The UK Experience by Malcolm Morley*
One of the biggest challenges I faced in working with private sector organisations as a management consultant was to get them to recognise reality. Reality in the customer’s terms rather than in their own terms as providers of products and services. Frequently I came across very senior managers who saw the world solely from their organisational perspective.
I would hear statements like ‘The customer is king’ but find that decision making about the nature and provision of products and services was solely internally focused.
How is this relevant to Local Government? Consider the following statistic: in England, only 54 per cent of the population are satisfied with their Councils overall. This is down by one percentage point from the last survey in 2003/04 and a fall of 11 percentage points over the past six years.
This statistic means that only just over half of the communities served by Councils actually rate their Councils as doing a good job overall.
Councils have a major marketing problem. Frequently there is a misconception about what Councils do and don’t do. This leads to overall perceptions about Councils being affected by events and issues outside of their control and responsibility. This point is confirmed by the satisfaction scores for individual services. Many individual services illustrate continuing improvement in public satisfaction.
As examples 73 per cent of people are satisfied with their parks and open spaces; 79 per cent are satisfied with their waste disposal; 70 per cent are satisfied with recycling services and 73 per cent are satisfied with library services.
Where people have a discrete interaction with a Council for a particular service there is certainty about the Council’s responsibility and response. People therefore score the Council on the basis of specific knowledge and experience.
When it comes to satisfaction overall, people revert to their general perception about the totality of the place they live. They are also very influenced by headlines in the press about issues and things that have gone wrong. Reports about one off incidents contribute to the creation of a norm for perceptions.
The things reported to have gone wrong might not be the responsibility of the Council. The individual might not have actually experienced anything going wrong. Perception (the individual’s reality), however, is affected by the available information.
Research has indicated that public satisfaction with Councils is higher when people feel better informed and engaged with their Councils.
The response to this is often to produce a Council newspaper, to issue numerous press releases and to hold ‘community’ meetings. Too often these are approached from the organisational perspective rather than that of communities/customers.
Engagement is about more than information provision. It’s about a relationship. If overall public satisfaction with Councils is to be improved, the community must not only have information they must be a partner.
A relationship based upon partnership has major implications for Councils and challenges organisational culture, power and decision making processes.
Councils ‘can’t get no satisfaction’ unless they respond positively to the challenge of engagement as well as information provision.
*Malcolm Morley is Chief Executive of Harlow District Council and can be contacted via the Editor, email info@lgfocus.com.au
The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of his employer.
