Benchmarking did not deliver and cutting pay is only part of the issue.

westtip

Benchmarking clearly did not deliver the improvements society demanded. Wage cuts will not cut the symptomatic problems we have.

The structure of our public services is at the core of our problems:

County Councils:

Why does the role of the county council in our society continue to be so important. The administrative role of the county council was established when the state was established – it needs to be looked at in terms of the structure of a modern state.

Take the county I live in: Sligo. Sligo has a population of 61,000 people. Why does such a small population need its own administrative body with a County Manager (on 200+K), A county planning department, A separate roads and roads engineering department. It is just too small a population to serve with these separate departments.

Public Administration issues now are not so much on a county by county basis but on a regional basis.

We should cut the county councils to match the European Election boundaries – so the bodies have some meaning.


Clerical and Admin services in the Civil Service

Why do we have so many pen pushers (or email senders) in the Civil Service Administration.

The public sector should be divided in two:

Frontline “real job holders” - Nurses, Teachers, Garda, Social Workers etc

Back office “Admin Staff” - All Admin roles and functions should be outsourced to the private sector.

Let me give you an example: My wife a front line real job holder (teacher) had an admin issue to sort out with the department of education recently (an expense claim for travelling);

She submits her claim

She hears nothing and follows it up with a telephone call two weeks later

Clerical worker in the DOE “Oh yes I have found your claim form here but my colleague Theresa is dealing with it”

My wife says “Well can’t you deal with it”

Clerical worker in the DOE “Oh no this is in Theresa’s file and she is off work sick but I think she will be back tomorrow, I can’t do her work”

OK……A week later my wife calls back:

Clerical worker in the DOE “Oh I’m sorry Theresa is on a course this week, I’ve just looked at her file and she is in the middle of processing it I can’t pick up on her file if she is already working on it”

My wife says “Can I talk to your supervisor then”

Clerical worker in the DOE “He is out today and tomorrow as he is taking two flexi time days”

You get the picture!!!!!

About two weeks later Theresa came back to work and processed the claim.

This needs a good shake up!

Contract out the enitre administrative process out to a private management company.

There is an opportunity now to have a massive shake up …….

It needs to be done.

The current pay cuts will not change the inefficiency of the public sector - which is not the PS workers fault - but the whole structure of PS administration.

PS workers are caught in a vortex of inefficiency, but because they are all "busy" doing their jobs within an inefficient system they don't realise how inefficient they are.

The_Honeybadger

Some good points westtip, but your proposal is not a runner, as what would you intend doing with the currents pen pushers and e-mail senders as you call them. Would the state be willing to pay them all redundancy, only for many to be rehired to do the same job by the outsourcing company? as well as that no government in their right mind would try to lay off 150k people in one go (guessing that figure before anybody takes me up on it), how many votes would that cost come election time.

I agree with you on county councils, and in fact many towns also have town councils as well, the duplication is unbelieveable, same with VECs.

I dont really think that there is an easy solution, I know first hand how utterly frustrating it can be dealing with civil servants and the situation you describe above does not surprise me in the least. There needs to be reform and more flexibility, for example it would have been very useful if the state could have moved people into Dept of social and family when we had the unemployment explosion, queues of two hours were not uncommon, i know because I had to stand in one.

Perhaps this recession is just what is needed for reform. Civil servants should now appreciate their jobs more, as I am sure they are well aware that they are all but unemployable in the private sector (if you had a business would you hire an ex civil servant?), and may be willing to co-operate a bit more with reform etc. It probably wont happen though as the government are too busy putting out fires in other places (banks) to be trying to fight for reform in the Civil Service as well.

BrianD3

westtip wrote: »

Take the county I live in: Sligo. Sligo has a population of 61,000 people. Why does such a small population need its own administrative body with a County Manager (on 200+K)

Sligo County Manager salary is 133k
http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/LocalGovernment/Administration/FileDownLoad,17596,en.doc

Riskymove

BrianD3 wrote: »

Sligo County Manager salary is 133k
http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/LocalGovernment/Administration/FileDownLoad,17596,en.doc

indeed....


...and

he is taking two flexi time days

you cant take two flexi days in same period

and...of course

“real job holders”

:rolleyes:




dont let facts get in the way of a good story

westtip

BrianD3 wrote: »

Sligo County Manager salary is 133k
http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/LocalGovernment/Administration/FileDownLoad,17596,en.doc

He is still overpaid! Mine was a guestimate thanks for the information thats over 2 euro per person in the county each year for one persons salary - shocking.

Whats more the document you have provided the link to just exposes how many of these county managers we have which we don't need, herein lies the problem I outlined in my OP. ~We just simply have over the top public services structure

I used Sligo as an example. It is akin to the Greater Manchester Argument that the entire GMC area is about the equivalent to the Irish state, why on earth have we got all these people in admin repeating jobs over and over again?

