Diaries from the front line—Formal supervision and job quality among social care workers during austerity

Abstract

Focusing on social care workers in public, private and voluntary sectors, this article contributes to research on the impact of austerity on public service human resource management (HRM). The article uses an innovative diary method to highlight the importance of intrinsic elements of job quality such as supervision practice in mitigating degradation in extrinsic elements as austerity dismantles public service HRM. The article also reports that supervision has itself come under pressure due to resource shortages. The results regarding sub‐sector differences have implications for policy‐makers and practitioners in terms of rebuilding the standard employment relationship in social care so that they are more sensitive to differences across private, public and voluntary sectors.

Doing the right thing? An institutional perspective on responsible restructuring in UK local government

“…All three councils experienced increased turnover among critical front‐line roles such as social workers and had to use agency staff to compensate; a finding echoed by Cunningham et al. (2021).…”

“…As Cameron (1994) argues, repeated minor cutbacks, however carefully they are announced and implemented, can be equally as damaging as one‐off restructures. While the public sector may appear institutionally resilient, a decade of austerity has levelled down standards, increased work intensity and reduced career development opportunities for public sector workers, all of which create significant risks for recruitment, retention and burnout (e.g., Cunningham et al., 2021). While care must be taken not to overly romanticise the historical ‘model employer’ approach in UK local government, the core institutional reference points of decent wages, job security and career development are stronger foundations on which to reform public services in the 21st Century than those of short‐term cost cutting and market discipline.…”

“…Echoing these concerns, the trade unions at all three councils noted that despite the espoused commitment to wellbeing, sickness rates had increased sharply since 2010, with stress and mental health issues by far the most common cause of staff absence because of rising work intensity. All three councils experienced increased turnover among critical front-line roles such as social workers and had to use agency staff to compensate; a finding echoed by Cunningham et al (2021).…”

“…In normative terms, local politicians and managers have significant ‘sunk investments’ in a model employer approach underpinned by job security, internal career progression and paternalistic HRM that are hard to unpick (Beszter et al., 2015). In cultural‐cognitive terms, managers historically relied on the skill and public service ethos of workers rather than close control of the labour process, and may therefore be inclined to proceed cautiously with changes to working practices and cultures (Cunningham et al., 2020).…”

“…It is worth noting that our findings, although rich and contextualised, are limited to the UK public sector where the scope for perceived deviance is greater than in the private sector given the historical commitment to progressive HRM. There are clear policy lessons for national governments, not only in terms of the short‐term underinvestment in public services, but in the risk to long term recruitment and retention of skilled workers arising from deteriorating job quality and the normalisation of fiscal cutbacks (Cunningham et al., 2021). Our findings also complement studies of large private sector organisations that have experienced the contestation of embedded HRM standards (e.g., Chaudhry & Rubery, 2019; McLachlan et al., 2020) Future research might fruitfully explore restructuring processes in matched pairs of public and private sector organisations in different institutional contexts to establish patterns of convergence and divergence in the approach to workforce reform.…”