It’s emerging as a key election issue, yet the proportion of Britons in low-paid work has changed little in 20 years. So what can be done to tackle the barriers to improving poor pay, in both the...
New year, new recruits? As public sector teams get ever leaner in size, matching individuals to a workplace’s culture becomes even more important. Both employers and prospective employees need to...
The government is talking up welfare cuts, with renewed appeals to ‘hard-working taxpayers’. But rising poverty, and changes to in-work benefits, could make it a reform too far
Valerie Pierce suggests ways to take the weight off your shoulders when the competing demands of the job pile up and conflicting priorities threaten your sense of perspective – and the morale of
your...
There’s a lot of talk about ‘big data’ and what it can do for the public sector. The analytical software is available but making sense of data and acting more intelligently as a result are the big...
Northern cities are being promised major new infrastructure investment to help rebalance their economies. So will the chancellor make good on his warm words of support for the One North initiative...
Online voting, five-minute digital tax returns and births automatically registered in the cloud. The future of e-government services has arrived – and it’s so much cheaper in Tallinn, too
Bad news stories are keeping the NHS in the headlines, despite the best efforts of ministers to shift the public’s gaze elsewhere before the election. Now two authoritative reports suggest there is a...
Government policies have put a rocket under over-inflated house prices while social housing’s share of the total stock has steadily fallen. So how do you rebalance the market?
Attacks on computer networks of businesses and public bodies are well documented. But hacking is also affecting international relations, causing fears that cyber espionage will provoke military action
Presentations can be terrifying experiences for the unprepared or the unconfident. But careful planning and an ability to ‘face your fears’ can turn a soporific speech into a peak performance. Angela...
Should public sector finance managers be more open with the public about the effects of cuts in services? Participants at a recent CIPFA roundtable debate on health and social care funding certainly...
Big-data analytics has been making a major impact on cities as far apart as New York and Baghdad, saving lives and money in the process. Now the latest stage in the information revolution looks set...
Employees need to be motivated and feel engaged in their work. If staff resign without good reason, it’s time to take a look at your employee benefits package and tailor an offer that helps hang on...
It’s no longer just the bottom 20% of society who are anxious about their future. In the new class structure of industrialised countries, where jobs growth is in services, white-collar and...
Stereotypes of men in grey suits poring over spreadsheets are out of date. Finance business partners are organisations ‘new’ critical friends’, helping them take decisions in a tough fiscal world
The personal brand may be more associated with celebrities and business high-fliers than with the public sector. But this need not be the case. Roger Delves examines how public managers can sharpen...
We need more clarity and brevity in financial statements if they are to meet the needs of users. But too often public bodies play safe and fail to consider the 'materiality' of the information...
Whitehall has already undergone wholesale cutbacks and radical change. But to survive the 2015 Spending Review civil service leaders will have to step out of departmental silos and take...
