Enforcement & Compliance Vacancy Filling - Lessons Learned

Andy Lord, Branch Secretary

Background

PCS negotiators in Enforcement and Compliance (E&C) canvassed and collated feedback via BB442/11, which has been passed to the Official Side in E&C, Personal Tax and the People Function involved in the vacancy filling. Having seen the feedback all parties on the Official Side (OS) are aware of the feelings of members and have committed to learn lessons from what has gone wrong in this exercise and take action to correct what has occurred.

The broad themes that emerged from the examination of the processes were;

• The planning and implementation were difficult due to the number of jobs being advertised.
  
• There were a number of systemic issues connected with the Civil service beta site. These are being worked through with the site administrators to iron out these problems. 
  
• Sifting and Interviews – many people have worked very hard but were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the exercise - there is an admission that mistakes have been made  - such as asking people to interview who had not cleared the sift then withdrawing the invitation  - some problems were simply human error which is understandable when trying to coordinate so many communications together. There is also a broad recognition that more could have been done in terms of sift parameters – was the bar set too high; equality issues – where it was not clear when interviews would be held and people were not given an interview under the guaranteed interview scheme; 

      But the most negative impact that has become apparent from feedback is the delay in getting information to people – members have found it hard to accept that they have a specific length of time to complete and submit an application, but have to wait so long for an outcome. The delays in sending out feedback to unsuccessful candidates have also been questioned by members; hot seat questions have outlined this problem, but no assurances given from management that further vacancies will not be advertised until feedback has been received.

In the very latest in a succession of errors, members have received appointment letters that contain incorrect information due to a misinterpretation of the tax professionalism policy on temporary promotion until accreditation is attained - this is very unfortunate and can only add to the confusion that has been created.

Next steps

Due to the large numbers involved – 7,500 people applying for 1,300 vacancies –the OS and PCS always knew there would be a many disappointed people. However, this disappointment has been compounded by the delays - leading to (rightly or wrongly) a loss of faith in the fairness and equity of the processes. 

It is simply not good enough for the OS to commit to learning the lessons from the mistakes made in this exercise – there has to be some clear and concrete plans that will ensure they are not repeated. There is much more to do and PCS are pressing the Department to plan for and execute future exercises in a far more consistent, co-ordinated and timely manner.

 
Finally, knowing all of the things that have gone awry has not and will not change what has happened – but PCS is doing everything we can to influence the OS so that future vacancy trawls will run more smoothly.