Everyone is having their say except Probation Chief Officers. At what point do our leaders ‘man up’ and condemn the mess of flawed reunification looming for probation? We criticise unions and politicians not doing enough, but what about Probation Chief Officers, Senior Managers and Heads of Service? Why should they get a pass?! These are the ones that are accepting and implementing the changes and manipulating the staff into a false sense of security. Exactly what they did during TR.
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I think when you've lost your way, the advisable thing to do is to go back to a point that is familiar and recalculate your position and direction. For probation that means going back to a place where you know it worked and was fully functional before plotting any further routes in the direction of travel.
I think when you've lost your way, the advisable thing to do is to go back to a point that is familiar and recalculate your position and direction. For probation that means going back to a place where you know it worked and was fully functional before plotting any further routes in the direction of travel.
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Agreeing with going back to a point that is familiar when you have lost your way. Sadly most Senior Managers are unable or frightened to do this as no moral compass...
Agreeing with going back to a point that is familiar when you have lost your way. Sadly most Senior Managers are unable or frightened to do this as no moral compass...
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Probation directors and senior managers are NOT “frightened or unable”. They are complicit with the plans and intentions of the MoJ. They implement the changes and in return sit in their Ivory Towers and rise through the higher ranks of HMPPS. They are not our allies or friends.
Probation directors and senior managers are NOT “frightened or unable”. They are complicit with the plans and intentions of the MoJ. They implement the changes and in return sit in their Ivory Towers and rise through the higher ranks of HMPPS. They are not our allies or friends.
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Probation directors cannot be compared to Probation Chief Officers of the past who gave a damn about probation values.
Probation directors cannot be compared to Probation Chief Officers of the past who gave a damn about probation values.
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Sadly the architects of the past 7 years are presiding over current reforms. Similar results are almost inevitable.
Sadly the architects of the past 7 years are presiding over current reforms. Similar results are almost inevitable.
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Sad to say but the managers, directors & other collaborators of HMPPS see this carping as unfair demonisation, as envy and an intransigent refusal to 'modernise'.
They have no understanding that they might be misguided or otherwise just plain wrong. They are the 'excellent leaders', the 'usual suspects', the passive-aggressive complicit crew who, if there's ever a problem say "I'm just doing as I'm told" but they are quicker yet to exploit every situation to their own personal advantage and they know exactly who to align with, who to protect - and when. They adapt far more efficiently than a chameleon with go-faster stripes.
They have a skill set that is, in my humble opinion, not suited to a probation environment. It may serve them well in a kill-or-be-killed corporate organisation or the lickspittle civil service structure. But probation was (past tense noted) about enabling, understanding, developing, bringing-on, learning, embracing ideas, nurturing; and that was just how staff were treated. It was, at its best, an environment where best practice was rife, where compassion was acceptable and ego could be set aside.
The culture of 'fuck you I'm alright' - a cultural trope that was vigorously challenged by probation staff in the past - is now well-established, is endemic throughout the upper echelons, and is mimicked/aspired to.
Sad to say but the managers, directors & other collaborators of HMPPS see this carping as unfair demonisation, as envy and an intransigent refusal to 'modernise'.
They have no understanding that they might be misguided or otherwise just plain wrong. They are the 'excellent leaders', the 'usual suspects', the passive-aggressive complicit crew who, if there's ever a problem say "I'm just doing as I'm told" but they are quicker yet to exploit every situation to their own personal advantage and they know exactly who to align with, who to protect - and when. They adapt far more efficiently than a chameleon with go-faster stripes.
They have a skill set that is, in my humble opinion, not suited to a probation environment. It may serve them well in a kill-or-be-killed corporate organisation or the lickspittle civil service structure. But probation was (past tense noted) about enabling, understanding, developing, bringing-on, learning, embracing ideas, nurturing; and that was just how staff were treated. It was, at its best, an environment where best practice was rife, where compassion was acceptable and ego could be set aside.