There has got to be a massive shake up and benchmarking achieved nothing and pay cuts will only make them martyrs

So cut the public sector pay bill through reform

Get rid of the county council as an administrative unit.

Have the following: Fingal and Dublin City Council

Limerick, Cork City and Galway Council

three regional councils Leinster, Munster and Ulster/Connaught

Make them reasonably sized and they have the critical mass to carry out the functions of super councils the tiny piffling county councils we have are a drain on our resources.

funnyname

http://www.finance.gov.ie/documents/publications/other/Bench.pdf

Executive Summary
The Public Service Benchmarking Body carried out a detailed examination into the jobs, pay
and conditions of public servants and compared these with jobs of equal size in the private
sector using representative comparative data on pay and conditions.
In this regard the Body:
• Collected evidence and information in respect of 138 public service grades.
• Examined a total of 3,994 individual jobs and interviewed 347 public servants.
• Collected private sector data in respect of 3,563 jobs covering 46,351 employees.
The Body considered:
• Personnel issues in the public service such as recruitment and retention.
• Equity between public service and private sector employees.
• The impact of pay on national competitiveness.
• The over-riding need for modernisation and change in the public service consistent
with the commitments in the PPF.• The value of public service pensions relative to those in the private sector; and
• Other material sectoral differences in conditions and benefits such as security of
tenure and benefit in kind.
The Body recommends:
• A number of changes in public service personnel management practices.
• A range of pay increases, linked to agreement on relevant modernisation and
change, giving rise to an overall increase in public service pay costs of 8.9%.
The awards sever all previous pay links and establish new absolute levels of pay. The awards
may not under any circumstances provide a basis for any follow-on claims from employees
within either the public service or the private sector.
7
1. Introduction
The Public Service Benchmarking Body (the ‘Body’) was established under the terms of the
Programme for Prosperity and Fairness on 19th July 2000. The Body was mandated to report by
30th June 2002 and in the course of its deliberations met on 103 occasions. This is the full and
final Report of the Body.
The members of the Public Service Benchmarking Body were the Hon. Mr. Justice John Quirke
(Chairman), Billy Attley, John Dunne, Phil Flynn, Maureen Lynott, Paddy Mullarkey and Jim
O’Leary.1
2. Pay Determination
The underlying principles of Irish public service pay determination have their origins in the mid-
1950s. These principles are based on the premise that the pay of public servants should, where
possible, be set by reference to direct comparators in the private sector; and that where these do
not exist, pay should be set on the basis of a relativity with the few pivotal grades which have
direct comparators. In fact, the pay of only a small number of grades in the public service has
been determined on the basis of direct comparators. The pay of the majority of grades has been
set ultimately by means of a relativity with these few pivotal grades. This approach has stretched
the underlying principles of pay determination well beyond what was envisaged and created
ongoing problems in the determination of public service pay.
It is in this context that the public service employers and trade unions recognised in the PPF that
‘‘the traditional approach to pay reviews in the public service, based on analogues and relativities,
has given rise to serious difficulties in the past’’ and committed themselves ‘‘to an alternative
approach which will be grounded in a coherent and broadly-based comparison with jobs and pay
rates across the economy’’.
3. Benchmarking
In undertaking the ‘‘coherent and broadly-based comparison’’, which was required by its terms of
reference, the Body engaged in a systematic, multi-sectoral and broad-based benchmarking of
public service pay. This process tested the links and relationships between public service grades
to ensure that the manner in which these grades relate to each other and the private sector is
more cohesive, equitable and sustainable than what has gone before.
Benchmarking is an integrated approach for the purposes of comparing work and reward. Under
its terms of reference, the Body was required to have regard to a wide range of considerations,
including: (i) the quantitative and qualitative measurement of jobs; (ii) comparison with the private
sector; (iii) public service and private sector reward structures; (iv) the incompatibility of crosssectoral
relativities with benchmarking; (v) the need for internal consistency and coherence; (vi)
recruitment, retention and motivation; (vii) equity between the public service and private sector;
(viii) public service modernisation, efficiency and effectiveness; and (ix) national competitiveness.
Central to the success of this benchmarking exercise is the capacity to understand and measure
1 Resigned from the Body in April, 2002.
8
the range of work across the entire public service and to compare this in a consistent and rational
manner with work and reward in the private sector. Well-established job evaluation methodologies
exist; however, the scale and the complexity of the benchmarking task required the Body to
develop its own job evaluation scheme. In doing so, it drew on contributions from nine leading
human resource consultancies. Using this method, the Body examined the work of a total of 3,994
individual jobs in the public service. Publicly available and privately held information on salaries
in the private sector did not meet the requirements of the Body as set out in the terms of reference.
The Body, therefore, undertook its own confidential salary survey as part of its corresponding
research into pay and jobs in the private sector in respect of 3,563 jobs covering 46,351
