There Is No Such Thing As a 'Velvet Drainpipe'.

The Social Mobility Commission produced a report last week into the levels of social mobility in the Civil Service. The outcome was a report that suggested that if anything the Civil Service is more privileged and posh now than in the 1960s.

What utter nonsense.

The report had a variety of impressive lines, including the suggestion that senior leadership talk in Latin, or that they spoke about things like rugby or cricket. Apparently, there is a ‘velvet drainpipe’ in existence (a revelation that must have come as a shock to just about every civil servant out there oblivious to this previously top secret project).

There is no doubt that the Civil Service can appear a forbidding institution, and that at very senior levels, it may appear to be something of an ‘old boys club’, but is this fair, or is it reflective of the reality of what the Civil Service is these days?

The Civil Service of the 1960s was an organisation whose values and culture are utterly alien to the Civil Service of the 2020s. Strictly hierarchical, with promotion based on time served and closed promotion boards passing judgement on your suitability to promote, and where a failure to join the ‘right’ career stream early on would hamper your career prospects for life.

There was an inside track, of overwhelmingly white males (after all women had to leave the service once they married, you can’t have dangerous concepts like married women in the public sector, who would look after the children?), who having gone to often very good schools and universities (at a time when barely 1% of people went to university), were on an accelerated path to greatness.

Of course, you had to be the right sort of person mind you – preferably male, probably white, and ideally heterosexual – in other words, if you met those requirements and the strict entrance exams, promotion boards and your face fit, then the world was yours for the taking.

To read through old files from the period in the National Archives is to be both shocked and uncomfortable at just how different the Civil Service of the 1960s was. But it is important too to reflect that it was also a model of how different our society at the time was as well.

To suggest that the Civil Service of today is anything like that organisation leaves you wondering whether the phrase ‘hyperbolic’ adequately covers just how stupid such an idea really is. The modern Civil Service is an utterly different organisation from its predecessors – note not better or worse, but different.  

Today recruitment is entirely open at practically every level of the system, and careers are managed by individuals and not career managers. Someone joining today may come in as an Executive Officer, but can demonstrate talent, capability and potential and promote at a speed of their development, not the anticipated requirements of a promotion board.

There is an issue in how the data used for the report was gathered. It seems to depend on self declaration of circumstances, but how accurate is it, and can it truly reflect the 445,000 civil servants around the country, or is it a rather misleading snapshot?

The system is open – you only must look at the Civil Service jobs website to realise that there is entry at every level, all the way through to the Senior Civil Service, and that anyone can apply to be part of it. It is not a closed shop, and certainly not an elitist or exclusive one – you only have to spend time in most Government departments to realise that Civil Servants are as diverse as the nation they serve and come from a huge range of backgrounds and different circumstances. There is no standard template for a Civil Servant these days.

Some suggestions border on the plain silly – the idea that Civil Servants talk in Latin for example. It may have happened once, to one person, but the idea that if you don’t speak Latin makes you ineligible for the top jobs is nonsense – SCS job interviews do not begin with the applicant being asked “Tu loquerisne Latine”? (To which the only reply is naturally De cursu - Id operantes classis Visigoth similes vobis)

Similarly, the idea that people talk about rugby and cricket doesn’t make this a bad thing intended to exclude people. It could just be that they enjoy rugby and cricket and are catching up in the same way that others talk in different offices about football scores or catching up on the results of the weekend Warhammer tournament…

There are some themes though that do warrant closer analysis, and thoughts on how to fix them. Firstly, the noted reliance on London as a hub for senior policy roles. There is no doubt that London remains the Ministerial centre of gravity for office work – Ministers want to be in London, close to the Palace of Westminster, so that they can carry out their parliamentary business too. Until it is possible for a Minister to vote virtually, it is unlikely that many ministerial offices will shift around the country.

This in turn drives the policy hubs existence in London – Ministers direct policy development to help deliver their political agenda. Most take a keen personal interest in delivering this, so it makes sense to keep the policy teams close by, to help support a Minister when needed.

This has led to a reliance on London as the hub for Government departments, which in turn have a preponderance of senior roles based there – which in turn creates the perception of a top-heavy department. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of moving into London, which can be expensive and for people with families or other commitments, probably unaffordable on civil service wages.

The best way to fix this is to leave London, but how can this be done? One of the few benefits of COVID has been that it has shown that working remotely is possible, and that the system can continue to deliver while deployed around the country.

The future model of the Civil Service is likely to see far more office hubs emerge, with locations around the country that staff can work from, rather than a deep reliance on London itself. This is coupled with the moving out of Government departments to smaller towns and cities around the UK – the Treasury is setting up a hub in Darlington, while the Home Office is moving to Stoke on Trent.

This move will be powerful in helping create localised job opportunities for people, boosting the chances of people being able to apply for senior roles that aren’t based in London (for example if you are a full time working mother living in the north west, a move to London may be too expensive and not in your family interests, but an SCS post in Darlington may be an ideal career move and means the family don’t have to move).

At the same time the ability to work remotely, potentially operating out of hubs will become ever more common. This means that civil servants can be based around the UK as part of a national organisation, supporting work virtually and not needing to be physically based in Whitehall. Indeed, it is hard to see the Government estate in Whitehall remaining the size it is for much longer – many buildings could soon be disposed of and turned into hotels or other spaces.