The culture of 'fuck you I'm alright' - a cultural trope that was vigorously challenged by probation staff in the past - is now well-established, is endemic throughout the upper echelons, and is mimicked/aspired to.
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Agree it's become a nasty environment. You don't get the best out of staff by treating them as disposable and killing any assertiveness taken as a lack of compliance. Senior managers have no idea what the front line is like nor do they care. Just keep piling on the pressure with the attitude if you don't like it leave. It's a joke and affecting people's physical and mental health but what do they care with their ridiculous bonuses and power they wield like a rod over us. Listen to how unhappy your staff are ffs.
Agree it's become a nasty environment. You don't get the best out of staff by treating them as disposable and killing any assertiveness taken as a lack of compliance. Senior managers have no idea what the front line is like nor do they care. Just keep piling on the pressure with the attitude if you don't like it leave. It's a joke and affecting people's physical and mental health but what do they care with their ridiculous bonuses and power they wield like a rod over us. Listen to how unhappy your staff are ffs.
From the general middle management.
ReplyDelete1 Staff need to accept they work for a living. 2 in the workplace spo middle managers have daily control. 3 the workplace is not a democratic process. 4 staff do as their told. 5 staff work to limits we set which are flexible. 6 managers cannot be challenged . 7 Managers are always right as they have control. 8 Acos always back mangers up to ensure the are right. 9 morale is not a managerial issue. 10 if you cannot manage leave. Aco priority list to come.
Far too many in management have been able to climb the greasy pole so damn quickly they have little or no experience of probation frontline work.
ReplyDeleteTheir primary concern now is the protection and consolidation of their own positions not the workforce they manage.
It's two years old, but this BBC article I feel is pretty appropriate to post on today's blog.
DeleteI think the issues it highlights are pretty near the mark, and perhaps in the interest of fairness to those that are in managerial roles it deserves a quick read. Perhaps?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-46197019
'Getafix
The management help those who help themselves. It's pun of course. They only help their own.
DeleteWould you ever hire an accountant with no bookkeeping training? How about a doctor who hadn't been to medical school? asks author Alison Green, and the creator of the workplace advice column Ask a Manager.
DeleteWe tend to agree that most skilled jobs require some amount of formal training - and yet for one of the jobs that is most key to companies' success, we frequently throw people in with no training at all: managing.
Many, many people get promoted into management jobs because they were good at something else. They were a good engineer or a good fundraiser, and so they're asked to manage engineers or fundraisers.
The problem is, the skills that it takes to manage people well are often a completely different skill set from whatever work the person was doing previously.
You have to know how to set clear expectations, how to delegate responsibilities, how to check in on work as it progresses without micromanaging or being overly hands-off, how to hire great people and develop them, how to give feedback, how to have difficult conversations about performance problems and other tricky topics, how to hold people accountable without being a jerk, how to resolve conflict - the list goes on and on.
It's hard work, and it doesn't come naturally to most people - which is why most of us make a ton of mistakes as we're learning.
And it's not that companies never provide any support. Some managers get sent to one- or two-day management training courses, where they're supposed to learn the basics. But a one- or two-day class just gets your feet wet; it shouldn't be the entirety of the support that new managers get - and yet it often is.
Other managers don't even get a class; they're just thrown in and left to wing it, with little guidance or support from above.
No surprise, then, that there are loads of terrible managers out there:
Managers who assign work without being clear about what they want, and who frustrate their staff when they keep sending it back for revisions, without having ever laid out a clear vision in the first place.
Managers who won't address problems and let serious issues fester on their teams for months or even years because they want to avoid awkward conversations.
Managers who who treat employees like wayward children.
Weak managers, rude managers, waffling managers, tyrannical managers - there are so many different varieties of managerial incompetence.
And yet the quality of managers has a direct impact on a company's bottom line - as well as on its ability to attract and retain great employees and to get the best results from them while they have them.
