As the States prepares for what is being termed the ‘recovery phase’ of the public sector change programme, chief executive Charlie Parker said that the ‘hard work’ of the past 12 months would soon begin to bear fruit.
And with work on transforming the middle-management level of departments now well under way following consultation with staff, he said that by the spring ‘some people will feel more secure; for some it will be a lot more secure’.
He added: ‘People will know what their organisational picture is, what their jobs are.’
Mr Parker – who is the subject of today’s Saturday Interview in the JEP – has recently published his second six-month progress report.
In it he says there is still a ‘hard slog’ ahead but that significant progress has been made.
The top level of the organisation has been completely transformed over the past 12 months, he explains, with a new structure in place led by eight directors general directly under Mr Parker.
And if the ongoing pay disputes with staff can be worked out, which Mr Parker says he is confident they can, and the new operating model currently being worked on put in place, then the organisation can then ‘start to move forward’.
However, the hard work will not stop there and Mr Parker has previously said that there are still efficiencies to be made, although these will not necessarily mean job losses in all cases.
The efficiencies include reforming areas where departments have traditionally overlapped, for example by each having their own HR departments and finance teams.
In his six-month report, Mr Parker says: ‘The past year has been one in which the States of Jersey has begun its journey of change, beginning with stabilising the organisation to prevent any further deterioration of the systems, processes, operations and services.
‘Next year [2019], we move from stabilisation into recovery, as the changes we have begun to make begin to bear fruit. It is, and will continue to be, hard work and a hard slog, but no large organisation that goes through significant and necessary change can achieve this without a period of upheaval, uncertainty and pain, before the recovery, repositioning and modernisation of the Island’s public services that follows.’