Solving the location challenge though is just one part of this problem. The other one is ensuring that the Civil Service continues to draw talent through, retain it or re-engage it at later career stages, and that this talent is fully diverse.

There is nothing wrong in saying that that when you look across senior leadership boards of various departments, they do not really reflect the UK. They are very male and very pale. While female representation is increasing, its still not balanced, with fewer female perm secs than male. This must change.

Partly this is down to the Civil Service in ensuring that people have every opportunity to promote and talent to get the best possible opportunity. There are a multitude of development programmes out there to encourage more diversity in the workforce, and their existence is to be warmly welcomed.

But the Civil Service needs to ensure that it retains this talent – there is always a steady exit of good people at the earlier stages of their career who could help change these demographics, but instead are lost forever. Understanding why this is the case, and what can be done to better retain the talents of the next generation is essential here – more could be done to improve talent management and retention and encourage people to remain and not look outside.

Finally, it is worth reflecting that many of the most senior civil servants out there do not have a lengthy background in the public sector. Many have spent time in industry or joined late in their careers – they are products of the commercial sector which gave them opportunities to promote. If the Senior Civil Service will increasingly draw on the private sector for its most senior appointments, then does this tell us something about a wider issue in society which means that the system (both public and private) remains orientated to promoting a certain type of person? What can be done to fix this?

But overall though the report paints a picture that is remarkably unfair on the Civil Service, and which does not reflect the reality of its workforce. It is easy to assume that the public sector is full of faceless mandarins who do nothing but spout policy all day, but in reality, the overwhelming majority of civil servants are not ‘policy wonks’.

Of the nearly half a million public sector workers, huge numbers do routine administration, low level paperwork, operational delivery that is essential to keeping the nation ticking over or working in unglamorous but vital roles that ensure the business of the state in supporting the people who fund it is delivered. There are many tens of thousands of normal people doing normal jobs around the UK for whom this report is, frankly, an insult to their hard work and effort.

What relevance though does all of this have for the armed forces? More than you may think. The challenge of the military is not dissimilar to that of the Civil Service from the last few decades – structurally it retains the strict hierarchy and career promotion boards and single point of entry recruitment that were long ago binned by the Civil Service.

Is there something that could be learned here about recruiting practise and direct entry for talented people? Strategic Command certainly seem to think so, based on comments by Leo Docherty MP, the current Minister for Veterans. He has hinted that there may be a way to recruit civilians into direct entry roles for some of the more difficult to recruit for posts in the armed forces – such as cyber or other roles.

There is significant sense in this – many of the skills needed to carry out effective cyber operations can only be sought from the private sector, and it makes sense to consider whether direct civilian entry into these roles, with a finite pool of jobs and career structures, would make sense.

In a world that relies on rank and hierarchy to deliver effect, someone turning up to a meeting wearing a Colonels rank tabs is more likely to be listened to and acted on than a civil servant. To that end, there is a compelling case to be made for direct entry to permit the right people in, although it would need careful handling to ensure people understood this was not a threat to their own careers.

Direct entry makes sense in some limited areas and is a good way of bringing experienced people into the organisation at a later stage in their career, where they can be paid and used for their ability to deliver business outcomes, project manage or achieve other effects, rather than the power of their ‘hand of command’ and ability to lead a section attack properly.

At the same time the system could reflect on the ability of the Civil Service to permit staff to apply for promotion when ready to go for it. The existence of annual promotion boards may make sense at some levels, but if you take the ability of an individual to plan their career out of their hands, particularly at the mid-career level when important decisions need to be made about how to take their career forward, this can be a retention negative tactic.

Maybe the time is fast approaching to encourage officers, perhaps at the SO1 level, to apply for consideration for promotion to OF5, rather than wait to see if they have been selected. This level is quite an important one as in the RN at least, promoting to Captain means adoption of a so-called ‘blood chit’ which means you no longer have a job to 55, only for the next 6 years. Such a move means that only those who want this can go for it, rather than forcing people into the perverse situation of almost not wanting to perform well for fear that they may be promoted.

Finally, there is something to be said for asking whether COVID means that the armed forces need the real estate that they possess. The existence of large HQs may make sense in some areas, but do most staff functions really need a formal HQ, with people travelling all over the country on a weekly basis to get to work, or is it possible that they could work at a different site instead?

The sheer savings to time, money and quality of life gains that could be accrued from virtually posting an Officer based in Scotland to Andover but enabling them to work from a local Army base, and then maybe visit Andover once per month, could be enormous. It could bring to an end the regular series of house moves and school changes and provide a lot more stability for military families – a key retention issue.

By moving to embrace a ‘work where you are living, not where your OJAR success is dependent on you being seen on the floorplate’ ethic, this could drive a huge change in how the military approach postings and their way of working.  Whether this comes off or not, or if the positives of COVID are lost in a stampede of directives demanding people be seen to come into work because ‘rules’ rather than work intelligently locally remains to be seen.

Ultimately both the Civil Service and Military need to embrace change and think about how the workforce they wish to recruit want to work. The world is changing and so is technology, and it is vital that to stay appealing as an employer of choice, both organisations are able to stay relevant, effective and reflect the diversity of their workforce. There is a huge opportunity here that could be either a victory, or stunning defeat depending on how it is handled.