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Public to private sector streamlining

The key to success during the streamlining of public sector organisations is to avoid enforcing abrupt change and to enable cultural and structural shift, argues Andrew Harvey, chairman of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He discusses the challenges of privatisation, and provides his insights into examples of best practice and the recommended avoidance of unnecessary upheaval.

Marketing departments are often at the forefront of every company and as a result, are best positioned to see the first-hand impact that internal change can have on a brand, consumer, customer or organisation as a whole.

Often playing an integral role between the board room and the customer, the marketing department ensures that the ethos a business is built on, and the process of communicating this to customers is maintained.

More importantly, they are likely to be the most aware if there is a ‘disconnect’ between the internal and external messaging within their organisation.

This often sees them acting as a ‘microcosm’ for the rest of the company – the first to face challenges that the rest of the company will soon have to live up to – suffering magnified disputes and being faced with trying to balance customer needs with those of the boardroom, more starkly than any other department.

Despite this, during the process of privatisation and the streamlining of services, we often see marketing departments as one of the first to see their budgets slashed and staff numbers reduced, as they are sometimes quick to be undervalued and are perceived by some as being a ‘disposable’ commodity.

However, if anything, marketing departments are as equally best placed to benefit from the streamlining of services as every other department.

The removal of internal barriers and constraints can be hugely influential on business – but more so marketing departments, who often find they are better positioned to be more creative and are able to implement the use of marketing techniques to measure campaign successes and maintain focus on outputs and results.

Enabling not enforcing

Having been through the process of privatisation on several occasions with various organisations, it has become apparent and somewhat crucial, that any changes in working practice are not enforced but enabled. While this can be done in a variety of effective ways, what remains important is that the strongest and most valuable assets of an organisation – the staff on the ground – feel part of the transition and are not the victims of the collateral damage of an abrupt and poorly executed redirection.

When it comes to the professional services arena, the challenges that marketing departments face in many ways mirror the challenges of public sector restructuring. Within a professional services environment, prior to the relaxation of regulation, it wouldn’t have been unusual for the annual client golf day to count as the marketing activity for the entire year.

As such, when marketers first came into the professional services industry, they were often seen as an unnecessary and obtrusive force, occasionally looked upon with hostility by their colleagues.

Increasingly however, marketers have continued to prove their value to colleagues and superiors. Through being a driving force in the generation of new business, and by creating greater outlets for the services of a company, marketing has become an accepted, exciting and important part of any industry.

Marketers in the professional services industry never used to assume that they had an automatic right to be at the boardroom table, and have worked hard to earn their place, often collaborating with those most open to change to demonstrate how a new approach can sometimes benefit everyone.

Gradual changes are imperative

The same is true of public sector services. In organisations where changes are being gradually introduced, marketers are working with staff members who are most open to embracing new working models, often resulting in militant and anti-restructuring staff being influenced by their peers, and ultimately coming round to the benefits of new working methods.

This has meant that the transition can be far smoother than trying, often in vain, to inflict wholesale change from the top down upon a reluctant and hesitant workforce.

Implementing this method of enabling cultural and structural change at a gradual pace also allows workers to retain their cultural stake in their organisation while they adapt their working styles accordingly. Having gone through this transition with a rail company, the financial benefits and changes to working practice were realised quickly and effectively without the need for abrupt change and staff resentment. When finally the time came for the company to make what is often seen as a ‘leap’ to the private sector, the only real change was in effect the sign above the door.

Many of the staff were already benefiting from a more liberated working environment, with many operations losing restrictions they had previously been working to, resulting in staff able to carry out their jobs more effectively.

These changes also had a noticeable impact on the marketers, who became increasingly aware of the need to introduce methods such as the use of metrics to communicate the effectiveness of their campaigns, and to inform and enhance future activity and ensure the department was brand and customer focused. By gradually redefining the working and cultural practice across the company as a whole, the marketing department was naturally able to rebalance its focus to produce more effective campaigns that could be measured and built on.

In a contrary experience, an alternative company I worked with enforced a very quick turn around in requiring staff to leave behind old working practices and conform to a new brand culture almost overnight.

This caused hostility among staff and highlighted the objections of those individuals most resilient to the change, with them supplanting their fears and hesitancies onto the entire workforce. By encouraging this type of hostility to spread within the workplace, this simply removed any type of cultural stake in the organisation. In this instance, the benefits of privatisation took a long time to become apparent, and by trying to implement the changes too quickly, the company were merely successful in isolating and disabling the very mechanisms of change that would have helped the transition to seamlessly come about otherwise.

The main insights that I have gained from leading teams through such transitions from public to private sector is that it is not the change itself that is important, it is the way in which this change is introduced that has the biggest effect on how it is received.

A slower implementation that actually involves staff and demonstrates the benefits of new working systems allows for the change to be applied from within and presents no alienation to the biggest assets of an organisation – the staff themselves. As local councils and public services look to streamline their businesses and cut costs, these lessons from past privatisations are valuable sources of best and worst practice, and should be heeded as we move through what is a challenging time for the economy whereby businesses are looking to reduce costs.

Andrew Harvey is a chartered marketer who, during his career, has become an expert in streamlining and helping to redefine workforces, having worked extensively with businesses encountering challenging restructures. More specifically, he has held a number of senior roles within the rail industry, successfully helping many marketing teams to make the transition from public to private sector, along with helping to redefine the role of marketing within professional services as regulation disappeared from the industry. Having been appointed chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in January 2012, he is now undertaking a personal challenge to give back to his profession, in what is a year of change for the organisation. 

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