Twenty-Third Report - Civil service workforce: Recruitment, pay and performance management

The Cabinet Office told us that it had agreed a standard definition of time to hire with departments, defined as the time taken from a job advertisement being published to a job offer being made.13 Using a similar definition, the … Read more The Cabinet Office told us that it had agreed a standard definition of time to hire with departments, defined as the time taken from a job advertisement being published to a job offer being made.13 Using a similar definition, the average time to hire across all departments in 2022 was 99 calendar days, based on departments’ reported recruitment times. Security clearance vetting time was on average an additional 171 calendar days, for recruits requiring the highest level of security clearance.14 The Cabinet Office recognised the current time to recruit was too long and said that it was not satisfied with the situation. It noted that recruitment best practice in the wider economy resulted in hiring times that were about half that reported by government departments.15 Show less

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Most departments—14 out of the 16 main civil service departments in 2022—do not collect full information on their recruitment costs and therefore do not understand how much it costs them to hire staff. The Ministry of Justice told us that, … Read more Most departments—14 out of the 16 main civil service departments in 2022—do not collect full information on their recruitment costs and therefore do not understand how much it costs them to hire staff. The Ministry of Justice told us that, in common with most other departments, it does not track the cost of staff time spent on recruitment activities by line managers involved in hiring staff.19 HMRC is the only department that is able to calculate its cost per hire, a standard measure for assessing the efficiency of recruitment processes calculated by dividing total recruitment costs by the number of people recruited. HMRC attributed this to the fact that its recruitment is largely centrally run by HR or specialised teams. Having centralised recruitment processes means HMRC is more readily able to capture data on the time spent on recruitment activities and the cost involved.20 Show less

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The Cabinet Office noted that it was seeking to improve cost data and was benchmarking all costs associated with recruitment, which would enable departments to compare cost elements such as those for advertising or employment checks.21 However, there are no … Read more The Cabinet Office noted that it was seeking to improve cost data and was benchmarking all costs associated with recruitment, which would enable departments to compare cost elements such as those for advertising or employment checks.21 However, there are no metrics on recruitment costs in the Civil Service People Plan, such as cost per hire, that departments will need to report against.22 The Cabinet Office did not confirm whether it would require departments to report recruitment costs consistently, particularly those costs that departments struggle to report such as the cost of hiring managers’ time spent on recruitment. Instead, the Cabinet Office stated only that departments had “very strong incentives” to understand how to lower their recruitment costs.23 Show less

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Most departments do not know how their recruitment performance compares to that of other organisations, either within the civil service or externally. In part this is due to the poor quality of recruitment data, as described above in relation to … Read more Most departments do not know how their recruitment performance compares to that of other organisations, either within the civil service or externally. In part this is due to the poor quality of recruitment data, as described above in relation to recruitment times and costs. The Cabinet Office explained this was why it was developing common metrics to enable departments to understand, compare and benchmark their performance internally and externally.24 Show less

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Other longstanding civil service pay issues include the existence of pay disparities between departments for staff at the same grade level. For example, differences between the higher executive officer (HEO) pay band at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural … Read more Other longstanding civil service pay issues include the existence of pay disparities between departments for staff at the same grade level. For example, differences between the higher executive officer (HEO) pay band at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and HMRC mean that the highest HEO salary in Defra’s pay structure is £1,601 less than the lowest HEO salary HMRC offers.32 Additionally, as at March 2022, senior executive officer (SEO) median salaries varied by up to £6,100 across departments.33 Pay disparities can lead to unhealthy and unproductive competition among departments for staff, for example where there are several departmental employers in a local area or where departments are trying to attract staff with scarce specialist skills.34 The Cabinet Office told us pay disparities of this kind might reflect differences in jobs in different departments, even though those jobs had been graded at the same level.35 However, it did acknowledge that departmental pay differentials in the same location could “add tensions” and that there might be a case for greater pay coherence across departments where jobs at the same grade were more similar.36 Show less

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Further, most departments do not monitor or report what happens to staff identified as underperforming. Monitoring outcomes for underperforming staff is essential if departments are to understand how effectively their performance management systems are supporting people to move out of … Read more Further, most departments do not monitor or report what happens to staff identified as underperforming. Monitoring outcomes for underperforming staff is essential if departments are to understand how effectively their performance management systems are supporting people to move out of underperformance or identifying alternatives for those individuals, such as changing roles.42 The Cabinet Office noted there is a balance to be struck between the time departments spend on collecting and reporting data and the time they spend on supporting managers and teams to improve performance.43 However, this is slightly at odds with the Cabinet Office’s own civil service performance management framework, which sets the expectation that departments “must track and be able to report on the progress being made with each individual” identified as underperforming.44 Show less

