The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Minister McVey’s off to a flying start as she demonstrates her ‘common sense’
It’s hard to think of many direct links and connections between the British civil service and the nation of China in these troubled times except that at the moment, they both seem to be under the cosh wielded by the UK Government. For very different reasons, obviously.
But the sum of events seems to be that homegrown civil servants, via the wonders of technology, are far too busy “working from home”, being distracted by “woke” political correctness and wearing rainbow lanyards to do their jobs properly and the Chinese, via the wonders of somewhat different technology, are far too busy accessing private information about British voters and armed forces payroll details which they have no business knowing. Whether their super-hackers sport lanyards of any kind while doing this has, so far, not been recorded.
It is a general rule of thumb, of course, that the minute anyone starts to bang on about “common sense”, what they come up with can be neatly filed under the heading “uncommon nonsense”. So Minister without Portfolio (aka “common sense tsar”) Esther McVey is off to a flying start before she even begins to berate civil servants for lying down on the job and bringing politics (especially the sort she doesn’t agree with) into everything. Pot and kettle mayhap?
Certainly, the civil service should be politically neutral so there is perhaps something to be said for encouraging and even enforcing that view.
But one could also argue that in most jobs, it is generally accepted that bringing at least some of one’s own personal experience and special expertise to bear in one’s working life is usually regarded as a good thing. Ms McVey also plans to move jobs concerned with promoting or ensuring equality and diversity into HR, all of which, she claims, “divert time and resources from the focus on the public.”
At any moment in history, of course, there will have been fads and fashions and – dare one say it – allegedly worthy new directions taken in the workplace which either eventually end up fading away without a backward glance of sorrow from anyone very much or alternatively, passing into law or general usage to the basic benefit of quite a lot of people, really. That tends to be how progress, well, progresses. Occasionally.
That’s not to say that time, energy and financial expenditure, especially in eras of belt-tightening all round, ought not to be monitored and kept within reasonable bounds. I would suggest, however, that there are a great many more people earning a great deal more than the average civil service diversity officer who might just be regarded by the public as doing an unnecessary, if not actually bad, job. Mayhap it might be a good thing if some politicians left some of their own personal political quirks at the office door and got on with the general job of making their constituents’ lives better.
There is, of course, a poll for everything these days (except, as yet, the one formerly known as a general election) but a recent-ish example apparently found that those asked tended to believe civil servants were generally more trustworthy and hardworking than government ministers. Get away.
Not to be outdone the Chinese, meantime, are not only flooding the world with cheap and (it would seem for the many who buy them) desirable goods and allegedly poking their noses into the internal workings of other sovereign states in a bid for backdoor world domination, some of them are also, it would appear, coming up with new and interesting ways to make the lives of the workers better and more rewarding. You wouldn’t have thought (at least I wouldn’t but then I always admit to colossal ignorance, even if it doesn’t stop me pontificating about whatever it is I know little or nothing about) that a certain Chinese supermarket chain might be a hive of forward-thinking and a caring approach to employees’ wellbeing or the notions of work-life balance, mental health and self-care. The Chinese work ethic and working style is not known, usually, for its adoption of sweetness and light.
But then you have a particular group founder in the Chinese province of Henan coming up with the notion that his staff should benefit from 10 days’ per annum “unhappiness leave”. In addition, mark you, to sick leave and holiday entitlement. And line managers can’t turn this request down. “Denial is a violation,” the head honcho says firmly.
Mind you, better working conditions, fairer pay and more flexible hours might do the job for you, rather than your HR department having to work overtime processing the queue of folk deciding that misery may love company but that they’d rather be at home under the duvet nursing their sore hearts than looking across the desk/production line/deli counter at a colleague with a face like a torn scone.
Implicit in all this, of course, is the notion that happier workers are more productive workers. And finding ways to make them happier in their work is a bit of a no-brainer. Stick that on your lanyard and wear it.
Implicit in all this is that happier workers are more productive