As members will be aware, the union has for some time been trying to obtain the results of the SPVA Staff Survey, not least because we had reasons to believe it contained evidence of serious and ongoing health & safety issues. I can now report that we were given sight of the data on the afternoon of the 4th of June, too short a period to do any form of in-depth analysis, and so this represents our first impression of the findings.First, it must be made clear that though the TU side were not at all happy about the form, method and content of the survey questions from the outset, we will still analyse the results in what we consider to be a professional, fair and balanced way. To that end, we will begin with some the most significant positives to be gleaned from them.
Over 82% of all staff, civilian, military and EDS are proud that their work supports the Armed Forces and Veterans.
Similarly, over 80% of all staff feel they are treated with fairness and respect from their colleagues, and;
Over 80% of all staff feel they are treated with fairness and respect by their line managers.
In addition, over 80% of all staff feel they are offered the opportunity to work flexibly where their jobs allow.
We are pleased to see that staff and line managers work in an environment of mutual fairness and respect, where they are proud to support the customer, and where family friendly policies, hard won by the unions over the years, allow staff the opportunity to adjust their work life balance by working flexibly.
Now to the negatives, and we will begin with a brief look at the results appertaining to AFPAA/VA merger.
On average only about a quarter of staff believe that people in SPVA are responding positively to the merger.
And even less believe that senior management have communicated openly and honestly about the changes associated with the merger.
Significantly less than 20% of all staff feel that senior management is capitalising on the opportunities offered by the merger to improve the way SPVA operates. But as only 25% of senior management think so themselves, this is hardly a surprising finding, if still worrying!
These results indicate to us that the merger has been less than effective. Perhaps contributing to those feelings indicated are the fact that:
Only about a third of all staff believes that communications within SPVA are effective, though 65% of senior management believe otherwise?
With only around 30% believing everyone in SPVA is working towards a common goal, the oft sang hymn on ‘partnership’ seems to be little off key, if not downright flat!
That only around 20% of staff thinks that people in SPVA rarely look for someone to blame when things go wrong, indicates a prevalent blame culture,
And even less believe that changes to business processes and/or technology are well managed within SPVA, despite the evident focus of persons and resources that have been toiling on this area for many a moon.
These results indicate that despite ours being a process driven, technology supported business, at its heart SPVA senior management is poor at managing and implementing change, quick to blame personnel for failings arising from poor management and just plain wrong in their fundamental understanding about how to communicate almost anything of importance to their staff. We believe management’s continual failure to engage in real and meaningful consultation with the TU side is a symptom of this attitude.
But overriding all those concerns we must now direct our attention to the most significant results of the survey overall.
· 7.5% of all staff say they have been the victim of bullying or harassment within the last twelve months, a figure that suggests that staff numbered in excess of a hundred are experiencing unacceptable behaviours from some persons around them, and possibly linked to this is;
· That 25% of all staff say that stress at work has affected their health in the last 12 months. This means that there are many hundreds of people in this organisation whose quality of life and indeed life expectancy is being directly affected by what is happening in the workplace.
Given the results previously discussed, it seems evident that the sources of the reported bullying, harassment and indeed stress do not in most cases originate from colleagues, line managers or indeed the clients we support. No, the root cause underlying this alarming data is clearly a blame culture that seeks to distract and disguise from, let’s face it, poor management, inadequate communications and tense partner/supplier relationships. The making of scapegoats, be they individuals or groups, has not been a recommended management tool since Roman times and the bad old days of the Decimation. We firmly believe the results of this survey clearly indicates there needs to be a sea change in the management style of SPVA.
Our hopes have been raised in that we are told that DCSC-MS-AD, absolutely welcomes TUS contribution in the development of meaningful action plans and seeks to ensure that effective consultation follows the publication of the survey results. We will keep members informed of this progress, and will offer further detailed analysis of the findings as time allows.
