The oldest tricks still work for some

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Boxer’s response to everything was always “I will work harder”. His belief that working harder would solve all problems was unshakeable. It’s a belief shared by many of the UK’s politicians as well as some ‘business leaders’, although they work to the slightly different version: “You must work harder”. The underlying problem of the UK economy, in their eyes, is simply that people aren’t working hard enough. Last week it was the Tories, with Chris Philp claiming that the UK was lacking a proper work ethic. This week, Labour are at it, with ministers threatening to make redundant any civil servants who don’t achieve more with fewer staff and less money.

We can probably take it as read that most of us believe that, in most situations, it’s better to use resources – whether financial or human – as efficiently as possible (although it’s worth noting that efficiency at a micro-economic level isn’t always the same thing as efficiency at a macro-economic level). But how is that efficiency to be measured and assessed? It’s not easy to measure the output of the average civil servant – or indeed, any employee who isn’t directly producing something which can be counted. But without measuring output, it’s impossible to measure productivity, which in this context is a cypher for efficiency. In that situation, lazy employers (in which category, we can generally count governments and public authorities as well as many private companies) fall back on simply cutting the resources available to do a job and insisting that the workers continue to do everything asked of them.

It isn’t really improving ‘efficiency’, although it often seems to ‘work’, at a simplistic level. The staff involved may suffer more stress, and may resort to working extra hours, but as long as those hours are ‘free’ – and in many situations that is what employers insist upon, although that’s a trend more common in the private sector than the public – then achieving the same output with less input counts as an increase in productivity, and it doesn’t even require measurement of the output to conclude that. Maybe corners have been cut, regulations ignored, staff well-being damaged, but none of that matters in economic terms. If 8 people each working 10 hours a day (whilst being paid for 8) can achieve as much as 10 people working 8 hours a day, economists will proclaim that productivity has improved. It hasn’t really, of course. The work done has still taken 80 person-hours, it’s just that the employer has only paid for 64 of those. People haven’t worked any harder – just longer.

‘Sweating the resources’, squeezing more out of people in order to improve profitability – it’s obvious who benefits from that, and it ain’t the employees. Yet somehow, the all-pervasive idea that the ‘problem’ is that workers aren’t working hard enough diverts attention from the underlying economic power relationship, and encourages people to blame themselves rather than their masters for poor economic performance, even if, in reality, that poor performance is often due to a lack of investment and innovation, issues which lie more in the hands of employers than employees.

Boxer accepted responsibility enthusiastically, and eventually collapsed from overwork. His reward for his service to his masters was to be sold to the knacker’s yard. What worked for Napoleon seems to be still working today.

Improving government efficiency

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Civil servants perform no useful function, and we can simply sack 20% of them with no impact on government services or performance. That is, apparently, what the PM believes, and why he has asked every department to reduce its numbers by that arbitrary percentage, leading to an overall reduction of 90,000 jobs. It’s hardly as if there are any backlogs in, say, the Passport Office or the DVLA which might be exacerbated by an arbitrary 20% cut in staff numbers.

I suppose that, for the head of a cabinet which could easily reduce its headcount by 100% with only a net positive effect on government performance, a cut of a mere 20% might even look to be a bit on the cautious side. And I somehow doubt that, in calculating the cost savings involved by not paying 90,000 salaries, he has taken any account of the potential corresponding increase in expenditure on benefits (or pensions, for those ex-civil servants who decide that they will simply retire early rather than seek alternative employment). Then again, because there will be no one available to administer said benefits and pensions, maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. Another brilliant cost-saving ‘efficiency’.

Interestingly, one of the things he said was that he wanted civil service numbers to get back down to where they were in 2016. For all of 10 milliseconds, I found myself wondering what could possibly be significant about that date. Could there have been some strange event which subsequently required the government to employ thousands of extra civil servants to negotiate trade deals, to implement new border controls, or to replicate other functions previously performed elsewhere, such as in Brussels maybe? But luckily, now that Brexit is officially ‘done’, none of that is needed any more. Obviously. And those unicorns are still grazing happily on the sunlit uplands.

