Lilley commended frontline staff whilst speaking on the panel of Deloitte’s State of the State report launch yesterday, and added that frontline staff needed to be asked how services and systems could be improved.
He stated that frontline staff often know of a more “sensible way” to do things, and said this is the key to improving productivity in the public service: “If you want to improve the productivity of public services, you've got to go to the people in the public services who deliver them to ask them if they have ways to improve them.”
Lilley went on to add: “People go into the public service to serve the public, but they're never asked how to do it better.”
He also highlighted blind commitment on the frontline as a problem, stating that even if a target’s consequences were “stupid”, frontline staff “continued to try to get to the target”. He stressed that there was an “overriding target, which is to deliver good service to people who need it”.
He continued: “I find the target culture quite worrying, and it's probably got worse. You've got to try and have a common sense culture in an organisation.”
Using the NHS and the state benefit system as examples, Lilley said that though the consequence of targets were sometimes “stupid”, frontline staff would still aim to achieve them: “They're forced to do lots of stupid things; they think that's what they're supposed to do and they do stupid things for a lot of their lives - unless you ask them what's the way.”