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The Cabinet Office’s approach to dealing with staff underperformance, and raising performance levels more generally, is based on improving the confidence and capability of line managers in departments. The Cabinet Office told us that as part of work to implement … Read more The Cabinet Office’s approach to dealing with staff underperformance, and raising performance levels more generally, is based on improving the confidence and capability of line managers in departments. The Cabinet Office told us that as part of work to implement the Civil Service People Plan, it is setting standards that line managers will need to work towards and is providing training to support line managers.45 However, it is hard to see how performance management in the civil service can be evaluated and improved without good data on the numbers of employees moving into and out of underperformance. If underperformance numbers and outcomes are not measured, it is not clear how 37 C&AG’s Report, para 21 38 Q101 39 Qq107–109 40 Q83 41 Q79 42 C&AG’s Report, paras 4.13, 4.15 43 Q83 44 C&AG’s Report, Figure 15 45 Q81 14 Civil service workforce: Recruitment, pay and performance management departments will be able to tell if their line managers are managing underperforming staff effectively, or more broadly, whether some departments have particular issues with levels of staff underperformance. The Cabinet Office recognised that there was scope to improve reporting in this area, and said it would work with departments to understand how best to do that.46 46 Qq84, 90–93 Civil service workforce: Recruitment, pay and performance management 15 Show less

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The time taken to recruit staff across the civil service is too slow. It takes an average of 99 days to hire new staff in the civil service, from the job being advertised to completing basic pre-employment checks. Completing security checks for new recruits can take on average an additional …

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Most departments do not know how much it costs to recruit staff, or how they could be more efficient. 14 of the 16 main departments cannot provide full recruitment cost data. Only one department, HM Revenue & Customs, understands its recruitment costs well enough to be able to calculate its …

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Chronic pay issues within the civil service have lowered morale and risk departments not being able to recruit and retain skilled staff. The Cabinet Office acknowledges that there are longstanding issues within the civil service relating to pay and reward. These include a long-term decline in real-terms pay, which has …

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Departments do not collect enough data on staff underperformance to know if it is being managed effectively. Some departments do not routinely collect data on the number of staff who are underperforming in their organisations, and most do not monitor what happens to staff who are identified as underperforming. Without …

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On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence from the Cabinet Office, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Ministry of Justice about civil service recruitment, pay and performance management.1

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However, the commitments and metrics in the Civil Service People Plan do not set out target or expected levels of performance against which the Cabinet Office can measure and evaluate the success of the Plan. For example, recruitment times will be measured using a common time to hire metric, but …

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The time taken to recruit staff is a key indicator of the efficiency of an organisation’s recruitment process. Recruitment times can be measured in a number of ways, including the time it takes from starting a recruitment campaign to making a firm employment offer – often referred to as ‘time …

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The Cabinet Office acknowledged that departments did not collect consistent and comparable data on how long it takes to recruit and vet candidates.16 The Cabinet Office told us it is working to improve the understanding of recruitment times across the civil 8 Cabinet Office, Civil Service statistics: 2019, 24 July …

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Improving recruitment performance will also involve learning from the experience of others and from external best practice. We heard several examples of efficiency and good recruitment practice within the civil service, such as HMRC on recruitment costs and centralised recruitment, and the Ministry of Justice on ensuring the diversity of …

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As part of their employer responsibilities, departments are delegated the authority to set pay for their staff below SCS level. Each department sets its own pay structure which defines pay rates for each grade. Annual pay increases are governed by the central pay remit guidance issued by the Cabinet Office, …

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Civil service pay for almost all grades has seen a long-term decline. Since 2013, civil service median pay has decreased in real terms for all grades apart from the most junior grade (Administrative Assistant).28 The Cabinet Office recognised that declining real-terms pay was a “chronic” problem affecting the civil service …

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Departments vary quite substantially in their approaches to performance-related pay, including how much they spend on it. For example, departmental per-head spending on performance-related pay in 2021–22 ranged from £13 to £1,366 per employee, for staff 27 C&AG’s Report, para 3.2 28 C&AG’s Report, para 1.10, Figure 6 29 Q56 …

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Performance management for civil service staff below SCS level is another responsibility delegated to individual departments. This has resulted in differences among departments in how they manage staff performance and support employees’ development. In particular, there is no common civil service-wide approach for identifying and dealing with staff underperformance in …

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