By David R. Caruso and Peter SaloveyIt is generally accepted that emotion should be felt and expressed in carefully controlled ways, and then only in certain environments and at certain times. This is especially true when at work, particularly when managing others. It is considered terribly unprofessional to express emotion while on the job, and many believe that our biggest mistakes and regrets are due to our reactions at those times when our emotions get the better of us. The authors believe that this view of emotion is incorrect. The emotion centers of the brain, they argue, are not relegated to a secondary place in our thinking and reasoning, but instead are an integral part of what it means to think, reason, and to be intelligent. In The Emotionally Intelligent Manager, they show that emotion is not just important, but absolutely necessary for good decision making, taking action to solve problems, coping with change, and succeeding. They detail a practical four-part hierarchy of emotional skills: identifying emotions, using emotions to facilitate thinking, understanding emotions, and managing emotions-and show how we can measure, learn, and develop each skill and employ them in an integrated way to solve our most difficult work-related problems.
Cabinet Office Minister Douglas Alexander has accepted a recommendation from the Advisory Panel on Crown Copyright that the scope for re-using information should extend beyond Whitehall and include local councils and other public bodies. As a result of the decision, the Panel has been re-named the Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information.The thinking of the Panel, which was set up in April 2003, has moved beyond the remit of making greater re-use of Government information, to generic exploitation. Research findings show that public service information is the most valuable body of intellectual capital in the UK, but it is barely managed and under exploited. The sources of information include data and information gathered by various bodies, the work performed on the information, such as reports and analyses and the knowledge and expertise created by public sector staff.
Local government employers and trade unions have agreed to put a provisional pay deal to their constituents. The deal is worth 8.9% over three years. Currently the local government pay bill stands at 14.7 billion pounds for the country’s 1.3 million council workers. The negotiators have produced a package that would benefit both employers and staff.The priority for the employers is to improve the standards of public services and to develop a more flexible economy. They want pay and pay systems to encourage and reward high quality service delivery. A key element is a move away from long service based incremental scales to shorter scales with target points to show employees where they are in relation to others. This would be achieved by combining some service-based increments with competency-based progression. Following the Chancellor’s call for regional pay for public service workers so that the public sector contributes to the increased overall flexibility of the economy as a whole, council pay rates would need to be more locally responsive.