Taxpayers and unionized workers in the provincial government complain that the sa国际传媒 Liberals鈥� belt-tightening is reducing service and stressing out workers, and now another group has found its voice: the public service鈥檚 middle managers.
Caught between workers and executives, middle managers, not surprisingly, say they are feeling the squeeze. Their organization, the sa国际传媒 Excluded Employees Association, has written a report called Running on Empty, a title that gives a clear picture of their impression of the government鈥檚 ongoing hiring freeze.
It would be astonishing if such a group delivered a cheerful assessment of the freeze鈥檚 effects, but the document gives some insights into the view from the middle of the sandwich.
British Columbians are most interested in whether the freeze affects the service they get from government. Of the managers surveyed, 20 per cent said that timeliness of service to citizens has been reduced, seven per cent said quality of service has declined and 35 per cent said both have dropped.
In the past, the report says, most of the effects were in service to other government departments, but as the percentages suggest, the strain is becoming more visible to ordinary British Columbians.
Of course, not everything government workers have to do is visible to taxpayers, and the managers say they are having more trouble fulfilling their mandates, both the visible and invisible parts. Managers handling land use on the Island, for instance, estimated they were fulfilling only 59 per cent of their mandates.
For some, not fulfilling mandates means handling crises while their clients鈥� overall well-being gets short shrift. For others, it means they and their staffs have less time to put into decision-making, so the work isn鈥檛 as thorough.
Hidden costs pop up when the public service is squeezed that way. Poorly researched decisions get appealed more often, which adds more work and slows everything down, defeating the attempts to streamline operations. Poor decisions about children in care or the use of the province鈥檚 land and water can have long-term effects on British Columbians, and for many of them, there is no do-over.
As in any organization, when time and resources are tight, one of the first things to be dumped overboard is long-range planning. Companies that ignore the future will limp from crisis to crisis to bankruptcy, but governments have to go on, even if they don鈥檛 know where they鈥檙e going. All of us have to live with the consequences of poor government planning.
Ironically, the reduced resources make it harder for managers to find time to devise or adopt innovations that would make their departments more efficient. They say that although they support innovation, much of it is coming top-down, with no meaningful consultation.
To top it off, their salaries have been frozen, while they are having to work longer hours without extra pay or time off. It鈥檚 tough to keep up your morale when it seems that your work isn鈥檛 valued by the people at the top.
The reaction of many British Columbians to the concerns of the middle managers is likely: 鈥淨uit complaining and do your job. We all have to do more with less.鈥�
It鈥檚 true that just about any organization 鈥� public or private 鈥� can find ways to operate more efficiently and with fewer people. The government had to respond to a dire financial situation in 2009 with cost-saving measures, and its quest to work smarter has paid off.
But as the sa国际传媒 Liberals dig into the new core review of services and try to find another $30 million to balance the budget, they must remember that if you squeeze the orange too hard, it will crack.
