New civil service performance management rules are about more than saving money

The government has published an updated version of the Performance management framework for the Senior Civil Service, a document publicly available since 2012 but one which rarely makes news. Last week, however, the government briefed that top civil servants could “face the sack if they fail to find savings”, and the new rules do nudge in that direction. More welcome, however, is the revised framework’s potential to raise the floor on performance management across the civil service.

Focusing only on efficiency savings misses the point

The new framework prescribes minimum standards for senior civil servants in four different areas: efficiency and value for money, people and line management, civil service leadership, and diversity and inclusion. A senior civil servant who fails to meet these basic standards will be deemed underperforming, regardless of their success elsewhere. Continual underperformance could – eventually – lead to dismissal.

Requiring civil servants to spend public money carefully is not new. Last year’s framework mandated an objective on efficiency – albeit in less detail – which would, in theory and over time, lead to poor performance management and possibly, ultimately, dismissal if it were missed. This year’s framework is more prescriptive, but it still takes a broad-brush approach. There are no figures, no timescales, and the requirement is to seek, rather than to find, efficiencies. The ask has been fleshed out, but it hasn’t really changed.

What has changed is that this ask – and three others – are now requirements. As minimum standards, they have some potential teeth. Failing any one of them for six months would automatically put a senior civil servant on a ‘performance development plan’ and rule them out of in-year financial awards, regardless of how well they are doing elsewhere.

There might not be dismissals, but the framework will change incentives 

It seems unlikely that many – or any – people will actually be dismissed for failing to meet these targets. The standards are broad, so it’s difficult to prove that someone has failed to meet them, and the path from failure to dismissal remains lengthy. But that doesn’t mean the new rules won’t work. Realistic threat of dismissal isn’t the only route to change. By articulating the standards, and by making them the absolute minimum required of all senior civil servants, the government is sending a very clear signal: basic good management – of money and people – is non-negotiable. 

Last year, for example, senior civil servants were asked to think about how they would get their teams to deliver. This year, they are being told that they can only succeed in their roles if they demonstrate active leadership and management and take responsibility for culture and capabilities.

Again, the actual ask has not changed much. But where some civil servants might previously have been able to brush inadequate people management under the carpet of other successes, they will now be required to confront it head-on. The government has, in a small but meaningful way, changed the incentives. It has created, if not yet raised, a bar.

Civil servants need better tools to improve performance management 

Civil servants still do not have the tools they need to properly manage performance in their teams. It is too hard to take action on under-performing staff, and too easy for those staff to bounce from one role to another. There are some tangible improvements to the civil service that would help, including  mandatory performance management training and giving hiring managers access to previous performance appraisals. Right now, however, it is too easy for civil servants to ignore poor performance. 

Until it is easier to tackle poor performance, and where necessary dismiss poor performers, raising performance across the board is a task that civil servants are being asked to do with one hand tied behind their back. But by making it a minimum standard the government is requiring senior civil servants to take performance management more seriously, and reducing the incentives to overlook it. This won’t be enough to solve the problem, but it sets a standard and should be welcomed.