Recognition of the Operational Delivery profession has changed attitudes to frontline staff. Jon Stone reports
“I’ve always seen myself as an operational delivery professional,” said Sally Evans. And the head of organisational capability at the Office for National Statistics has worked in the civil service for 26 years, she told a Civil Service Live audience in Bristol last month– yet operational delivery was only made a formal civil service profession in 2009. Nearly four years after that change, how have the 250,000-plus civil servants in the group been affected?
Formalising the profession in 2009 was “all about making sure that everyone who sees themselves in that profession gets all of the support they need to be able to do their job – and to be able to do it really well,” Evans explained. That’s a big task, for operational delivery is a behemoth of a profession: encompassing 70% of all civil servants, it clearly has more members than all the other professions put together.
Delivery professionals are “primarily involved in roles that are on the front line,” Evans explained. “We may be face to face, dealing with UK citizens; processing tax returns; or working in a contact centre.” HMRC, as one of the two departments with a big frontline workforce, has provided both of the profession’s leaders: it was first headed up by HMRC chief executive Lesley Strathie – who sadly died in January 2012 – and is now led by director general Ruth Owen, the head of the agency’s personal tax operation.
Asked whether formalisation has made a difference to how she works, Evans was clear: “Massively,” she said. “It really did.” She recounted that at the time of the change, a civil servant from another profession at the Office for National Statistics had seemed agitated, and questioned the value of considering operational delivery as a profession. “‘How can you possibly be a professional when you don’t have a degree?’,” she was asked; and she added that “I’ve always remembered that, because that is what we have to work against. Fortunately, I think over the last four years that [attitude] has really, really gone away.”
What changes were made on the ground as a result of the profession’s formalisation? “One thing we’ve done in the Office for National Statistics is ban the word ‘generalist’,” she explained. “We used to, on the ONS website, list the professions [of our staff], and then we’d pretty much just have the word ‘generalist’. You know – two thousand people: generalist. We produce the statistics: we’re not just ‘generalists’.
Audience members were keen to contribute their experiences, and there seemed to be a general consensus from the operational delivery staff present in the session that being regarded as professionals has made a big difference to their working practices.
One talked about no longer being “poo-poo’d” as “just a generalist” under the new regime. “There are more opportunities,” she explained. Flexibility, and making the profession invaluable to civil service reform, were also themes. “I think operational delivery people are the most flexible and most adaptable,” Evans argued.
“There’s that quote from Darwin: ‘It’s not the most intelligent of the species that survives, but those that are more adaptable to change’,” she concluded. “That actually is one of the key tenets of operational delivery people: they are people who are always prepared to adapt to change.”