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Wherever the fault lies following the departure of Sir Olly Robbins from government, it’s clear that this is another blow to the already damaged relationship between ministers and civil servants, says Joe Hill
The things organisations say they value can differ a lot from the things they actually value. Enron – a company which went bankrupt in 2001 and whose C-suite went to jail for fraud and insider trading, listed their values as integrity, communication – respect and excellence. Most organisations don’t depart as far from their values as Enron did, but in many cases their values are still a bland set of positive statements dreamed up by their leadership team one afternoon at a corporate retreat – hardly distinguishable from those of any other company.
But what about organisations which don’t talk about their values at all? What kind of message does that send about why people should work there, or how they will know if they are doing a good job? It certainly isn’t how a high-performing organisation in the private sector would choose to work, so why should our expectations of the government be different?
Wherever the fault lies following the departure of Sir Olly Robbins from government (and more weeks wasted on process stories about who knew what and when) it’s clear that this is another blow to the already damaged relationship between ministers and civil servants. Like a marriage on the rocks, better communication is needed on both sides. But the thing that struck me most in Robbins’ testimony two weeks ago was the part where he told MPs that he was confident he acted in line with the Civil Service Code, the set of values the civil service include in their terms and conditions, which he said he could recite “from memory”.
Memorising the Code is an impressive trick. Although my time in the civil service was shorter and much less illustrious than Olly’s, I definitely couldn’t have quoted to you from a document that I signed a copy of on my first day in 2015 then only dipped back into once or twice. But it’s even more impressive considering that with 1,336 words the Code doesn’t give much useful guidance at all.
Rather than a list of things which the civil service values, it is a technical and legalistic statement of the long list of things that civil servants can’t do. It says precious little about the things that civil servants should do. So when the former Permanent Secretary says he acted in line with the Code, he means that he didn’t trip up on the constitutional principles of an impartial civil service – rather than that he was role-modelling any values which would help officials know what to do when dealing with challenging moral dilemmas. On these questions, the Code is silent, and the silence is deafening.
The absence of a stated civil service culture doesn’t mean it doesn’t have one, it just means that we all pretend it doesn’t exist. Organisations have to organise by some principles, and the absence of positive ones means that Whitehall organises around negative ones – avoiding things. Avoiding taking risks, avoiding new ideas, avoiding bringing in people from the outside, avoiding getting rid of people who aren’t doing their job, and avoiding every elephant in the room.
Rebuild trust
To rebuild trust between civil servants and ministers, we need a stronger civil service culture – one which clearly sets a higher standard, of the kind which you would expect to see in any high-performing organisation. That should start with a new set of values and a new Code.
How about valuing ‘ownership’ – Netflix, one of the highest growth companies on the internet, described their values in 2009 with a 125-page slide deck called ‘Freedom & Responsibility’, speaking to the need for individual staff to take responsibility for what they delivered and what they couldn’t. It’s a far cry from a civil service where officials are more likely to die in service than they are to be fired for poor performance. The same could be said for values like excellence, openness and courage – high standards for a high-performing Whitehall, ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century.
But how does an organisation which doesn’t hire, promote or fire based on these values today even begin to rewrite the Code to change them – a task which would require openness to new ideas, and courage to make the case for them? The new Cabinet Secretary said reviewing the Code was one of her objectives, but without new ideas from outside the system I think she will struggle.
For years, ministers have asked the civil service to reform its culture by itself with exercises like this, an approach which has had predictable results. So we at Re:State have decided to skip to the end and rewrite the Civil Service Code ourselves and publish it. It’s up to the government (or indeed a future one) whether they want to require it of all officials – but if they don’t, I predict as little will change in Whitehall in the next two decades as has since the Code was last rewritten in 2006.
Joe Hill is director of strategy at Re:State
