Time to show 'Dunkirk spirit'
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by business editor Trevor Sturgess
Public sector workers have been urged to show Dunkirk spirit and
copy the cost-saving discipline of business.
Business consultant Alyson Howard, former chairman of Kent
Institute of Directors, said thousands of employees had taken pay
cuts, unpaid leave, reduced hours and other measures to help save
their own and others' jobs.
Owners had suffered too, often taking "pay holidays" for
months.
There should be similar levels of initiative and sacrifice from
public services.
Managers should not be more concerned about their own power but
involve their teams in making the best use of their brain
power.
They should make decisions as if they were a business.
It was time to be upbeat about the cost-cutting process rather
than go into it with low expectations.
"We are better than that, and nowhere more so than in Kent. So
let's have fewer of the "things have never been so hard and they
are going to get worse remarks".
Things had been a lot worse and the recent Dunkirk 70th
anniversary commemoration had reminded us of British pride,
resilience and strength of character at a time when living
standards were well below what they are today.
The "nanny" state had turned the British into a "lazy, passive
and entitled" people, she claimed, poking and prying into
everything we do yet "wasting huge sums on useless self-serving
initiatives".
The cost-cutting process gave the country a chance to change
things for the better, to genuinely cut down on waste.
Meanwhile, Dr John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, predicts that the
Government's deficit reduction measures will stall any recovery in
the UK jobs market and push unemployment close to three million,
half a million higher than today.
Wednesday, June 09 2010
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