I saw a rant from a real estate agent, self identifying as a front line worker, raging against those who he sees as feeding off the hard earned wages such as the likes of him.
I’m close to retirement now and I have spent most of my career in the background in administrative and middle management roles. As part of the public service, I was encouraged to excellence and the award bodies available wanted to see more award applications from front line services. Which led me to some deep thoughts about who in the public service directly touches the public? Teachers and health care providers are entrusted to our most vulnerable every day. There’s the counter agents at our registries, and various licensing and application processing agents. These are the front line workers in the public service.
As for the great bulk of the public service, they are never seen. I can count on one hand the number of personal interactions I had with the public. I worked in the records rooms in our province, keeping paper moving, making sure that needed information was findable and accessible, while making sure offices did not drown in the sheer volume of completed paperwork. I struggled to envision how my efforts supported the needs of the public. How did my work contribute to the bottom line?
Indeed, supervisors, managers, directors, all the way up to CEO’s of both private and public sector businesses rarely interact directly with their clients. Services like payroll, accounts payable, and IT work in the background supporting but never seen. All these positions are “overhead”, not contributing to the bottom line.
I use the analogy of the utility services in a building like water, power and sewage to describe a service that we rarely notice unless something fails. You don’t want to wait for failure to find out that the system needs maintenance. Replacement is always more expensive than maintenance. So even though “overhead” costs do need to be controlled, no business will be free of those costs.
An image I’ll never forget was the story of a nurse completing paperwork for half the day, in a non profit hospital overseas, as the charity had cut overhead costs to satisfy donor demands. Sure all the funds were going to nursing, but this front line worker’s effectiveness was literally cut in half. More efficient by far to employ a part time clerk to do the clerking stuff, and release the nurse to do the nursing stuff. I’d like to see some benchmarks established, by industry, what an ideal percentage of “overhead” is optimum.
I believe it is everyone’s duty to recognize their value to the corporation, and if they are in an “overhead” role right up to the CEO, to build efficiencies in to everything they do.
Sweeping budget cuts don’t accomplish efficiencies. A required service might be accidentally cut-off and it may take months or years to discover the failure. See how long your house holds up without a downspout.
There is great room in the public service to tighten its game. Some of the most valuable efficiencies however may take investment and may take years to realize the benefits. This does not play well to a government looking for flashy results. But these sorts of improvements are the right thing to do.
I have an opinion on which department has invested in a smooth and efficient application process, that behind the scenes is electronic from submission through to approval. Just eliminating the transmission time between desks is a great improvement on turnaround. How they got there took years of commitment, largely unseen and unsung. These great services do exist here in the Alberta Public Service and they deserve to be emulated.
As for that real estate agent? He’s not as front line as he thinks. Farmers, production workers and miners produce. In real estate he’s the middle man, and the clients he is facilitating a transaction will be closely scrutinizing his service fees to make sure they get value. He’s “overhead” too, and ComFree is nipping at his heels.
PS I just remembered more front line public service roles; police, fire, ambulance, and prison guards.
