What a farce! Council cuts 2,000 jobs... but hires actors to play binmen!
A CASH-STRAPPED Scottish council which is planning to shed 2,000 jobs is hiring actors to impersonate binmen, road workers and care-home staff.
The actors are being recruited for role-play sessions to help managers practise ‘challenging performance improvement conversations’.
City of Edinburgh Council, which is aiming to save £148 million by 2020, is spending thousands of pounds on courses to help bosses initiate what it also calls ‘courageous and stretching performance conversations’ with staff whose jobs are under threat.
However, critics last night attacked the ‘ridiculous’ move.
A total of 45 two-day workshops will take place between January and March next year for 450 managers – with up to four three-hour sessions every week.
Two actors will be involved in the sessions and afterwards they will give feedback on how well each participant handled staff under pressure.
An advert published last week said: ‘The council is undergoing a period of culture change and is aspiring to create a culture of learning, performance and partnership-working.
‘Each workshop will be a two-day workshop and actors will be needed for the afternoon of the second day to help participants practice more challenging performance improvement conversations.
‘Actors will be playing the part of employees during a performance issue conversation. Actors will be required to adapt their acting style as appropriate to a wide range of operating environments and audiences.
‘These will include corporate headquarters, care at home, care homes and manual services such as a roads or waste team.’
The Mail on Sunday understands each actor will earn around £250 for their three-hour stint – which would make the total cost of 45 sessions £22,500.
The local authority will also have to provide cover for senior staff while they are away from their desks.
Scottish Conservative local government spokesman Graham Simpson said: ‘Council tax payers could barely stomach these ridiculous stunts when times were good. But now local authorities are under so much financial pressure, people will be even more angry that these expensive activities still go on.
‘This kind of mumbo-jumbo makes the blood boil. It’s breathtaking that councils still think that it’s acceptable to throw away money on airyfairy nonsense like this when services are struggling.’
Eben Wilson, director of campaign group TaxpayerScotland said: ‘Taxpayers have to ask if we can ever get value for money from these exercises.
‘The scope for staff cynicism and disruption of normal working days is huge.
‘Doing this at half the price might achieve similar results.’
Lorne Boswell, national official for Scotland and Northern Ireland at actors’ union Equity, said: ‘Pay depends on what it involves. Some roleplay is really simple; some much more complicated. For executive management training they can pay really rather well per day.’
Around 700 staff have agreed to leave the council, with leaders planning to axe a total of 2,000 jobs.
A council spokesman yesterday declined to reveal how much has been budgeted for the workshops.
She said: ‘This is an established practice and organisations have been doing this for many years.’
‘Throwing away money on airy-fairy nonsense’
WORKERS facing redundancy in Scotland’s capital city may rest assured – the managers throwing them on to the scrapheap will do so with great sensitivity.
They can be confident of the cold crumb of comfort because the senior staff doing the firing have hired actors to help them ‘role-play’ the difficult meetings to come. Were people’s livelihoods not in the balance, this would be comical.
If budgets are so tight at the City of Edinburgh Council, surely the employment of actors to help managers practise dealing with staff might be considered something of a luxury.
This wrongheaded plan should be scrapped before managers and actors perform in a publicly funded farce.