By Earl Carter and Frank McMahonEmployee under-performance is expensive, time-consuming and bad for morale. This book is essential reading for managers who want to improve employee performance. Drawing upon the authors’ experience of developing a risk management approach to people management, the book covers all the tools required for implementing a performance management system and includes setting the scene for workplace coaching, conducting formal reviews and what to do when the response to the coaching is inadequate. The theory is illustrated by case studies.

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Public sector employment has risen every year from 1998 and in June 2005 it reached 5,846,000. This was an increase over the period of 11.6%. The private sector increase was 5.7%. The figures are published in report from the Office for National Statistics, ‘Public Sector Employment Trends 2005’. The savings required by the Gershon efficiency review which recommended cuts in the civil service and other back-office jobs across the public sector appear to have stopped the growth trend.A recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that there are employers in the public sector who expect to employ more staff, but these increases are entirely offset by those expecting to employ fewer people. In the current year local councils intend to make efficiency gains exceeding 1.1 billion pounds according to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Over half of the efficiencies are being sought from individual service departments such as Social Services, and the remainder from activities either supporting or cutting across several direct services to the public.

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With many public bodies in central and local government planning to celebrate achievement of the e-government target of getting all services on-line by December 2005, the EU has sent a wakeup call about take-up of the services. Many voices have warned about low take-up and the need to market the benefits more aggressively, but the results of an EU wide survey provides the hard evidence that the public in the UK are not yet experiencing the improved services that e-government can bring.The survey by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, provides a picture of use of on-line services across 26 member states. EU wide, the Internet is used by 47% of individuals and by 89% of enterprises. Only those who use the Internet were included in the survey. The results show that 31% of private individuals who use the Internet in the UK obtained information on-line compared to the EU average of 45%. This puts the UK behind Latvia, Portugal and Slovenia. Denmark, Finland and Germany took the first three places with 52%, 51% and 46% respectively.

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By David Allen The continual seeking out of new ways to improve performance combined with the demand for evidence based policy and practice are driving a demand for more research in local government. The author examines the difficulty of getting the right focus for the research when the problem holder may be unsure or even unaware of the nub of the problem. He suggests an approach for getting a better focus.

The local e-democracy project, one of 22 national projects initiated and funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, is being rolled-out for general use following successful piloting by 21 local councils across the country.Evaluation of the project by the Oxford Internet Institute and the Edinburgh based Napier University show that local e-Democracy National Project pilots, ranging from the community based to council initiated, can build an on-going interest in local democracy.

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The NHS plans in 2008 to reduce the time patients wait for an operation to 18 weeks from GP referral to hospital admission. Responsibility for managing waiting times will be transferred from hospitals to primary care trusts. This radical change raises many issues and the NHS wants the views of stakeholder organizations on shaping the new plans.Traditionally individual hospitals have been responsible for achieving targets to improve access and reduce waiting times, but some parts of the journey from referral, such as in-patient waits and out-patient waits and waits for diagnostics, have not been measured. By December 2008, the whole patient journey will be managed and measured as one. For the first time, primary care trusts will be responsible for ensuring all of the local health providers move patients as quickly as possible through the different stages towards treatment.

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Speaking to the North West Improvement Network in Manchester David Miliband, Minister of Communities and Local Government, set out the Government’s view of ‘community’. Polls indicate that confidence about the future of communities is not high and many people have identified a growing sense of powerlessness in the face of rapid change. The belief that individuals can act with others to achieve societal change is not strong.’People say they want to live in a place where you can trust others, and feel a sense of pride and belonging. But these are things that consumers cannot buy and for which MPs cannot legislate. They exist in a space between the state and the individual – a space often called civic society, or community. It is a space defined by shared values, interests, activities, institutions and spaces. And the politics of community is about how we nurture those things we share. Success will be measured in tangible differences – less crime, better health, and better education. But there are also the intangible benefits – higher aspirations, clearer expectations of how to behave, trust in other citizens and institutions, and a sense of belonging and ownership, with citizens feeling pride in their neighbourhood, and a sense that local services – the police, schools, childcare, GPs – are run by us rather than them.’

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Students from low-income families are more likely to take jobs that do not require a degree because of the financial pressures they face when they leave university, according to a report today. The research by the University of Glasgow finds that students from less well off backgrounds pay more for higher education because they incur heavier debts and receive less help with repayments after they graduate.Today’s report, produced for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is the last in a series charting the progress through higher education of young people from disadvantaged areas of western Scotland. The researchers found that students without significant financial support from families often felt compelled to take the first job that came along. That in turn made it harder for them to begin graduate careers or to gain the skills that would help them move to better paid jobs where they would be more able to pay off their debts.

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The Government is thinking of freezing the recycling and composting targets that local authorities have to meet in 2007-08 at their current levels but a final decision will not be made until the completion of a consultation exercise that has just been launched.Targets, designed to cut the levels of waste being sent to landfill sites, were first set in 2000 and the current aims are due to run until the end of March next year. They are designed to deliver the Government’s overall aim that at least a quarter of household waste should be recycled or composted by this year.

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By Joan C. Dessinger and James L. MoseleyThis much-needed book offers trainers, consultants, evaluation professionals, and human resource executives and practitioners a hands-on resource for understanding and applying the proven principles of confirmative evaluation. Confirmative evaluation is a marriage of evaluation and continuous improvement. Unlike other types of evaluation which are used during the design of a learning program or applied immediately after conducting a program, confirmative evaluation follows several months after the program is implemented. It tests the endurance of outcomes, the return on investment, and establishes the effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and value of the training over time.

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