Union becomes a keystone in bridging trust after the human is taken out of HR
Via my LinkedIn page you can see a specific account detailing the organisational and ultimately operational costs that come from removing the human from HR sytems planning and processes.
Over the last three and half years I've spent huge amounts of my working time supporting Napo members and trying to resolve pay, pension, leave and sickness issues and the multitude of tax, NI, and wider contractual challenges that fall out from systemic HR process breakdown.
On the positive side I and hopefully Napo, have learned much. We're in the process of organisational change ourselves, responding to our operating environment having been blown up by Grayling's dogmatic "Transforming Rehabilitation Revolution". Therefore, being stretched by the scale and complexity of our largest employer groups total HR meltdown has tested our systems and structures so we know more clearly what we have to change to meet our members' basic needs and assumptions of what a service from their trade union and professional association requires.
But that's faint comfort. Our reality is that just when the service needs the professional input of its staff most, the only organisation with any credible and consistent presence across all parts of probation and therefore in any position to help - Napo - is itself overstretched and having to channel huge energy and resource into reacting.
The human cost of these HR failures contaminates all aspects of probation, including its union and professional association. Experienced probation staff, hugely committed to probation's mission, fought against Grayling's Revolution. In defeat many left. Those who remained carry their battle scars but remain firm to the faith and cause. Disproportionately they're in leading positions locally (both in Napo and in work). Therefore, when the systems fail and they are placed under particular strain, especially line managers and/or local union Reps, the emotional frustration thrown at them from members or their teams land on bruises still raw. Their remaining energy and morale drains. The energy can quickly be replaced by anger and its destructive twin cynicism.
For decades, both employers and unions have relied on experienced and loyal staff to bring on and develop new recruits. Probation is complex, difficult and emotional work. Feeling part of a community on the front line is an essential emotional support. The soft advice and training newer recruits get from experenced comrades is vital. Or it was...with the local "leadership" increasingly defensive, insecure and feeling beaten the cyncism either cascades and spreads the corrosion more quickly or a dangerous gap emerges between the enthusiastic new recruits and the experienced war vets.
Both Napo and the employers are looking for ways to bridge this gap and shift the discussion onto the more positive, forward looking professionally based agendas - looking to seize opportunities and link together the strategic need for new professional standards; training and career pathways, with opportunities for apprenticeships and broadening access to probation jobs to make them more reflective of the communities being supported; modern coaching based performance management and development replacing the old dogma around performance pay and bell curves; and modern pay systems that don't take 27 years to reach an uncompetitive rate for the job and which recognise and reward people for what they do.
The common will to build a lasting and better peace after the failed revolution is there on all sides of the negotiating table. But little concrete progress is being made because the cancer is still rampant and eating its way through the heart and soul of the service.
There are two reasons for this - both rooted in emotion rather than reason but both needing to be recognised and overcome before reason can win the day. Firstly, the computer problems continue. The senior leaders are unwilling to reboot their system and accept the scale of the illness. To do so would require accepting some responsibility. It will also involve telling their bosses - including th new Secretary of State and Ministerial team - some truths about their predecessors failures and their own weakness in facilitating the political dogma. If Grayling was the Revolution's Chief Architect then too many of his Chief Engineers are still in place, being lined up to manage the re-building project. Trust has to be re-established. Trust requires bravery. Until the leadership find their courage then the computer will keep whirring on, churning out new errors and feeding the cancer.
Secondly, they're trying to do too much. In painting the picture of the bright new tomorrow to spin that all is not hopeless and lost, it is natural to want to dive headlong into the longer term projects. It is also easy to renew your evangelical energy levels by rehearsing old songs about how probation can solve prison problems and thus, if you're not careful get dragged into the prison crisis as well as the probation crisis. Emotionally this makes sense but it is destructive. Rationally it also makes solving the current probation problems infinitely more difficult.
Firstly, the leadership seem more remote from the troops who also have a deep seated mistrust of prisons. Probation and prisons are not two sides of the same coin but opposite ends of a magnet and moving them together will just demonstrate the force of resistance to the other.
Secondly, the leaders are ignoring the structural, foundational flaws in the systems and so, when they divert off, their plans quickly fall into the holes. You can't, for example, introduce a new coaching and performance management model if line managers have up to 16 direct reportees to coach and support - not unless you don't want the line manager to do anything else and that would not be leading. You need instead to firstly make sure you have the right structures and number of staff. To recruit more staff you need to pay them competitively or well... just actually pay them.
You don't need to have revised Maslow for your CIPD exams to know that you can't reach service or organisation self-actualisation without first taking care of basic needs and securing your staff.
Napo therefore finds itself in a weird place for a union - we're the change champion offering ourselves as the keystone of the bridge between the different groups and vested interests - in particular seeking to act as a trust ambassador to new recruits. This is a huge opportunity for us but like all keystones we're feeling the strain. Time will tell how successful we are but as ever this will also depend on what further traumas hit the environment.
