5 Comments
User's avatar
David Russell's avatar

The move to part time and job share is a factor here. Typically a post taken by a job share pairing has each person working 3 days a week - so covering the week between them and allowing a day of overlap for coordination and coherence. So the job becomes 1.2 FTE. The same effect happens en masse in a team with many part-timers : what would have been say 10 people and 10 FTE becomes say 15 people and 12 FTE. Not saying this is a bad thing - it has much to commend it. But it’s an important factor in how the CS has grown and become less efficient, at least in terms of staff per post.

Expand full comment
Martin Stanley 🇺🇦's avatar

Thanks David. That is quite a challenge and quite worrying, if true.

Depending on other pressures, I would quite like to ask whether others have seen this happen - maybe as part of a blog about CS productivity. But, before I do so, do you have any data or detailed analysis in this area? Also, where did you work, please?

(No problem if no data available - anecdotes can be valid and I think I may have seen the same in London.)

Expand full comment
Anthony Metcalfe's avatar

The dramatic cut in civil service numbers during the 1980s was of course made easier for those concerned by the huge retirement bulge deriving from the large scale recruitment of civil servants during the war and the Attlee government. By contrast, presumably it is the smaller cohort recruited during that period, when civil servant numbers fell by a third, who are retiring now. Tony Metcalfe

Expand full comment
Martin Stanley 🇺🇦's avatar

Thanks Tony - Very good and helpful points! I have included them in my web page which summarises civil service numbers over the years - https://www.civilservant.org.uk/information-numbers.html

Expand full comment
David Higham's avatar

Your comment on the Major administration prompted two thoughts: there was a pretty extensive delayering exercise when Heseltine was in charge of DTI (I was on the panel which did the basic work) and the creation of the Government Offices was in large part about rationalising the regional presence of four Whitehall departments. The post I took at GONW was the result of delayering and at the first office away day I attended (held the day before the Manchester bomb) most of the people I met were actually leaving the organisation. As you say, all the result of good basic management principles, applied consistently.

Expand full comment