Recruitment and retention

2.23  Twelve of fifteen commercial directors told us that a lack of flexibility in recruitment procedures is a significant barrier to putting project teams together. Commercial directors note that the length of time to make a permanent appointment in the public sector can deter departments from moving quickly to secure commercial staff. Our report on recruiting civil servants found that recruitment can typically take an average of 16 weeks.19

2.24  Civil service pay structures may limit the number of commercial staff that can be employed and the salaries that they can be paid. SROs and commercial directors have told us that they are not able to offer market rates when recruiting commercial staff. In May 2009 HM Treasury's Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP) recommended that the cost of back office operations, which includes procurement, should be reduced by 25 per cent.20 Such factors could potentially prevent the recruitment and retention of staff with the commercial skills to deliver complex projects.

2.25  The OGC considers that public sector benefits packages can attract private sector staff. Its data appears to indicate comparability between the cash salaries that public and private sector procurement staff earn (Figure 5). The experienced commercial staff the public sector needs to recruit for complex projects are not, however, conventional procurement staff, but professionals with recent experience in participating in commercial bids. These staff tend to attract higher salaries. In addition, the comparison set out in Figure 5 does not take into account benefits such as company cars or pensions.

2.26  There is some inconsistency between government departments on pay for commercial staff. For instance, the median salary is approximately eight per cent more for Grade 6s and 11 per cent more for Grade 7s within the DWP, as compared to the Department of Health.21 The OGC and departments agree this could potentially lead to movements in commercial staff between departments, in a manner inconsistent with where the need for their skills exists.

2.27  Despite the limitations on funding, the government has had some success in recruiting commercial staff with private sector experience. Three current departmental commercial directors have been recruited from the private sector. The Home Office's PCR reported that it had been successful in attracting talented commercial leads from the private sector, helping it to meet significant delivery challenges.

2.28  There are some cultural barriers to government's recruitment and retention of high quality commercial staff. Senior commercial staff in advisory firms told us they considered that there were low levels of decision-making autonomy and restrictions on career paths in the public sector, which would put them off a career in government. Research on 50 senior civil servants recruited from the private sector found that they had been attracted into the public sector by the possibility of working in a complex and challenging environment and by making a contribution to society. Many of them felt, however, that they were not able to 'play to their strengths' and that they could not achieve what they had been brought in to do.22

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19  Recruiting civil servants effectively, NAO (HC 134, 2008-9).

20  Operational Efficiency Programme: back office operations and IT, HMT (May 2009).

21  The Department of Health and DWP have been compared because they have a similar proportion of procurement staff based in London (nine per cent and 11 per cent, respectively).

22  Transfusion: private to public. Views on the delivery challenge from senior civil servants recruited directly from the private sector, Deloitte (2008).