The Public Service Sector in the UK and Australia - Essay Example

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF THE MARKETISATION OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT SERVICES WITH REFERENCE TO THE UK AND AUSTRALIA Introduction The public service sector is meant to serve the public. As such it is supposed to be committed to the welfare of the citizens. The public service sector is operated by the government with an aim of providing social services to the people. Unlike the private sector that is owned by individuals, the public sector is more accountable to the people. The money to run the public sector comes from the people and thereof it has to give services that are equally to the tax that is paid by the public. But for along time now, the public sector has been dodged by a lot of controversy. It has been one of the most underperforming sectors in the world. This is not only in the UK or in Australia but all over the world. This has been due to lack of laxity among the public service since they are not accountable to any one. Although they are accountable to the public which employs and pays them, employer in the public sector have for a long time not wakened to this realization. As a result there have been many complains from the public on the way the public sector offers service to them. Many people have been opting for the private sector which is considered more efficient and more responsive to the needs of the people. The private sector is also considered to be more efficient in delivery of service and it is also considered to be more professional. Therefore many people have increasing been regarding the services of the private sector over those of public sector. (National Audit Office, 2004) One of the most inefficient areas of the public service sector has been the area of state enterprise. They have been some of the most nonperforming areas of the government. State owned enterprises have been making losses which mean that it is the tax payer's money that has been funding their operations. As a result, they have been considered as a burden to the state and to the public. Even the most efficient state corporations have been dodged by issues of mismanagement and the use of state resource by the managers of the companies for their own private gains. This has been one of the most contentious issues that have led to the call to have the government take action aimed at making the public sector more efficient in the delivering of services. This has been due to rising government expenditure on some of the corporations which have not been serving the public as required. (Michale 2000, p. 24) There has been also low level of performance by the public service sector that is supposed to offer basic needs to the public. Some sectors like the health sector have not been able to offer to the public the required services. As a result, there have been increased rise of private practitioners in the private health sector who can offer better service. In this regard there has been a realization that some of those practicing in the private sector are also employed in the public sector and therefore they continuously undermine the capability of the public sector to offer services to the public in order to ensure that they attract the public to their private sector practices. (Dobbs 2006, P. 8) In the recent past, the government has come up with move that is aimed at making the public sector more professional and responsive to the needs of people. In this regard the government of the UK and Australia have made steps which are aimed at addressing the weaknesses that have been dragging the public sector. This has been through implementation of various strategies that are aimed at addressing the needs of the public. The government have been involved in some of the widely researched areas which are aimed at collecting data that can help the government address the problems that the public sector has been facing. One of the way in which the government has taken the initiative to deal with the problem in the public sector has been increased privatisation of its service. Since the early 1990s, there has been increased privatisation of most of the public sectors services to the private sector. The government has been working closely with the private sector. Under the practice of privatisation, the government has been offering some of the public services to the private sector where they operate for a profit. The increasing trend has been increased sale of the government stake in the public enterprise to the private enterprises. This has been aimed at changing the performance of these state enterprises and making the management to become more accountable since it is now under the mandate of the private sector. Therefore the increased privatisation of the public sector has been aimed at making the sector more responsive to the needs of the public and at the same time making them self sufficient. (Butcher 2005, p. 21) One of the way in which the public sector failed has been on human resource management issue. This has been one of the most contentious issues in the public service sector. With an aim of ensuring that there is equal access of public resource to all people, the public sector has been offering low salaries and at the same time recruiting not very competent people. The problem of human resource management has been compounded by lack of motivated, competent and committed workforce. This has made it difficult for the public sector to offer quality services to the public. Therefore the government has taken bold steps towards ensuring that the issue of human resource management is well addressed in the public sector. As result there has been increased privatisation of public service employment. This is meant to ensure that the public service gets the most competent workforce and at the same time gets the most committed workforce. There has been many advantages and disadvantage of privatisation of the public service employment. Let us look closely at some of the advantages and disadvantages with reference to the steps that the government of the UK and Australia have taken. (Harris 1999, p. 7) Marketisation