By Richard Johnstone | 20 October 2011
More than a third of public sector workers believe their department has been left under-resourced following the government’s cuts, according to a survey.
The poll of more than 1,000 public sector workers also found that 26% had witnessed significant job losses in their departments. This rose to 40% for central government workers, the quarterly survey for recruitment consultancy Badenoch & Clark shows.
Around a third of those surveyed, 35.1%, also believe that there will be further job losses in their sector. And 37.8% claim morale has fallen noticeably following the job cuts.
Badenoch & Clark managing director Nicola Linkleter said that the figures showed that public sector employees were feeling insecure one year on from the publication of the government’s four-year spending plan, as cuts ‘ripple out into the public sector workforce’.
She added that the fact that 32.1% of the respondents said they had not seen any tangible effects of the reduced budgets meant that ‘the worst effects of the spending cuts are still to come’ in some areas of the public sector.
Linkleter warned that ‘in such times of flux, it is important that organisations do not become complacent and continue to work on reasserting the public sector brand, communicating change down to all levels.
‘Fallout from decisions made since last October’s [Comprehensive Spending Review] announcement is likely to last for many more months to come and it is important that employees perceive their employer as committed to its workforce.’
Ahead of the results of the strike ballots over pension changes being held by the three biggest publicsector trade unions, around one-third of the survey respondents (33.9%) said they believed pensions were worth striking over. This rises to 50.8% for central government workers.
