29. Excellence

I am Greg and I want to grumble about that genre of mindless bureaucracy which is service quality standards or service excellence accreditation.

The accreditation is a potentially useful idea sabotaged by a focus on process rather than outcomes as someone goes into a workplace they may have no understanding of to ensure that a series of policies and practices are in place – regardless of whether or not those predetermined processes are useful or appropriate.

And so, there are occupational health and safety processes to ensure that office workers don’t get paper cuts in the paperless offices, whilst at the same time ignoring the big issues of workload, long hours, and job insecurity.

There are staff management policies which ensure that the most ruthless bosses know which boxes to tick and the best managers can’t do what might actually promote good work; and privacy policies full of stunning requirements like keeping people’s private information private.

There are even policies about having policies, but not, sadly, about whether the work and service is actually excellent.

And that is the point. Excellence is about a focus on people’s needs and outcomes, it is not about an accumulation of processes divorced from outcomes, and organisational structures and cultures.

Any accreditation divorced from outcomes, but particularly in relation to services to vulnerable and disadvantaged people is insulting, and a great waste of time and resources, but apparently you won’t be eligible for government grants and contracts if you don’t have such important paperwork. Not that that will stop another set of bureaucrats asking you again for the same policies when you apply for or report on the abovesaid grants.

So while we hear lots of talk about red tape reduction, and have seen some good moves at state and federal level lately, there is still a long, long way to go.

I am Greg and I am grumbling.


This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 18 February 2014