of public service employment in UK and Australia The government of both countries have been in the frontline in ensuring that they address the inefficiencies that have been there in the public sector. They have marketized the public service employment in both countries in order to make sure that they can tap the best workforce in the market. The UK government has come up with the Jobcenter Plus which is a government agency that supports people who are of working age from welfare into work and at the same time helps employers to fill the vacancies that hey have. The agency works as a part of the Department for Work and Pensions in the sense that it supports the department aim of prompting opportunities and independence for all people using modern approach which is customer focused services. The agency has many objectives. (JobCenter Plus, 2008) It aims at influencing the efficient supply of human resources in form of labour through promotion of work as the best kind of welfare and by helping the unemployed and those who are not economically inaction to get into active employment in order to develop the economy. The agency also aims at working towards parity in terms of outcomes for all regardless of their ethnic or minority status. It also aims at paying the customer the correct benefit and at the right time in order to protect the benefit system from practices of fraud, error and any form of abuse. The agency also aimed tat providing high quality and demand led service to the employers which will help to fill the job vacancies quickly and in an affective manner by ensuing that they get well prepared and well motivated employees who understand what is expected of them. It also aims at assist those who are faced by barriers to employment to rise up to efficient competition in the labour market and help them to remain in world. In this regard it also aims ate improving the quality, accessibility and delivers of all services to the customer. The agency also aims at ensuring that those who are of working age receive their benefits and fulfil their responsibilities at work. There is also the implementation of the New Deal in the UK. This is a program which was initially targeting the youth 18-24 years old introduced in 1998 and as aimed at reducing unemployment by providing training, subsidized employment and voluntary work to the unemployed. The qualification criteria has been improved to include young people aged 18-24, those aged 25 and above, new deal for lone parents, the disabled which encourage those who are receiving disability benefit to return to work, new deal for those aged 50 and above, new deal for partners and new deal for musicians. In trying to come up with a test time welfare to work programme, there has also been the implementation of the new employment zones. This is a three stage program which offered practical support to get to work if you live in some designated area like Nottingham, Plymouth, Doncaster, and others. There is a personal advisor in the program. In the first state the adviser helps one of identify the kind of work that one would like to do and all the factors involved in the chosen job. In the second stage, one carries out activities as listed on the action play with support from the adviser, and stage three is voluntary option to continue on the employment zone in case one has not found a job. The program is open for hsoe who are aged 25 and above or 18 to 24 who have been receiving jobseeker's allowance fro the last 21 months or if you have participated in the program and never completed in the last 12 months. The program is also open for parents and people getting pension credit. But the above program have been criticized on the fact that there is still very high rate of unemployment in the age category as most of them have left the region in rural areas to seek education in urban areas. In most of these zones, the unemployed are in the age category of 30-50 years. On the other hand the Australian government has come up with the Australian Job search which is an initiate of the Australian government. It is offers various vacancies that are offered by the government departments and at the same time link employers to job searchers. The Jobsearch helps the searcher to enter their qualification in the data base and they are notified of the chances once they arise. In the site, the job searcher registers and are give a pin number which they will be using to log in and look for the job chances as they arise. The website also helps the government to list down all the chances that are coming up in it is department in order to help the applicant apply for the vacancies. (Australian JobSearch, 2008) There are a number of similarity and difference between the two initiatives. There is a lot of similarity in that both at government initiatives which are aimed at addressing the needs of the public to access jobs. Both websites have been designed in order to deal with the problem of rising unemployment both countries and also in order to help in equitable distribution of jobs. This has been due to the fact that there has been skewed employment mostly in the public sector where issue of internal recruitment has been on the rise. Therefore the sites ensure that there is public awareness of the job vacancies. These two sties are also similar in the sense that they act as a link between the employers and the job seekers. In this regard they help to link the employees with the job searchers so that they can access all the available chance. They are all aimed at creating a data base for all the unemployed people in the country. Apart from making the chances in the public sector open to all, they also helps the government to estimate the current problem of unemployment that they are facing as they can be a source of vital unemployment statistics. However there is also a number of differences that is evident between the two sites. First there is a difference in the sense that the Australian jobsearch provides more information on the vacancies that are there for the Government while the UK site does not give more of such information. The Australian Website requires the use to register and