The Whitehall & Industry Group (WIG) is an independent, not for profit and non-lobbying membership organisation.
How often do we hear the stereotypes in our national media? ‘Everyone in the public sector clocks off at 5pm.’ ‘Everyone in the private sector behaves like the worst used-car salesman.’ ‘Everyone in the voluntary sector runs their organisation like a disorganised charity shop.’
Well, in reality, Whitehall often works late into the night because Parliament doesn’t stop at 5pm. Many private sector companies take ethics just as seriously as the public sector and have detailed rules about employee behaviour. Many charities are national retailers and manage billions of assets – think of Cancer Research UK.
The stereotypes are wrong and outdated. When the Whitehall and Industry Group (WIG) was founded in 1984, ‘Berlin Walls’ existed between the public, private and voluntary sectors. People stayed working in one organisation and one sector for their whole career. Government policy was made behind closed doors, and services were delivered by one sector or the other, with clear divisions.
Nowadays, the government is eager to engage with and learn from the private and voluntary sectors. The internet and Freedom of Information legislation have made everything that government and business do more transparent and accessible, which in turn has changed the way they communicate with each other: now the dialogue has to be faster and more frequent.
There is currently private sector delivery of public services to an extent unimaginable when I started work in the civil service in the 1970s, with many services delivered by the different sectors working together. The Private Finance Initiative has been a major factor in this, as has the contracting out of services. We take in our stride, for example, London’s Boris Bikes operating with Barclays finance and Serco. We are also getting used to our charities being large booksellers and some, like Turning Point, delivering the government’s new programmes for helping people back into work.
And what of ‘talent silos’, where expertise is kept within the sector where it was first nurtured? Fortunately, people are moving across the sectors more during the course of their careers. The current Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, Ian Watmore, spent most of his career at Accenture. The former Chairman of John Lewis, Sir Stuart Hampson, used to be a civil servant. Open competitions in Whitehall have helped promote cross-sector working, and most of its finance and human resources directors have been externally recruited and are professionally qualified. Another positive development in the past decade has been the recruitment of senior private and voluntary sector leaders to the boards of government departments and agencies. WIG has recruited nearly 200 non-executives to these boards and arranged many more secondments in both directions.
Do we need to go further to break down the barriers between the sectors? Absolutely. The first step is always to improve understanding, knowledge and cooperation, which is what WIG tries to do by sharing best practice, forging strong cross-sector relationships and connecting top leaders. We also need to ensure that policy is well informed and effective. If the government is making laws that don’t maximise the potential of the private sector or put unnecessary restrictions in place that don’t fulfil policy goals, it’s certainly not in the national interest.
Another step would be to encourage more interchange earlier in people’s careers, not just at senior levels. I had secondments to Pilkington’s and Courtaulds Textiles early in my career and they were fantastic learning experiences. Young civil servants who have been seconded to charities under our Charity Next partnership with the Prince’s Charities Foundation have benefited hugely.
The public, private sector and voluntary sectors can learn and work constructively with each other. But partnerships don’t just happen – they must be carefully constructed and tended to. The more they are, the more the country will benefit. In these tough times, we need to value the contribution of every sector and every person to national competitiveness.
