Culture of underperformance fuels discontent in the public sector

Research from Roffey Park, the education and research providers, shows public sector morale continues to decline while private services report improvement. The public sector is suffering from high levels of morale-sapping internal politics, poor board reputation and a failure to tackle underperformance, according to findings that emerge from The Management Agenda 2008 report.

The report shows the public sector is falling behind in a number of critical areas. Just six per cent of public sector organisations reported high morale among there workforce, a stark contrast to 33 per cent within the not-for-profit sector and 24 per cent in the private sector.

The report suggests the inability of public sector managers to motivate teams and deal with poor performance with only four per cent of respondents from the public sector believing underperformance is tackled “very well” within their organisations.

Private sector boards enjoy a relatively high reputation with their employees
whereas 43 per cent of public sector employees rate the internal reputation of the board as negative compared to only 25 per cent in the private sector
The research found that office politics, the primary cause of workplace stress, is much more entrenched in the public sector than elsewhere. One in two public sector respondents reported that political behaviour is one of the main factors causing conflict within their organisations.

“All sectors are experiencing structural and systematic change but, compared to private and not-for-profit sectors, change in the public sector is more prolific,” say the report’s authors Annette Sinclair and Gemma Robertson-Smith. “The public sector is seen as less capable of managing this change effectively.”