HMRC Staff Survey 2011

Andy Lord, Branch Secretary

Background
HMRC will be launching the annual staff survey on Monday, 26 September.  The decision of conference this year was that support for the survey should be withdrawn on the basis that staff were being pressurised into filling in the survey, to fill it in in a particular way, and that staff survey results were being used to inform departmental decisions about its future presence in specific locations.  This paper outlines the current position in relation to conference policy and recent developments in the department. 

PCS issues with the staff survey
The key issue arising from conference this year, prompted by singularly unhelpful statements from senior members of HMRC on the Hotseat forum, was essentially that HMRC was using the staff survey results to determine staff engagement on an office by office basis and subsequently using this information on which to base decisions about office closures.  In addition, members reported that they were coming under undue pressure to complete the survey.  On 21 April the CEO issued a statement to all staff which merely compounded the issue and if anything made matters worse.

On 17 May the CEO issued a second statement to all staff on the subject in which she stated that:  “I think it is important to make absolutely clear that we have never used People Survey scores as a factor in deciding which offices will close, nor will any future People Survey results be a factor in any difficult decisions on where we locate our staff and services.” 

Whilst this statement from Lesley Strathie was generally helpful, it came too late to inform any of the debate at group conference.  In any event we remained concerned that subsequent reports from branches suggested that the view that staff engagement would be a factor in determining which offices were to stay open was still being conveyed to staff in some areas by some managers.  It is these key concerns that have formed the basis of our ongoing representations to the department. 

Agreement on staff survey
Branches will be aware that our colleagues in ARC (FDA) have had their own issues with the survey, as reported in BB/306/11.  ARC successfully balloted their members - on a 68% turnout and 86% YES vote - over the summer on their willingness to withdraw support for the survey.  An agreement with HMRC has now been reached which brings an end to their specific dispute.  The terms of this agreement, which were published on the HMRC intranet on 20 September, will apply to the future conduct of HMRC in relation to the staff survey as a whole and will therefore apply to PCS as much as to ARC members.

 From a PCS perspective the fundamental terms of that agreement are that staff will not be pressurised into taking part in the survey or to answer staff survey questions in a certain way, nor given the impression that completion of the survey is mandatory or insist on evidence that people have completed the survey.  The survey data, under the terms of the agreement, will not be used for anything other than improving working life in HMRC nor will the results be used to blame managers or teams where results are low. 

The agreement explicitly states that the survey results will not be used when considering office closures, team moves or anything that can be construed as negative.  HMRC has committed to work with the unions to achieve consensus on action plans at HMRC and at line of business level.  To underpin these commitments the department, with both PCS and ARC, will appoint an external expert to overview the implementation of these commitments. 

Current position
There is clearly some work to be done to determine how PCS negotiators now engage in further discussions and continue to influence the process, but taken as a whole the agreement, and the supporting statements from HMRC, are helpful in moving towards meeting our concerns.

We also recognise that the agreement and the statements from HMRC have gone some way to restoring the trust that members expect to have when completing the survey. On this basis we are more confident that we will be able to rebuild the necessary trust required for our members to be able to complete the survey in future years. For this year’s survey, however, we will be following group policy and we would ask therefore, that PCS members are reminded of the resolutions carried from conference. Members are accordingly to be advised not to complete the survey this year.

Completion of the survey is in any event voluntary and no member should feel pressured into filling in the survey - indeed any concerns in this regard should be reported immediately to group office. We would welcome feedback from branches on the issues raised in this circular and ideally ahead of the GEC on the 5 October. Please therefore send any comments to Marion@pcs.org.uk