Capita Week - Day Three - Staff Morale

With so many Barnet staff being transferred over to Capita  (along with 200+ being made redundant) I thought I would look and see what staff say about Capita. Some staff seem happy enough but many staff seem deeply dissatisfied.

This link is to a website of reviews by Capita staff. Some of the comments are good but many are not and include the following:

• "Frustrating inability to deliver tools to do job"
• "A living nightmare, apart from some good co workers"
• "Under values employees, vast pay inequalities"
• "Frustrating"
• "Soulless business only interested in the number"
• "Shambolic Management"
• "Capita needs to be employee centric and not management centric"
• "Good work/life balance however they pay extremely poor salaries"
• "Good!! I spent 7 years with Capita & it is an experience I will remember for the rest of my life" (employee in Mumbai)
• "Excellent place to work"

 In August this year Capita's IT services staff voted to go on strike after they were notified of redundancies as jobs are moved to India. At present there are no plans to move Barnet jobs overseas, but will that promise still hold when cost savings are under pressure?

Capita is a FTSE 100 PLC. It has shareholders to keep happy and as a result it will do what is right for them. However, that may conflict with the objectives of a local authority and it may offer a completely different culture for staff. I hope that Capita can deliver on the promises in their bid but I suspect that many of the comments above may be echoed around NLBP once Capita take over. Happy and motivated staff are best placed to deliver great service. If staff are unhappy it will be much harder for residents to receive the service they deserve. Maybe that is why there is a major focus on replacing people with technology.