). But ‘stress’ is one of those mainly intangible, and mostly misunderstood, negative concepts that can (and do) have a negative impact upon one’s mental and physical well-being.

What is stress? Stress is caused by two things. Primarily it is down to whether you think situations around you are worthy of anxiety. And then it’s down to how your body reacts to your thought processes. This instinctive stress response to unexpected events is known as ‘fight or flight’…(stress.org.uk)

In humans, as in other animals, the adrenalin rush of this fight or flight process helps us to run faster and fight harder, all physical traits useful to those working within our Emergency Services for example. But the life-threatening events are not the only ones that trigger these physiological reactions. We experience them whenever we come across something unexpected or something (or someone) that frustrates our aims, goals, expectations or conditions of perceived normality.

These latter factors are all prevalent in today’s public sector. Services like the NHS and not least our police service, are currently undergoing unprecedented change. The police in particular are also under what appears to be a sustained and constant barrage of (mostly unfair) criticism and attack from the government and our media. As if the job isn’t stressful enough already! But the down side of mobilising our bodies for survival is; the process also presents negative consequences and medical conditions, ones that can have a profound impact upon our ability to work effectively, let alone personal longevity prospects!

The HSE define work-related stress as; a harmful reaction people have to undue pressures and demands place on them at work. Unsurprisingly HSE statistics show that industries reporting the highest rates of work-related stress in the last three years are within the public sector. Stress at work is a major issue for any organisation, not least those involving public service, but it is also one that almost every element of management has specific responsibilities for preventing.

The HSE produce guidelines about the Management Standards expected to mitigate the risk of work related stress. It defines six key areas that managers need to address, if they want to effectively remove/control those risks. If you are a manager, are you aware of your responsibilities?

Well-designed, organised and correctly managed work helps to maintain and promote individual health and well-being i.e. happy workers. But conversely, as with much of the so-called police reform currently taking place, where there has been insufficient attention to organisation and/or task design along with some frightening examples of poor management, the benefits or assets associated with good work conditions are lost. The common result of this being work related stress.

People who feel they have some control over their working lives are then less likely to have illnesses (Professor Cary Cooper - Lancaster University)

Considering all these health impacts, you would think that much of the political rhetoric about ’doing more with less’ should have fallen on deaf ears by now, unfortunately this isn’t the case. A combination of government enforced austerity measures, along with a predominance of self-interested senior management in the public sector, has prevented it.

The one positive outcome from all this (if you can call it that) is; killer management is likely to mitigate the future financial impacts placed upon our society by an ageing population! 

Related articles

• Do Night Shift Workers Suffer Health Consequences? (mcminnala.com)
• Fears over diabetes risk for irregular sleepers (time4sleep.co.uk)
• Does shift work affect the quality of sleep and weight of our nurses? (time4sleep.co.uk)
• Shift Work May Set Stage for Obesity and Diabetes(webmd.com)

Criminal Justice System: why the constant public angst?

Our CJS Angst?

There is a mass of misunderstanding about the workings of our Criminal Justice System (CJS), a confusion often fuelled by the emotive headlines produced by an often mischievous media machine. This generally results in those who work within that sector being, almost constantly, berated by a dissatisfied public. But is all this vilification actually warranted?

In the main, the majority of those who work at the coal-face of the public sector are there to provide you and I with a service. People like police officers, fire fighters, paramedics and nurses et al, even teachers generally all do what they do because they want to build a better society. Yes they get paid for what they do, many a lot less than they used to, thanks to this govt but in short, the majority take pride in providing a service to others and most are simply trying to make a difference.

It’s strange that we rarely (but rightly) see any verbal condemnation of those who volunteer to do similar work, such as the RNLI Lifeboat crews or our Mountain Rescue teams. The only major difference is the remuneration aspect so does that mean, we expect as a society that, no one should get paid for helping others? Perhaps that thought process is behind many of the politically motivated austerity measures of recent years i.e. public sector cuts are ok because we can fill the void left by them with volunteers. Perhaps politicians should carry out their role on a similar basis?

In general, the public tend to be mostly supportive of the work actually carried out by most of those mentioned above (excepting the politicians I would suspect). They understand the roles performed by each of them however; what they have difficulty getting their heads around is, how come performance so rarely matches expectation these days?

Any failure to meet (or exceed) public expectation, be it justifiable or otherwise, simply results in the tax payers standard retort - ”I pay your bloody wages!” Commenting upon the recent news that MP’s are to get an increase in money to pay their staff one respondent wrote…

“We’re all in this together.” Are we? Absolute hogwash. What is the collective name for a group of self-serving, money-grabbing, self-centred morons? I don’t know, but “A British Parliament” springs to mind. Another appalling decision by a group of people who have no idea what it is like in the real world.

