The civil service’s new commercial chief, Gareth Rhys Williams, has confirmed key details of a major overhaul of the way Whitehall employs its most senior commercial staff.
As CSW reported this week, commercial leaders working at Grade 6 and above are set to be moved over to a new Government Commercial Organisation housed in the Cabinet Office.
Staff making the leap will first have to gain a professional accreditation overseen by the GCO, but will then be employed centrally and will be in line for better pay and terms.
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They will be effectively loaned back to departments for one-to-five year stints, with the Government Commercial Organisation charging departments for the administrative costs of the service and overseeing career development, training and HR for key commercial staff.
Rhys Williams, who was appointed to the new role of Government Chief Commercial Officer earlier this year, has now given the first official public confirmation of key elements of the new structure – and sought to reassure staff that GCO’s aim is not to rival existing commercial expertise.
“The GCO is a subset of the people in the overall Commercial Function and will bring together all staff at Grade 6 and above from across the civil service,” Rhys Williams wrote on the official civil service blog.
“They will be paid centrally, which will also help build a sense of functional identity, but they will still work and be based in their departments.
“This is no easy feat, but it is crucial to building the stature of the commercial profession within the civil service, and in turn the capability of the people who staff the function. It’s important to underline that the function works in addition to the departments, it‘s not an alternative.”
The latest changes to the structure of the commercial profession come after a series of warnings from MPs on the public accounts committee and the National Audit Office spending watchdog about the civil service’s ability to deal effectively with private sector suppliers.
"It’s important to underline that the function works in addition to the departments, it‘s not an alternative" – Government chief commercial officer Gareth Rhys Williams
A recent PAC report said government commercial roles were still "not attractive enough" to outsiders, warning that some departments have reported vacancy and interim rates of 15% among commercial jobs, with key senior-level posts "still unfilled".
Rhys Williams, who joined the civil service after stints as chief executive of hygiene services firm PHS Group and engineering business Charter International, said he had been struck by the “sheer scale” at which the public sector operates since taking up post.
“What is also clear is that there are real opportunities to make huge savings for taxpayers, and improvements in service levels, through better-designed contract negotiation and ongoing management,” he added.
And the commercial chief said he was “unapologetic” about his aim of making the Government Commercial Function “the best commercial function in the UK”, something he said could only be done by “maximising value on goods and services bought by government” and “offering competitive pay and rewards and making it clearer what an exciting place to work this is”.
Although CSW understands that the Cabinet Office has yet to finalise the exact terms that senior staff who gain accreditation to join the new GCO will be working on, documents show it is considering offering higher base pay, higher performance-related pay and new pension arrangements, with lower contributions from officials themselves.
As well as the shake-up at the centre of government, departments themselves have been busy preparing new “Commercial Blueprints” in conjunction with the Cabinet Office, with the documents expected to set out in detail how each department will bolster its own commercial skills.
Rhys Williams confirmed in his blog that the Blueprints exercise was likely to be done and dusted “by late summer”.