consequently offers the use a pin number which is not the case with the one of the UK. In this regard, the Australian site can give more accurate data since it can give more accurate data on the level of unemployment in the country. In this regard it can also be an important source of information for the statistics for the government. (Civil service, 2000; Hottop 2005, P. 2) However these programs have not been able to deal with the problem of unemployment effectively. Though they have been able to open the job market and mitigate the situation they have no achieved their initial target of reducing the rate of unemployment. Advantages of the Marketisation of the public service employment The Marketisation of the public service employment has come with many advantages to the government of both countries and also to the citizens of both countries. Apart from the obvious reasons which can be attached to the initiatives of making the public service sector more relevant to the pubic, there are more underlying benefits that the government and the citizens are likely to get. The public is likely to benefit from the initiative as it will have more access to information on the vacancies that are arising from the government. As we said earlier, one of the problems that have been dodging the public sector has been lack of proper recruitment due to unattractiveness. The public sector recruitment has been leaned on favours and kinship ties which mean that one could secure the job based on the one he or she knows in the public sector and not based on their qualifications. As a result the sector has been faced by incompetent manpower which has failed to deliver as per the expectation of the public. Therefore this initiative has been aimed at ensuring that sector becomes attractive so that it can attract the most competent workforce and maker it more equal to the private sector. These initiatives are likely to open public employment to more people such that there will a wide range of selection that they can choose from. (Hicks 2005, P. 74) The initiatives will also ensure that there is equitable distribution of chances in the public sector. One of the challenges that are faced by any government in the world is on the issue of ensuring that there is equitable distribution of resource to all people. As a result the government strives to ensure there is equal access to state resources by all people regardless of their gender, disability, or ethnic minority status. For a long time now, the public sector has been dominated by those who are well connected and politically correct and employment also favoured those who are close to them. This is because many of the chances in the sector were not announced to the public and recruitment has been done as a secret. Therefore with the coming of the initiative, there is likely to be more openness in the recruitment process and it will also ensure that more people have access to resources. These initiatives have been aimed at ensuring that there is equal access of the resources to the poor, the disabled and the minority ethics. In order ensure that there is a fair representative, the government will be able to receive all applicants from all regions and the selection process can take care of that. (Marie 2006, p. 7) The initiatives have also helped to act as an important link between the employers in the private sector and those who are unemployed. This is because with the government having such kind of a database, employers can access it and make their selection. This makes it easy for them and at the same time save cost. It also helps them to access the best labour in the market since they have a variety to choose from. Unlike before when the employer had to spend their time and money going over the mass media to advertise for the vacancies, there is now a simple way of doing it since they can just login and access all those with the skill that they want. (Lynda 2005, p. 89) Disadvantages There are as well a number of disadvantages that are associated with the initiatives. First it will make the public service sector more competitive and hence those with low qualifications who could have made their way before are unlikely to get to the sector as the level of competition rises due to the opening up of the recruitment services. This may make some people also lose their jobs in the sector as the level of those seeking employment rises. The public sector is also likely to lose some of the workers as there will be a lot of raised awareness to the private sector on jobs that are available at the in the private sectors. The private sector has been efficient and is associated with good salaries and other packages. Therefore many of those working in the public sector are likely to make advances to the private employers who may not hesitate to take them in. This may have devastating effects on the public sector since it is likely to lose more of its qualified and experienced employees. It has been shown that the private sector wants to employ the most competent of the workforce and therefore there is a likelihood that it may stalk of the government employees who are more qualified and experienced. (The Philosopher, 2000) Therefore the government should come up with a well structured payment contract that will ensure that those employed in the public sector deliver to the public. This may involve coming up with performance related payment contract so that those not performing can give way for those who can perform. This wills help to improve the performance of the public sector and help it to overcome the many of the challenge that it is facing. Outsourcing for employment in the pubic sector is likely to help the sector become more active and reproductive. However there will be a challenge of ensuring that as the government invest in training and development of the workforce, it does not lose this workforce to the private sector which may be more enticing than the public sectors. The government must also come up with a challenge of ensuring that it protects those who are not highly qualified against displacement by those whore are highly qualified. 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