DeleteBad managers drive away good people, and hold teams back from achieving what they otherwise could. So why, then, don't organizations put more of an emphasis on training new managers in how to do their jobs?
Part of the answer is that employers simply don't value management enough as a skill of its own. They see someone who's good at their job function and assume they'll be good at managing people who do that job function too.
They don't sufficiently appreciate the skills it takes to make the transition to managing. Part of it, too, is tradition - if you're a manager who didn't get much training and had to figure it out on your own, it's easy to think that that's just how it works and others can do it too.
And part of the explanation is time and money - it takes resources to train people to learn a new and complicated skill. Learning to manage isn't a short process and one class isn't going to do it - it's a long, ongoing process of learning, and it takes continuous support from more experienced managers who can mentor newer managers and weigh in and advise when new and complicated challenges come up, as they inevitably will.
Employers would do well to consider pairing new managers with more experienced colleagues - but doing that means valuing management as a skill in the first place. And until we do that, it's certain that bad managers will continue to flourish.
To complement Getafix's post
ReplyDeleteFor a couple of decades at least the UK has been in the grip of a nepotism-based management culture, modelled by a succession of UK governments, where rewards & responsibilities are not necessarily handed to the right people. Here's today's example:
"The bill for private consultants hired by the government to help combat the coronavirus pandemic has climbed to £175m... The government has bought consulting services from almost 90 different companies... Disclosed spending on consultants has risen by £65m since the end of August...
The latest figures emerged in the same week it was revealed that executives at Boston Consulting Group, the fourth biggest recipient of coronavirus consulting contracts, were being paid as much as £6,250 a day to work on the struggling NHS test-and-trace system.
The government’s reliance on expensive management consultants has come under scrutiny during the pandemic. Lord Agnew, the Cabinet Office and Treasury minister, last month said the civil service had been infantilised by an unacceptable reliance on consultants."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/16/uk-government-spending-on-covid-consultancy-contracts-rises-to-pounds-175m-investigation
And these are just the covid-related contracts that have been disclosed. There are many £millions' worth of undisclosed, commercially-sensitive contracts across all aspects of government that we aren't being told about.
UK over-a-barrel-govt covid-19 data breaking news:
ReplyDelete"We are launching a new version of the dashboard. We welcome your feedback on the experimental release of the new service."
Again & again & again & again...
Management at its best..
Deletehttps://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/serco-handed-test-and-trace-contract-with-no-penalties-for-poor-performance/15/10/
Serco shares jump almost 20% as profits soar from test and trace contract.
"DOMINIC Cummings and his family ARE liable to pay council tax on a further two properties at their North-East farm, but charges will NOT be backdated to when they were built.
ReplyDeleteIt means that years of unpaid taxes, potentially between £30,000 and £50,000, on two homes built in breach of planning laws will be written off.
Instead, new charges for the properties on the outskirts of Durham will come into effect from the start of this month following an investigation by the Valuation Agency Office.
Durham County Councillor John Shuttleworth said: “They should have informed them (the authorities) and it should have been checked.
“If it was anybody else, they would be getting charged and it would be backdated, or they would be getting taken to court.
“It just proves there is two sets of rules, one for them and another for everyone else. It is not right.
“We have to abide by the law and it we don’t you get put in prison or you get fined. They are just above it.”
Mr Cummings, who built his cottage on the farm with his father in 2002, and was listed as one of the property owners... It is understood the council tax will now have to be paid on Dominic Cummings’ band A cottage, and his sister’s band C family home."
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18790597.council-tax-payable-dominic-cummings-lockdown-cottage/
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/18793683.broke-dominic-cummings-council-tax-story---timeline-events/
"Mr Cummings had previously told journalists that the "cottage" he stayed in was "sort of concrete blocks" ... enforcement action could simply not be taken because changes were made to the North Lodge cottage too long ago... the unauthorised change of use for the building is now immune from action by the planning authority but that it may still be liable for council tax... Dominic Cummings and his family would in fact be liable to pay council tax on a further two properties at their North-East farm, but charges would not be backdated to when they were built... this meant that years of unpaid taxes, potentially between £30,000 and £50,000, on the two homes built in breach of planning laws would in fact be written off."
