With budgets being squeezed, public sector bosses must double their efforts to engage staff hit by swingeing cuts

Political parties have urged us to tighten our belts, live within our means and manage more with less as the huge national debt is tackled. That means major cuts in public services—from education to the police and the NHS to civil servants in central and local government—even though politicians pretend these savings will not affect frontline staff.

There will be fewer people delivering services, pay freezes, pension cuts, more hardline absence management and, ultimately, a resurgence of the industrial relations strife of the 1970s and 1980s.

So how will public sector managers cope with managing "more with less" with disgruntled staff who will see their traditional security blanket of jobs for life, comparatively good pensions at 60 and other benefits begin to disappear?

Those managing public services must embrace the task ahead by reigniting our Dunkirk spirit in the same way those in the private sector already have. Britain has shown a real ability to revitalise itself—we did it from the doldrums of the dismal 1970s to create a more robust entrepreneurial 1980s and 1990s. Much will depend on the people who will have to manage these changes in the public services, a transformation that will be dramatic in contrast to previous decades.

It will require much better management than we have seen in the past, with greater dialogue and engagement with staff. This will mean picking a different breed of manager, one that understands man management, and managers who will listen to staff and who can create a team spirit.
Bosses who lead people by offering praise and reward, not by finding faults or issuing threats. As Ronald Reagan said: "I've always believed that a lot of the troubles in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other."

If you look at the four leading engagement characteristics from the Mercer scale, which measures employee motivation, they are "being respected at work", "having a stimulating and interesting job where the boss values your contribution", "a better work-life balance" and "providing a good service to customers" (this applied particularly strongly to public services).

Note that money does not feature in the list, so if public sector managers can create an environment that can meet some of the needs, it will go some way in providing at least psychological compensation for material losses.

In 1965, an American psychologist, Arthur Kornhauser, wrote a book entitled The Mental Health of the Industrial Worker, in which he explored characteristics of a healthy and productive workforce. "What is important in a negative way is not any single characteristic of his situation but everything that deprives the person of purpose and zest, that leaves him with negative feelings about himself, with anxieties, tensions, a sense of 'lostness', emptiness and futility," he wrote.

The challenge for those in public sector management aiming to get the most out of people is to create work environments that engage staff, respect and value them and provide the framework for balance in their life.

If only managers could reflect on what Mark Twain wrote: "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can somehow become great."