employees.
4. Characteristics of the Public Service
There are significant differences between the culture and employment characteristics of the public
service and private sector. These include pay determination systems, non-pay benefits, career
structures and pay progression. In comparing the public service and private sector, a number of
other differences are apparent e.g.
• Public Service as Employer: The public service is the largest employer in the country
employing around 235,000 people, approximately 20% of the working population.
• Levels of Educational Attainment: A substantially higher proportion of public service
employees hold a third level qualification as compared with private sector employees.
• Occupational Profile: A higher proportion of public servants are employed in
professional, associated professional or technical occupations than is the case in the
private sector.
• Age Structure: Two-thirds of public servants are aged over 35 compared with less than
half of those employed in the private sector.
5. Personnel Issues in the Public Service
The Body has concluded that better overall planning is required in some sectors of the public
service to deal with recruitment and retention, supply, training and development, motivation and
performance management.
It was evident to the Body that a number of the recruitment and retention problems point to
deficiencies in personnel analysis and planning, rather than simply issues of pay.
Excessive reliance on overtime and ‘on-call’ working raise issues of concern in a number of
services. Such practices are not in the best interests of staff, employers or consumers and the
Body recommends that steps be taken to eliminate them.
6. Considerations Underpinning Pay Recommendations
6.1 Comparative Analysis of Public Service with Private Sector
In reaching its recommendations on pay, the Body, in addition to the considerations set out in
Paragraph 3, Points (i) to (ix), also considered a number of other issues in respect of the public
service. These included security of tenure, pension arrangements, allowances, annual leave and
9
working hours. In the private sector, the Body similarly considered aspects such as bonus
payments and non-pay benefits examples of which are: company cars, medical insurance, profit
sharing arrangements and share option schemes.
6.2 Performance Related Pay
Performance related pay exists to a variable degree in the private sector linking certain elements
of reward to the performance of the individual, group or enterprise. A general pattern which
emerged from the Body’s research is that such payments tend to represent a more significant
element at higher levels of remuneration. The information available to the Body indicates that, in
practice, such payments are more dependent on actual performance at these levels.
The Body notes the commitment of the parties in the PPF to the introduction and subsequent
review of systems of performance management in the public service. The Body has taken the
view that consideration of the introduction of performance related pay in the public service is
premature pending the outcome of that process of review. Accordingly, it makes no
recommendation in this regard.
6.3 National Competitiveness
Under its terms of reference, the Body is required to have regard to ‘‘the need to underpin
Ireland’s competitiveness and develop our economic prosperity on a sustainable basis’’. It has been
an overall concern of the Body that the public service should not lead the private sector in matters
of reward. At the same time, however, a central objective of the benchmarking process, as
required by the Body’s terms of reference, is the ‘‘need to ensure equity between employees in
the public service and those in the private sector’’. These principles have been a major element in
the formulation, within the overall context of the PPF, of a cohesive overall set of
recommendations on public service pay which has regard to the full range of considerations
referred to in the Body’s terms of reference. In light of the foregoing, there is no basis for any
follow-on claims from private sector employees arising out of the Body’s recommendations. Any
such claims would have no justification and would have a wide impact across the economy with
significant implications for competitiveness, employment, and economic and social development.
6.4 Modernisation and Change
The challenges facing the social and economic development of Ireland in the medium to longterm
underpin the need for continually progressing the modernisation of the public service. The
Body notes the reference in the PPF to the link between public service pay awards and the
delivery of the modernisation programme in the public service. The Body strongly recommends
that implementation of the pay awards should be made conditional (apart from the one-quarter
of any award to be implemented with effect from 1 December of 2001 as agreed between the
parties) upon agreement on relevant modernisation and change issues at the appropriate local
bargaining levels. It will be a matter, in each case, for managements and unions/associations to
determine the agenda for this local bargaining, but it is the firm expectation of the Body that real
outputs will be delivered. The establishment of an appropriate validation process is recommended
to ensure that agreements on issues such as adaptability, change, flexibility and modernisation are
implemented.
10
6.5 Severing of existing pay links
The Body’s recommendations on the remuneration of the benchmarked grades have the effect of
severing all previous pay links and establishing new absolute levels of pay for each of those grades.
No benchmarked grade may receive a further pay increase as a consequence of the Body’s
recommendations as they affect any other grade, whether benchmarked or not.
6.6 Pay Recommendations
The overall increase in public service pay costs arising from the Body’s recommendations is
8.9%. The awards recommended are set out in Chapters 7 to 11 of the Report.