Agreeing with Dorries

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This week brought a rather frightening occurrence – I found myself agreeing with something said by Nadine Dorries. They say that given an infinite number of chimpanzees with an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite period of time, one of them will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare, in the correct order, and duplicating every single one of the bard’s original spelling errors. (Mathematically speaking, the idea is wrong – infinity is so vast that we’d actually end up with an infinite number of perfect copies, but let’s not allow mathematical precision to spoil the flow.) The thing is, the perfect copy doesn’t have to be the infinitieth one; the power of randomness is such that it could equally be the first, which means that it doesn’t need an infinite period of time for even Dorries to say something sensible. It just feels that way sometimes. Mind you, given a choice between agreeing with Dorries or agreeing with Jake, it’s a tough call for many of us, although that didn’t prevent the PM from coming down firmly on the side of Jake.

It isn’t just me: both the columnist Simon Jenkins and many of the heads of the Civil Service have also found themselves obliged to agree with Dorries on this occasion, even if it’s a trend which won’t last. Jake is, of course, famed for being out of touch with reality, and it didn’t really need him to wander round the offices of civil servants leaving patronising and insulting notices on empty desks to demonstrate how removed he is from the real world in which most of us live. He manages that just by getting up in the morning. And I suppose, given the PM's history of sexism and misogyny, that it shouldn’t be a surprise that Johnson would support a fellow old-Etonian and Oxford graduate ahead of a mere woman, especially one from a working-class background. She, like the civil servants who have attracted the derision of Jake, is supposed to know her place, and her deviation from her usual position of providing adulation for the PM will not have been welcome.

The point she made, though, is a valid one. The issue we should be addressing is not whether civil servants are at their desks for the specified 37 hours per week, but what they do with their time and how productive they are. If the job gets done efficiently, why should we care where they do it? Whilst there are some roles, even within the civil service, where staff working together and talking directly to each other can spark innovation and efficiency, there are plenty of other, much more mechanistic, jobs where the opportunity to mingle round the coffee machine or the water cooler can actually damage overall productivity. And even those where it is of benefit don’t really require 5 precise days of 7 hours each to achieve the necessary effect.

So, are the civil servants working from home being productive or not? And if not, why not? We know that there are problems with backlogs at the DVLA and the Passport Office, and we know that both have got worse since the start of the pandemic (although neither were particularly famous for the speed of their response even before that). Is it because they are inherently inefficient or workshy, or is it because of a lack of resources (staff absences due to Covid have been high) or even a lack of systems to support homeworking? Are the rules about what staff can work on at home too restrictive, meaning that some particular tasks end up with a backlog? Could changes to rules, or better systems actually facilitate more efficient working? Despite Jake’s obsession with seeing offices full of people sitting at desks doing whatever it is that they do, we know that a combination of Covid, a war in Europe hitting energy costs and supplies, and the need to reduce our carbon usage all mean that working from home, where it can be managed, is to be preferred, and that’s without even beginning to consider issues such as work/life balance.

That’s not an analysis which Jake has done, of course – nor is it one he’s ever likely to do. He doesn’t need to when he ‘knows’ that state employees are inherently lazy and workshy and can only be managed by close direct supervision. Both he and Johnson share the ideological standpoint that everything the state does is essentially rubbish (the civil service can’t even organise decent parties – as some of the ministers defending the PM have pointed out, there were no outside caterers, no balloons or poppers, and people were wearing suits). For ideological Tories, delays at the DVLA and the Passport Office can only ever be down to the poor performance of individual civil servants, and the underlying assumption is always that employing fewer staff on minimum wage level salaries in companies owned by Tory donors will do a better job, presumably because the employers will be able to use bigger whips. The more one thinks about it, the more surprising it is that Dorries seems to have abandoned her party’s ideology and struck the nail on the head. It could just be the effect of that randomness mentioned earlier. Or maybe she just didn’t get the memo telling her what she’s supposed to believe. Perhaps the memo's author was working from home and wasn’t allowed to send the e-mail because of civil service rules.

To each according to need...

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In the last few weeks, the Conservatives-in-Wales have turned their faux anger on the Welsh Government’s proposal to trial a Universal Basic Income in Wales, with their Finance spokesperson telling us that it would hand money to the wealthy and the MS for Aberconwy adding that it’s a step towards Wales becoming a communist state. They succeed only in demonstrating how utterly clueless they are. There’s nothing new about the idea of a UBI – in one form or another, the idea has been floating around for the last 4 or 5 centuries. And there’s nothing particularly left-wing about the idea either; there are some good right-wing arguments in favour as well.

