North Hertfordshire District Council

 

Working at North Hertfordshire District Council (NHDC) counts as one of my favorite jobs to date. There are some funny stories to tell about it, but it was a point in my life where knowledge and experience peaked and I felt really proud of my work there even though effectively I probably managed myself out of a job.

The first point, which is quite funny and I am not sure my boss was ever aware of this, but he and I applied for the same job which he got. I remember him saying ‘I am sure I remember you from somewhere…’ and me thinking, ‘I remember exactly where you know me from and I am not saying anything!’ He was a bit pompous at interview. We all had to refer to him as ‘Dr’ X, but actually as a boss he was a bit of a sweetie.

The very best thing about it was that my experience in local government at South Beds before had made me fully aware of political processes and during my time there I suggested and led on a Rural Strategy which we took through a committee process and which then enabled us to get a £250k annual fund to renovate the 43 village halls for 4 years out of the annual non restricted funds the council had of £500k per year. It was a huge achievement and immensely popular with local councillors as they all had village halls in their patches that had been feeling aggrieved for some time and were now being given due attention. We also produced a Village Halls booklet illustrated by a team member that promoted the halls for hire.

I was also put on the job evaluation committee. I had done this training before and was sent as being ‘the last one in’ and it being the boring training nobody wants to do. It is crazy not to do it. I re-wrote all the job descriptions of our staff so that at the very least they stayed on the same pay scale and some went up.

There were staffing issues. There are always staffing issues. I found myself delegated responsibility for an employee who had been allowed to get away with poor performance, but when I proved poor performance they would not go down the incapability route (probably because he had been ‘incapable’ for years) but tried to get staff changes by redefining roles. Pressure, but no support was put on me to get rid of him at this juncture, but I didn’t. He did meet the person spec. Also at this juncture information about him was ‘vague’. Nobody told me the history of his issues. They just didn’t like him. I gave him a chance and then found he was not operating the charges procedure correctly and had not been doing so for a long time. I brought it to manager’s attention as it was technically fraud. Again, nothing was done. When redundancies were in the offing I got selected. My boss said, ‘someone’ had told him that I was told to get rid of this guy and didn’t. In the end I felt bullied for other’s poor management that had been going on for years. After that I really lost my passion for managing people. Why have HR policies and procedures if you don’t follow them?

I did make some excellent recruitment choices there though, including the guy who was kept on to manage the village halls fund – a post created when mine was lost. I even suggested this post when we were asked for our comments on a restructure! In reality though 2-3 years later most of the management were axed as budgets got squeezed and community development is not a statutory function.

I still feel a bit of pain though when I drive past the offices in Letchworth. I was the only person on my floor to get made redundant, got a very generous collection because everyone felt sorry for me and did actually get offered my next post literally the day before I left. I remember my boss hugging me. He had a good heart and I had my children depending on me to bring home the bacon.

The art work for the above was completed by one of our team who managed a local community centre.