Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
21 Haringey Staff are paid over £100,00 PA , Highest in London
Surprised no response to Haringey Independents report on Haringey Council. Having the Highest number of Staff being paid over a £100,000 per year
Report originated by Tax Payers Alliance Report
Especially as Rate Payers are aware Services are being reduced
Must be coming from All the New Rate Payers that coming online. From all the New builds being built in the Borough
Plus All the Large properties being divided into flats. And Houses into rooms
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dan on
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I didn't say generalise. I was referring to rewarding people who do a good job in a way which is measurable to them, and set against goals for the borough, which IMO are quite easy to measure and carry a HUGE impact.
There are those who are not so good as well. People can improve and the borough can improve and there are ways to do this which create value for everyone.
It's all a ball of wool right now it seems.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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It true that performance related schemes are only as good as what is being measured. In more output related work it’s fairly straightforward (make X widgets to a certain standard every day). As you climb up the greasy pole it gets a lot harder as it’s about outcomes - stuff like reduce health inequalities between the richest and poorest. The measurable goals vary according to what you do and as people do hundreds of different jobs in a big organisation it is either going to be difficult to publish them all or you publish core set of corporate goals that are so nebulous that they become meaningless unless they are related to what individuals do.
it’s also true that managing individual performance can, and does, become subjective. I suppose that’s one of the reasons checks are put in place in the next layers up. If manager Y consistently gives their staff a five star rating and manager Z a one star, it should start ringing bells. That of course assumes that intervention will happen.
There are also real problems with how people see scoring. In my old organisation it went something like
1 - urgent need to improve
2 - adequate
3 - good, fulfils the expectations of the role
4 - occasionally exceeds the expectations of the role
5 - has consistently delivered exceptional work well in excess of expectations
People became fixated on their scores and getting 3, even though it meant you were doing exactly what you were being paid to do, caused tears and tantrums.
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Hi Michael,
I disagree with your statement on measurement protocol. I actually think it's extremely easy to measure and account for outcomes in councils. I work with data of highly skilled employees across the world, which is extremely granular and 100% objective - so for me this is not a reason and the ends don't justify the means.
This scoring is quite old fashioned. There are no goals or measurements. It's opinions along the chain. As we know opinions are affected by all sorts of unconscious things (how you feel today, smells, lighting, etc).
High public sector pay IMO should be linked to measurable objectives and outputs. It's not difficult. I think people want to avoid scrutiny. IMHO this chain to me shows why the pay does not equal the outputs (not just for bad, but also for good). If Haringey was paying the most, it should be seeing the highest improvements (or thereabouts) against set baselines.
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I think that works with well defined outputs but what about an area like social work? You may have 100 clients on your caseload and manage to tick off visits to all 100 of them over the course of a month but what if you make the decision to concentrate on 5 who need far more of your time? Things like well-being are notoriously difficult to measure but important. Metrics too often focus on doing work in a prescribed way but hardly ever on designing services that fit with what people want.
I recall an awful metric set by the government some years ago which was the % of calls to an organisation answered within target time. It ended up being a perverse indicator as it was easy to answer the call and then put the phone down and get a 100% success rate.
Local government doesn’t make stuff, it mostly spends its money mainly on things that are difficult to measure or where the measurement doesn’t actually give a very full picture of the impact work is having. Everything can be measured and the risk is making what is measured the most important thing as targets need to be met. Sometimes the way to do that is not about numbers, how you feel after an interaction is just as important as what that interaction achieved - knowing how to say no and sending someone away feeling satisfied and understanding why is incredibly hard but increasingly what staff in the public sector have to do.
Having said all that I completely agree that staff in senior management roles are completely responsible for the delivery of the staff they are responsible for - it’s called leadership.
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This sounds like an excuse, not a reason. I don't mean any of this personally.
Firstly, this has now become about social workers, rather than exec pay. Secondly I never said anything about making stuff. Data is so much richer than 'making stuff'. That is a taylorist view of productivity right out of the 1970s.
Local authorities have tons of data that is great and not used well. I have seen it. And its not used well. As long as data is handled well and in the interests of the employee (to improve management) and the users/borough, I don't see why this is an issue. We see this in other places, why should local government be so special?
So for SW, I am sure there are data that outline where a case has been handled well and not. That data can be case-case, by social worker, by area, and so on. It can be linked to qualitative outcomes and quantitative. Well-being is not difficult to measure. It's easy to get wrong by working with crap consultants and with a closed mind. Why are goals such a hard thing to aim for?
Sorry Michael, but your statement on leadership feels like invisible hand waving to me.
I support people who do great work and achieve goals being paid more. And I support a happier workplace. And science. And to go full circle, it can be done. IMO, again we come across 100 reasons not to do something (we can't), when the one reason to do it would create more value (We can).
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I’d be interested to know which sector you do work in as that might account for the difference in our experience of the issue. I wasn’t trying to shift away from the issue under discussion - social work was just an example of work and outcomes that are difficult to capture but success or failure in an area like this is exactly how senior staff are, quite rightly, held to account.
Let me give another example (a real one). The success and future of a library was measured, amongst other things, by number of items issued, number of visits, fines collected, those sort of hard outputs. A member of staff I knew at a small library on an estate in central London was a disaster on these hard metrics. That was because he was adept at engaging with teenagers who were at risk of getting involved in crime and gangs. They would talk to him and the time he should have spent doing his “job” was substantially reduced. His annual appraisal would have failed as I doubt that any of his customers would have sat down to do a satisfaction questionnaire. In that case a subjective assessment of his value was completely the right thing to do
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I worked in Local gov for 12 years. I led some world-leading research (that a borough didn't realise was so world leading). Also worked in homelessness for 7 years in 3 boroughs and with centrepoint.
I am well aware of how data in LG is not used to its full potential. Now I run a tech firm that works in many sectors. When I see these kinds of salaries, the anger of the residents, the lack of accountability and the available solutions, the unfairness of good/bad employees and the ROI. It is frustrating.
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Yeah...
These systems also depend on how good the manager is. I.e wheteher they are really neutral or just applying downward pressure on staff. BUt also on how good the emplyee is at playing the game. And then there is POLITICAL interference too and that can have an extremely negative impact in politically controlled breaucracies. So many very, very technically good employees often get sacrificed by these systems becasue they just don't have the emotional intelligence to work those very systems to their own advantage.
And that is where the good leadership and managemnet coomes into play...
In an ideal world they would work but so many other parameters coeinto play for measuring staff performance.
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To some extent I agree with you. Councils have such important tasks to handle, so people should be paid very well if they work well and not if they don't. I don't see why that would be controversial.
It's really not difficult to ensure accountability, agree metrics, set goals, control for external factors, link ROI to pay, and incentivise.
I just feel personally that there's an aversion to scrutiny, which I agree can be somewhat attributable to politics.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Ruggles on
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With Haringey Closing and Out Sourcing so many Services
Where is the need for such high paid Managers , who are running so limited Rate Payer services
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Money on the Majority have Offices in the Civic Centre
From the Vehicles I have seen parked around the Civic with Council Permits
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Latest report just published
Includes some Job holders
https://www.taxpayersalliance.com/town_hall_rich_list_2020?fbclid=I...
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