This year’s top five councils have out-performed last year’s top five, with higher scores on all eight factors in the Best Councils to Work For analysis.

The biggest factor separating the best five from the rest is leadership, which includes being inspired by the chief executive and having faith in him or her.

Jonathan Austin, founder and chief executive of Best Companies, says staff want a chief executive they can believe in. “You want somebody as a leader who you believe cares about your best interests and the services that you provide as a council.”

Councils are in the unique position of having a chief executive and a political leader and Austin considers it essential that the vision for a council is shared or co-created, “rather than a chief executive trying to convince the elected members that this is the right way to go”.

Austin says: “If you get clarity at a leadership level about where the organisation needs to go, it helps that everybody can see how they can play their part in achieving that strategy.” Lucy de Groot, executive director of the Improvement and Development Agency, agrees, adding: “Staff also need inspirational leadership to feel fully engaged.”

The absence of a clear strategy and vision leads to confusion and can result in individual departments operating in isolation from one another. It is not an uncommon phenomenon. The Best Councils results (rules, see facing page) suggest that even the top five councils are afflicted – 60 per cent of their employees say that some departments/teams “don’t work well together”. Overall, 78 per cent of council staff agreed with the statement.

The findings are replicated in the private sector, Austin says. “A lot of senior management teams see it as their role to protect their department and do not act in the best interests of the organisation as a whole.”

Another wake-up call for councils is the results on job security. Overall, 38 per cent of council employees do not feel their jobs are secure and the top five councils do marginally worse at 40 per cent.

De Groot says: “Local government reorganisation, even in organisations not experiencing it, could create a perceived concern about job security. The important thing is that these concerns are managed properly.”

People do not expect to have a job for life any more, she says, noting: “This can be a positive thing. People move around, gain more varied and different experience and bring a larger range of skills to a job.”

Councils’ best-value process can also contribute to feelings of job insecurity, Austin says. This requires councils to demonstrate that the services they provide in-house are commercially competitive and can lead to employees being let go or moved across to a new supplier under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations.

But “fair deal” scores, which relate to pay and benefits, saw the greatest improvement for the top five councils, with a 4 per cent increase over last year. Austin says: “I think there’s going to be more pressure on fair deal by virtue of mortgage issues, heating bills, interest rates and food. I think people are going to be more aware of their financial remuneration.”

Jan Parkinson, managing director, of Local Government Employers, says it is no surprise that the top councils show exceptional leadership and a commitment to listening to their staff. “Becoming the best requires long-term dedication to ensure that employees feel part of the council,” she says. “Many councils are rising to the challenge and I know that other councils are working to aspire to learn and implement from the best.”

The quality of a council’s services is inextricably linked to its staff, and the Best Councils awards are an important way for councils to benchmark how well they work with employees, de Groot says. “Of this year’s top 25, more than two thirds are also in the highest comprehensive performance assessment categories.”

Austin believes that councils want to counter suggestions that working for the council is a “soft option”.

“I think a lot of councils want their people to be proud of working for their council and to buck the trend of this myth that councils are not particularly high performing,” he says.

“It’s fantastic that there are councils that are willing to go through this process, take the feedback from their staff and implement change that will make them even better.”

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