The Director General of Health organised an excellent event last Friday called ‘Productivity, Quality and Performance Improvement 2010/2011’. It was a gathering of employers, MOH officials and union leaders from the DHB sector. All of these parties have committed to work together on improving health sector productivity under the Health Sector Relationship Agreement.

Several presentations were made by overseas as well as local speakers about successful productivity initiatives. Most of these initiatives demonstrated an understanding and commitment to changing the culture of workplaces from the old style top down approaches of management to more team-based facilitative styles associated with lean systems thinking. A real sense of urgency and the need for a fundamentally transformational approach was embraced by participants.

Contrast that with what we keep hearing in the core public service. Apart from a couple of exceptions, everyone from cabinet ministers down seem to be all talk and no action when it comes to responding to the union’s demands for better and more productive ways of working. Instead, we hearing ‘you can’t measure productivity in the public service’ or ‘we’ve already done it’. The PSA keeps pushing the view that continuous improvement is never ‘done’ and while measurement is not straightforward, these issues are not an excuse for inaction.

PSA members are up for the challenge because they know that part of the secret to better productivity is better management. The question remains are employers, the SSC or the Ministers up for this challenge too or do they feel threatened by a transformational agenda?