Following the news that Jersey business ‘fixer’ Kevin Keen has been drafted in to make the States more efficient and save millions of pounds for the taxpayer, the political party have raised concerns about his appointment.
They say that Mr Keen, who is to be paid £650 a day in his new role, has a proven track record of laying people off, reducing terms and conditions and cutting services.
- Educated at St Helier Boys School
- Trained at accountancy firm Alex Picot
- Joined Le Riches in 1985 as an accountant, worked up to finance director and then head of supermarket business.
- Moved to Jersey Dairy in 2003
- Interim chief executive of Visit Jersey between 2014 and 2015
- Joined Jersey Post as chief executive in 2011
- Finance director of the Jersey Battle of Flowers since 2007
- Married 32 years, to Christine and has three grown-up daughters
- Non-work interests old motorcycles and cars
Reform Jersey’s Deputy Geoff Southern said: ‘It’s not rocket science. Sack staff, reduce wages, privatise or outsource to reduce conditions.
‘The end result has always been reductions in the level of service, both in quantity and quality.’
The Deputy went on to cite Mr Keen’s previous roles in both private and public sectors, most recently overseeing the restructuring of Jersey Tourism into a new organisation, Visit Jersey, as evidence of his methods.
‘The “guru” chosen to deliver these cuts, Mr Keen, has a track record in the private sector which needs scrutiny,’ said Deputy Southern. ‘As chief executive officer of Jersey Dairy, our guru’s response to cash-flow problems was to scrap home deliveries and school milk and make redundant more than a dozen milkmen.
‘Then he moved on to Jersey Water, where he saved costs through sacking the drain-digging team and replacing their long-serving workers with cheaper ones on much reduced terms and conditions.’
He added that during Mr Keen’s time at Jersey Post, workers were made to reapply for their jobs with a reduced workforce on lower pay and eroded terms and conditions, with a cut in services being the result.
‘Most recently we have seen Mr Keen use his methods on the Tourism Department, and yet again we see 18 States employees laid off,’ he said. ‘Not one has been re-engaged with reduced terms and conditions on the new Visit Jersey team.’
‘Of course it will not be the likes of Mr Keen, on £650 per day, who will suffer from this new round of cuts. It will be the most vulnerable people in our society.
‘We have already seen the start of this process with the introduction of sanctions against those with a disability and the scrapping of widows’ pensions.
‘To the poor, to the sick and to the elderly in Jersey, I say: “Be afraid. Be very afraid”.’
- Reform Jersey was formed in 2012 when the States voted to establish a commission looking at electoral reform. The group was founded by a group of ordinary residents to campaign for a more democratic system and to prepare for the electoral reform referendum of 2013.
- In March 2014 the groups chairman, Sam Mézec, was elected as a States Deputy in a by-election. With other States Members keen to be on board, it was decided that Reform Jersey would reconstitute itself into an official political party.
- The party was officially recognised as Jersey’s only political party in July 2014.
- In Jersey’s first general election in October 2014 the party put up eight candidates, but only three Deputies Sam Mezec, Geoff Southern and Montfort Tadier, all of whom were already sitting States Members were re-elected.
- In September, in the lead up to that election, the then Deputy Nick Le Cornu was expelled from Reform Jersey after posting a tweet that appeared to imply that St Peter Deputy Kristina Moore was faking her struggle with cancer or her recovery from the illness.
- Reform Jersey say that they value democracy, equality, social and economic justice, strong communities, trade unions, the environment and human rights.
- The partys current chairman and leader is Deputy Sam Mézec, while Deputy Geoff Southern is vice chairman, Rosie Baker is secretary and David Eves is treasurer.
- Earlier this month the party claimed that it was the real opposition in the States, after it emerged that all but one question due to be put to ministers in the Assembly that week was from its members.
Former JEP business editor Christine Herbert spoke to Kevin Keen after his appointment last summer to oversee Visit Jersey – the replacement company for Jersey Tourism.
WHAT do you call a man who takes on failing businesses and puts them back on track?