It’s true, though, that in broad terns, the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ approach the idea from different perspectives. I can sort of see how Finch-Saunders almost has half a point about the relationship with communism. But only almost, and only half. Marx did indeed utter the phrase “…to each according to his needs”, implying that goods and services should be distributed on the basis of need rather than ability to pay, something which is anathema to modern-day Tories. It was, though, based on the questionable assumption that a developed economy could produce such an abundance of good and services that there would be no need to ration them on price (which is the basis on which capitalism works). And the first part of Marx’ phrase is omitted, because he also assumed that all in society would be making a contribution, or as he put it: “From each according to his ability”. It’s an important caveat.

From a more ‘left-leaning’ perspective, UBI is about ensuring that society provides at least the basics for all its members, and therefore inherently conveys a sense of what ‘society’ is or should be. Supporters of UBI who lean to the right tend to see it more in terms of simplicity and efficiency. A single fixed payment to everyone gets rid entirely of an overcomplicated benefits system and all the bureaucracy associated with it. (And if the same sum is also paid to pensioners, it removes another over-complicated system and the costs of administering it.) It’s true that it also involves the state paying money to millionaires, but that’s a complete red herring; a progressive tax system on all income over and above the level of UBI would mean that the wealthy simply pay more tax. And I very much doubt that the suggested target group for the Welsh trial – care leavers – contains a large number of millionaires.

Whether UBI discourages people from seeking work or not is an open question. Freed of the need to work in order to pay for food, shelter etc., there may well be some who will decide not to work at all, but then there are some who do that at present anyway. They’re more of an exception than the media would have us believe, though: most people living on benefits are either unable to work, or unable to find suitable work, rather than have taken a positive decision not to bother. It depends to a very large extent on how the level of UBI is set and how ‘basic needs’ are defined, but most people’s ‘wants’ go way beyond their ‘needs’. UBI could equally increase the incentive to find work for people freed of the daily worry about how to meet the basic costs of simply staying alive.

The bigger concerns with the proposed pilot in Wales are firstly its necessarily limited scope (given the lack of power of the Senedd) and secondly that it is being viewed as a way of simplifying the benefits system for the target group. Not only does that look more like a conservative argument for UBI, it is also likely to be of limited use in judging whether it should, indeed, become truly ‘universal’. It’s in danger of being a trial which contains the seeds of its own destruction, to adapt another of Marx’ sayings.

Sharing the benefits

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It’s more than 60 years since Parkinson came up with his famous law that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".  I’m not sure that it’s ever been scientifically ‘proven’, but for most of us it seems to have a ring of truth about it in many workplaces, in offices at least.  The underlying problem that it highlights is the difficulty in measuring the productivity of many activities.  In essence, productivity is simply output divided by input, and in a widget factory it’s fairly easy to measure both and thus assess productivity – it’s simply the number of widgets produced divided by person hours to produce them.  (In passing, it’s worth noting that that isn’t quite the way in which overall productivity of the economy is calculated, but that’s for another day.) 

In an office environment, however, measuring ‘output’ is a great deal harder to do, which is why many lazy employers don’t even try.  Instead, they put their efforts into managing the input side of the equation: controlling the hours put in by employees, managing sickness absence, dealing with a lack of punctuality.  There’s an underlying and unstated assumption that if they can maximise and control the input then the output will take care of itself.  It’s an invalid assumption, and in some cases over-controlling the input side of the equation leads to a disempowered, or even demotivated, workforce which feels, rightly, that management don’t trust them to get on with the job; and the probable impact of that on output (and thus productivity) is more likely to be negative than positive.

That’s something of the context within which the TUC this week called for a move towards a four-day week rather than a five-day one.  The BBC report tells the story of one company which switched to four-day working and found that they were achieving as much as they had before.  From simple observation over the years, I suspect that would be true of many workplaces.  ‘Presenteeism’ is a growing problem, and the number of employees who believe that they should be seen to turn up before the boss and not leave until after (s)he has gone home is far too prevalent.  It leads to some people working long hours involving what is often unpaid overtime, but I’m not at all convinced that it adds anything to output.  Instead, the Pareto Principle applies: staff achieve 80% of their overall impact in 20% of the available time; the remaining 80% of their time is taken up by often trivial activities having little overall impact.  Presenteeism merely adds to the time used for not particularly productive activity.