In general, the disparity between performance and public expectation actually results from management failures within the sector. That and/or the political agenda being applied by those (often self-interested) individuals employed to manage these agencies on our behalf. The direction and administration of the organisations serving us is the problem, rarely the actual quality of work carried out by the practitioners.

Writing a guest blog for No Offence! Tessa Webb, Director Probation Chiefs Association, penned a brilliantly simple piece which goes someway towards explaining the issue. She equated our public sector to her car…

I just want it to work and if it doesn’t, I want the professional to ‘sort it out’ but I have little interest in what needs to be done, other than I hope it will not cost too much or take too long. A mechanic may wish to share with great pride their handiwork, but the reality is that I am only likely to get animated if it fails to work, after they have told me that they have fixed it, or I think it costs too much. But just think where would we all be if there were no car mechanics? Some jobs are simply essential and it is good to know there are people who will do them with skill and passion. Isn’t this the business that a ‘Big Society’ should recognise and engage with? As when it is effective everyone wins…(Tessa Webb)

There is no doubt that Tessa’s analogy was written from her own field of expertise within the sector however; similar can also be said in support of many public sector agencies, not least our police and the courts.

Despite so many of our public services currently being reduced at alarming levels, as a result of government austerity measures, the general condemnation continues, but why is this? Once again our media need to shoulder much of the blame, they the politicians and senior organisational leadership. All for whom it serves well to detract from the real issues involved here; self-protecting and self-motivated actions designed for self-protection. The actual concept of true public service rarely features in the overall scheme of things.

Because of this, I found it somewhat disconcerting to read the views of that well-known, but often controversial and predominantly left of centre,  journalist and TV presenter Janet Street-Porter. Writing in The Independent this week she said; The police must shape up, knuckle down, and change. Her article started by saying “the police service is stuck back in the days of Dixon of Dock Green!”  Janet went on to deride the police in general but in particular, she condemned the views of Paul McKeever, the chairman of the Police Federation.

Wouldn’t you think that a staff association, representing those who deliver the services that our communities are crying out for, must be in a better position to know what the public actually want? After all, they are the ones interacting with those people on a daily basis.

But again, Janet, like the rest of us, is being hood-winked and taken for a fool by our political masters; not hard when you take into account the ‘broken car’ analogy is it? Many of the current police reforms, already implemented and proposed for the future, have very little to do with delivering better policing services. They are more about placating public concerns and fears around the reduced levels of service we are already experiencing. A situation that is only set to worsen, despite all the “doing more with less” rhetoric.

What we’re suffering from now is actually the product of a myriad of previous failings, as opposed to any massive changes in role requirements per se. Yes there are some aspects of policing now that differ from those of twenty plus years ago however; the fundamentals of policing, the services that our communities probably need (arguably) more now than ever before, are broadly similar. Most of the current reforms are simply born out of the self-interest of senior police leaders and politicians; people who all have deep-seated and vested interest in disguising years of self-serving management failure.

Perhaps a good way of examining the whole issue, given that we’re looking at the legal world, would be from a more legal perspective? Within our civil law, attributing guilt is usually based upon ‘the balance of probability’ (onus probandi) however, some might even suggest that a ’beyond reasonable doubt’ burden of proof, as within our criminal law, would be even more appropriate.

To prove that someone was guilty of a crime, it must be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) a prohibited act (actus reus) has taken place, (2) the intention or mental state (mens rea) of the ‘offender’ and (3) there was no legal excuse for committing the crime.

The choice of which definition you actually chose, when apportioning guilt to those responsible for the demise of our police (and other public services) is up to you.

Who the guilty party is in all this is debatable, be it the media, police senior leadership, our politicians, or indeed the Police Federation. But, despite all the mitigating circumstances being offered by the defence counsel for ACPO and the Government, someone IS guilty of what can only be described as; the criminal damage of  a once internationally respected system.

To my mind it’s not the rank and file police officers (or even their staff association) that are at fault or to blame. But, as a result of all the PR smokescreens and political spin constantly in play, only our society can be the ultimate judge!

Note: No Offence! is a Community Interest Company, not-for-profit, headed up by a Senior Management Team and Volunteers all with significant sector experience and specialisms. The organisation is focused on reducing waste and isolation in the Criminal Justice System within the Public Sector. It seeks to do this through facilitating and encouraging collaboration. There are currently more than 1500 members of No Offence! forum and that number is growing at a pace.