Workforce Reform Presentation to the OECD Public Employment and

Management Network

Liz McKeown

Deputy Director and Deputy Chief Economist, Cabinet Office

October 2011

October 2011 1 UNCLASSIFIED

Outline

The UK Context

Current Challenges

Policy Tools

Workforce management information

Next Generation HR

Talent Management across the Civil Service

Employee Engagement and the Civil Service People Survey

October 2011 2 UNCLASSIFIED

The UK Context

October 2011 3 UNCLASSIFIED

Today just over 1.5% of UK workers are Civil Servants.

October 2011 4

Civil

Service

(453 thousand)

UK Economy (29 million)

Public Sector (4,908 thousand)

Government

(529 thousand)

The Government (Civil Servants and employees in non-departmental public bodies) makes up approximately 2 percent of total UK employment and about 11 percent of public sector employment.

About 15 percent of people employed by the government work in non-crown NDPBs and are not classified as Civil Servants.

UNCLASSIFIED

Civil Service FTE employment is at its lowest level since

the Second World War.

1918: 221,000

1944: 1.16m (highest ever)

1977: 746,000 (highest in past 50 years)

2011 Q2: 453,000 (lowest since WWII)

2005 Q2: 536,000 (HM Courts Service transfer in)

1999 Q1: 478,000 (start of quarterly time-series)

October 2011 5 UNCLASSIFIED

Civil Service employment as proportion of public sector

employment is also at its lowest recorded level

The Civil Service’s share of total

employment has declined over the

period from 1971. This is due to a

combination of falls in Civil Service

employment (as shown on the

preceding chart) and increases in total

employment.

The Civil Service’s share of public

sector employment has fallen by

nearly three percentage points since

1993. Over this period public sector

employment has increased while Civil

Service employment has reduced.

The most recent drops in the Civil

Service’s share of public sector

employment have been due to the

reclassification of a number of financial

institutions from the private sector to

the public sector.

October 2011 6 UNCLASSIFIED

The grade composition of the Civil Service

Almost three-quarters of all Civil Servants work at

one of the four largest departments.

The changing grade composition over time reflects

the changing challenges that the Civil Service faces.

The Civil Service by department18

The majority of Civil Servants work on the front line, at a

relatively junior level, in one of the large delivery

departments...

DWP23.4%

HMRC15.7%

MOJ16.8%

MOD15.6%

OTHER DEPARTMENTS28.5%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Pe

rce

nta

ge

SCS

G6&7

HEO/SEO

EO

AA/AO

UNCLASSIFIED

100

110

120

130

140

150

160

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Ea

rnin

gs I

nd

ex

(3 m

on

th a

ve

rag

e to

Ma

rch

2000 =

100)

Public sector

Private sector

Civil Service

…and most Civil Servants earn less than £25,000 per

annum.

The above chart compares salary developments in the Civil Service with other sectors in nominal terms since 2000.

Civil Service salary distribution Cumulative salary increases over time19

The Civil Service salary distribution is skewed towards the bottom end, with the majority earning less than £25,000 per annum.

Sala

ry b

an

d

(th

ou

san

ds)

20 15 10 5 0 5 10 15 20Percentage of Full-Time Civil Service staff in salary band

1.9%

29.5%

21.7%

17.8%

10.6%

5.9%

3.1%

0.8%

1.1%

1.5%

2.2%

2.5%

0.4%

0.8%

£75+

£70 - £75

£65 - £70

£60 - £65

£55 - £60

£50 - £55

£45 - £50

£40 - £45

£35 - £40

£30 - £35

£25 - £30

£20 - £25

£15 - £20

Up to £15

UNCLASSIFIED

Current Challenges

October 2011 9 UNCLASSIFIED

The world in which the Civil Service is operating is

changing and we face a number of challenges

October 2011 10 UNCLASSIFIED

Policy Responses

October 2011 11 UNCLASSIFIED

Policy tools (1) – Workforce management Information

October 2011 12

• Monthly Workforce

Management Information

•Quarterly Data Summary

•Workforce projections over the

spending review period

UNCLASSIFIED

Policy tools (2) - NGHR

Reorganising Civil Service HR through

the Next Generation HR programme to

be an enabler and help us achieve

savings in a way which ensures we are

effective as well as efficient in the

future

• NGHR is developing the infrastructure,

products and solutions to enable the

Civil Service HR function to work more

collaboratively, efficiently and effectively

• The Programme brings together

expertise from HR professionals across

the Civil Service

• The results – efficiency savings and

improved performance – will be realised

throughout the Civil Service

October 2011 13 UNCLASSIFIED

Policy tools (2) - NGHR

October 2011 14

Departmental HR Shared Services

Transactional services

Expert Services

Strategic Centre

Strategy and performance

Resourcing Civil Service

Learning

HR Directorate HR Business

Partners

Policy

UNCLASSIFIED

Policy Tools (3) – Talent Management

October 2011 15 UNCLASSIFIED

Policy Tools (4) – Employee Engagement and the Civil

Service People Survey

• Driving performance – the CSPS is a key operational tool providing

consistent metrics on the quality of leaders and their ability to manage

change in organisations.

• Transparency and benchmarking – the CSPS allow us to benchmark

performance internally and externally.

• Managed and coordinated approach to staff feedback – the results provide a

platform for team level action planning which can help to identify local and

global efficiencies.

• The Civil Service People Survey (CSPS) is an annual survey open to all Civil

Servants and those that work for Civil Service organisations. In 2010 325,000

Civil Servants across 103 organisations participated.

• The CSPS is delivered through a single procurement exercise that replaces

over 100 separate exercises cutting the cost of staff surveys in the Civil

Service by over 40% since 2008.

• It provides consistent and robust metrics which help us understand how we

can improve levels of engagement across the Civil Service.

What?

Why?

UNCLASSIFIED

Policy Tools (4) – Employee Engagement and the Civil

Service People Survey

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

20

10

En

gag

em

en

t In

de

x

Policy Regulatory Sepecialist Smaller delivery (<2,500) Larger delivery (2,500+) Organisational function:

Each dot represents an organisation’s

engagement index, the shape/colour of

the dot indicates its function.

Specialist

Organisations that deliver

specialist services tend to have a

higher engagement index than

other organisations.

Large operational organisations tend to

have a lower engagement index than

other organisations. However, small

delivery organisation appear across the

range.

Policy and regulatory organisations do

not appear to be clustered in any

particular part of the range of

engagement index scores.

UNCLASSIFIED

The size of the bubble shows the strength of the relationship between each of the nine survey themes

and employee engagement: the larger the bubble the stronger the relationship with engagement.

… but some local factors

have seen small increases

in the benchmark score

There has been a worrying decline

in the benchmark figure for learning

and development…

Policy Tools (4) – Employee Engagement and the Civil

Service People Survey

UNCLASSIFIED