It’s not clear yet to what extent automation will replace much of the routine work undertaken by staff in offices.  Again, it’s easier to see the impact of automation in a widget factory.  I suspect, however, that most people are underestimating the extent to which technology will be able to replace much of the work currently done, as well as underestimating the rate at which that change will be upon us.  The TUC talk about sharing the benefits of technology with the workforce; reducing the length of the working week is one way of doing that.  It strikes me, though, as a wholly inadequate response to the impending changes which technology will bring.  The challenge is not just about sharing the benefits in the workplace, it’s about sharing those benefits more widely across society.  I suppose it’s close to inevitable that an organisation composed of the representatives of working people will be prioritising the interests of those working people; but there are a lot of people in society who aren’t in that category who will also be affected.  And that number is likely to grow.

Some politicians talk about automation as though it’s similar to changes of the past, as a result of which many jobs disappeared but were replaced by new jobs and new types of jobs which hadn’t even been imagined previously.  They may be right, and if they are I may be worrying unduly.  I have a feeling however that the change we are now facing is of a different nature – even if new types of organisation supplying new types of services emerge, the potential is there for many of them to be automated too.  In theory, those who own the machines can produce goods and services with little dependence on employees, and the benefits of automation accrue to the machine owners.

Things aren’t quite that simple, however, and the advance of technology highlights the underlying problem with the capitalist economic model.  For those organisations adopting the technology first and moving away from dependence on human employees there are potentially huge advantages.  But if everyone does it, and there are no employees left, who has the money to buy the goods and services?  What looks good for an individual capitalist simply doesn’t work when applied to the economy as a whole.  That has always been the flaw in the model but continued economic growth has disguised it.  I paint an extreme picture to make a point, but unchecked automation with all the benefits flowing to the automators ultimately fails.  The TUC are right to argue that the benefits of automation should be shared more widely; if anything, their proposals strike me as being rather timid.  What they are suggesting is in the interests of the capitalists as well as the workers, but I don’t expect the capitalists to recognise that just yet.  There is a wider political question as well – what are politicians going to do to ensure that the benefits are shared rather than accruing to one group alone in the short term?  Merely assuming that there will be new jobs to replace the old looks is not just complacent - it’s more a dereliction of duty.

Catching criminals

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There’s a certain inevitability about the way in which press coverage of lengthy reports will tend to highlight a few striking points rather than delve into the detail.  This report in yesterday’s Independent was no exception; faced with a 105 page report from the Policy Exchange (available here), no brief summary was ever going to do more than scratch the surface.  (Interestingly, the same report, almost word for word, appeared in the Western Mail as well as in the Independent)

One of the headline figures associated with the story was that “14,500 police officers in Wales and England made no arrests last year”.  It’s an eye-catching figure, but my reaction was to ask ‘so what?’.  Is the number of people arrested really the right criterion for judging the success of the police service?  I’m more interested in levels of crime – preventing and deterring crime is surely a better outcome than catching people after the event.

In fairness to the full report, it takes a much more rounded view of the efficacy of the police service than that one figure suggested, and the most important overall conclusion drawn, to my mind, was that increased expenditure on the police, and increased numbers of staff, have not resulted in a commensurate improvement in performance in terms of crime solving and reduction. 

But would we really expect it to?  There is no reason why crime should be different from any other phenomenon; the marginal cost of a small reduction is likely to get higher as the total falls.  Determining how much we are prepared to pay for a given additional level of further reduction is precisely in the sphere of political debate about priorities.

That doesn’t mean that the police service cannot find ways of doing some things more efficiently or cheaply, of course.  No organisation of that size is without potential for improvement, and the police must be subject to the same level of scrutiny as other services. 

In that context, the report raises some interesting points about civilianisation, and effectively questions whether the investigation of crime requires the same skill set and training (and subsequent salary costs) as those required by uniformed warranted officers.  It’s not the first time that question has been raised recently – there was a suggestion not long ago that the long-standing rule that all police officers of all descriptions have to start as ordinary constables should be revisited. 

The suggestion is anathema to many in the service, but that is not reason enough to reject it outright.  The UK approach to policing – as a single integrated service – is far from being the norm elsewhere.  Many countries have multiple police forces dealing with different issues at different levels.  Rather than concentrate simply on costs and efficiency, it might be better for us to take a more radical look at policing in general.