A troubleshooter?
A hatchet man?
No, certainly not a hatchet man – Kevin Keen is far too genial for that.
In his role at Visit Jersey, Mr Keen took on possibly the biggest challenge of his 40-year career, which has already spanned accountancy, retail (Le Riches), agriculture (Jersey Dairy) and, most recently, Jersey Post.
‘It’s odd, because according to one of those psychometric tests, I’m someone who hates change,’ he remarks, settling into one of the low chairs in the hotel foyer. ‘I actually like to do things my own way. I know it sounds soft, but I do like a cause, not just a challenge – something I can put my heart into.’
Jersey Dairy, for example, was in a bit of a pickle before he came along (‘I was sorry to see it in such a mess’), and Jersey Post was much the same.
Three years on, he says, the Island’s postal service is making a profit, customers are happy, staff are happy.
‘At the start, they said people weren’t writing letters anymore and we were all doomed – but the number of parcels was growing. It’s about having a positive attitude.’
So why move on now?
‘I think in these jobs, it is not right for the business to stay too long. I try to get the business stable and find a good person to take over.
‘I thought I’d probably have the summer off – I’ve been working for 40 years.’
But then a friend working on the Visit Jersey report asked him what he thought of the idea.
‘I sort of proposed myself,’ he explained. ‘It needs someone to get the job done. It isn’t fair to the staff or the industry to keep them waiting around.
‘I think I’m good at listening, understanding people’s concerns and finding a way through.’
It’s fair to say that disbanding a long-established government department and restructuring it as a private enterprise would not be everyone’s cup of tea, particularly as job changes are likely to be on the cards.
‘I’ve been lucky enough to get such interesting projects. I can be my own boss, run my own business, work with some nice people. I’m really lucky.’
So how does he go about any new task?
‘I normally try to listen first. I have talked to people in the department already. I try to understand their concerns, and I know that they will have something valuable to add. ‘Then I look at the numbers and put down some ideas and look at what the board have done already. It really isn’t rocket science.’
WITH an ageing population and a structural deficit looming, Jersey cannot afford an inefficient and culturally complacent public sector.
Senator Alan Maclean and his ministerial colleagues know it, as do thousands of Islanders in the private sector who have witnessed the effect of recession on the companies they work for.
Efficiencies are desperately needed across departments to help fill the hole in States finances.
The Treasury Minister is now seeking to implement a modernisation agenda that has been his preoccupation for years.
He wants to see a cost-effective public sector that can help Jersey stay competitive, attract business, control spending and keep taxes low.
But will Senator Maclean be the irresistible force of reform which has so far been absent from efforts to budge a monolithic bureaucracy?
Others have tried and failed.
Mark Sinclair, who was brought in from the UK as head of States human resources to overhaul the public sector, threw in the towel after two years in 2013, his efforts thwarted at every level by those with an interest in derailing efficiencies.
Now it is Kevin Keen’s turn.
In a letter to the JEP in 2009, he said that a public sector pay freeze was ‘entirely proportionate and probably generous in the light of the economic problems currently facing Jersey’. He suggested that ‘a substantial reduction in the cost of the public sector workforce was needed’ and that workers ‘were lucky they were not facing a pay cut or redundancies’.
If he was cast as would-be hatchet man then, he has since shown such a label would be a misnomer. At Jersey Post, Mr Keen proved to be a reformer capable of taking his workforce with him through difficult and fundamental change.
He and Senator Maclean have the will to tackle the deeply divisive issues of pay and performance management in the States sector.
Those who fail to meet performance criteria can no longer be moved sideways, retaining generous salaries and gilded pension packets.
An event last year showcasing public sector innovation revealed an appetite within the States to break through outdated cultural norms and embrace new ways of doing and thinking.
It hinted at the potential of an energetic and enthusiastic can-do States sector focused on delivering excellent public services. Some will try to sabotage the reformers, but Jersey cannot afford to let the dinosaurs of a self-serving bureaucracy win this time around.