A tongue-in-cheek crowdfunding page has been set up for Dominic Cummings after his family were ordered to pay council tax on the bolthole he escaped to during his controversial trip to Durham at the height of lockdown.
DeleteMr Cummings, who earns between £95,000 and £99,999 a year as a special advisor to Boris Johnson, co-owns the properties at North Lodge, just off the A167
500 a day he can afford the bill the tosser.
Delete“It just proves there is two sets of rules, one for them and another for everyone else. It is not right.
ReplyDeleteThere are two themes on today’s blog, and this quote successfully merges them.
All of my working life, 40+ years now, our ‘leaders,’ in the workplace, in politics, Kinnock, Blair etc. and in the trades unions, have banged on about complying with the law whilst the upper echelons do exactly as they please.
During the big industrial unrest’s which followed the miners strike, one of the big print unions was ‘sequestered,’ and had £6m of assets seized for breaching a Tory law. Meanwhile, Dame Shirley Porter legged it to Israel to avoid paying penalties imposed for gerrymandering and managed to eventually pay a small percentage 16 years later.
I can think of countless other examples where our ‘leaders,’ have sole out and been rewarded with titles and safe seats. I have said on countless occasions, these people are not your friends.
Why does the law only apply to working people and their organisations?
Simple, because the law is not neutral and will never come down on the side of workers when the bosses and/ or the states vested interests are at stake
Merseyside Labour Council tier 3 gyms closed and fined.
ReplyDeleteLancashire Conservative Council tier 3 gyms stay open.
It will all end in tears.
And Johnson is having December off. It has been made clear that open theatre is running snow White and bojo idiot is playing dopey his natural role.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting decision that might offer a solution to the discrimination faced by other minority groups seeking housing :
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/16/uk-supreme-court-backs-housing-charitys-jewish-only-rule
And so Johnson & his Brexiteers have manipulated, massaged and generally manhandled the UK into the no-deal scenario they always wanted, whilst blaming the EU for the whole clusterfuck:
ReplyDelete"For whatever reason it is clear from the summit that after 45 years of membership they are not willing - unless there is some fundamental change of approach - to offer this country the same terms as Canada."
Errr... "after 45 years of membership ***THEY*** ARE NOT WILLING..." ???
And who wanted to leave???
"Boris Johnson has said that, unless there is a "fundamental change of approach" from the EU, Britain is prepared to move to trading on World Trade Organisation rules when the Brexit transition period ends.
The PM said: "I have concluded we should get ready for 1 January with arrangements more like Australia's based on simple principles of global free trade.
"So now is the time for our businesses to get ready, and for hauliers to get ready, and for travellers to get ready.
"And so with high hearts and complete confidence we will prepare to embrace the alternative." "
BBC & others
DeleteAs with everything that Johnson utters, his own duplicitousness catches him out every time - not that he knows it or gives a fig.
He swapped sides to cheerlead the Brexit brigade, told lie after lie after lie about the reasons, the benefits & the assurances. Now its all the EU's fault. But he has what he always wanted - a bullies charter which will enrich a few of his favoured chums. The rest of the UK can go hang.
Similarly his mishandling of the pandemic - and the truth - has led the UK into a covid cul-de-sac. He wanted to have UK-wide control & despised the different stratgies implemented by other nations within the UK (because they were generally more effective & had more approval than his bungling efforts). Now he says he wants control to be regional, to be locally targetted, that a nationally imposed solution is not possible.
How is his little brain wired such that he can perform such acrobatics without batting an eye?
The contradictions are legion; the cognitive dissonance he and those around him have to deal with must be heartbreaking.
He is not someone who should be running a country. I doubt he could cope with running a bath.