LONDON — Rookie British MPs are turning to outside management training as they struggle to balance the burden of being both legislator and boss.
Around half of MPs who entered the House of Commons after last year’s Labour landslide victory were new arrivals, and for many it was the first time they had found themselves responsible for managing a team of people.
Unlike other countries — such as the U.S. — where newbie legislators are offered extensive training during post-election transition periods, British parliamentarians are expected to hit the ground running within hours of the votes being tallied.
The result? A notoriously poor workplace environment at the heart of Britain’s democracy that raises the risk of burnout, bullying and constant churn among those responsible for setting laws and advocating for society’s most vulnerable.
‘It was just go and do it yourself’
The urgency to hire staff, prepare contracts and find and furnish a constituency office, all while trying to make sense of Westminster’s archaic traditions, came as a “big culture shock” to new Labour MP Matt Bishop.
Despite management experience from his previous roles as a police officer and school welfare officer, Bishop told POLITICO those unique pressures, combined with an absence of institutional support, had posed a serious challenge for his new intake.
“What I anticipated happening if I won was that there would be a book or a guide that said: ‘This is what you do, this is what you tick off first,’” he said. “But there was nothing, it was just go and do it yourself.”
Fellow Labour MP Beccy Cooper said she too had been “absolutely astounded” at the lack of support when she arrived in parliament last year, warning the system risked setting up new arrivals for failure from the outset.
“I’m massively surprised that this country runs at all. It’s miraculous,” she said. “I think it’s just through people’s sheer bloody-mindedness that anything gets done.”
Responding to the comments, a House of Commons spokesperson said: “The House of Commons aims to provide excellent services to Members, ensuring they have access to the professional support and advice they need to carry out their parliamentary duties.”
The spokesperson added new MPs were given a “comprehensive induction” which included one-on-one guidance on recruitment, staffing and HR. Best practice guides and “tailored” documentation, they said, was also on offer to help MP “recruit and manage their teams quickly and effectively.”
Finally, training
Despite those claims, both Bishop and Cooper are among a cadre of new MPs now signed up to a training and certification scheme being offered by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). Arming legislators with management skills, the group argues, will not only boost productivity but also help improve Westminster’s torrid reputation following a long stream of bullying and sexual harassment scandals.
But Petra Wilton, the CMI’s director of policy and external affairs, said it was “frustrating” that the parliamentary system lacks accountability around who should be responsible for ensuring new MPs are properly supported.
Alongside basic leadership skills, the training will provide MPs with advice on how to implement performance management schemes and handle difficult conversations with staff — many of whom arrive straight from university into a world of harrowing constituency casework and online abuse.
Without a centralized HR system, MPs are largely left to manage those relationships alone — a dynamic that has repeatedly been cited as a contributing factor to Westminster’s often odious workplace culture.
“Some of my colleagues have had some terrible HR issues because they’ve hired people that, frankly, haven’t been a good fit,” Cooper added. “They’ve ended up in all sorts of sticky situations.”
Having entered parliament following a long career as a public health doctor, Cooper claimed she’d spent a significant amount of time trying to work within the constraints of the system to build a “healthy work environment” for her staff — something she said was “not the norm” in Westminster.
“It’s takes a lot of energy just to get things running reasonably normally, because you are trying to run it in a very abnormal environment,” she said.
Adding to those pressures, Bishop argued, is that staffing budgets are strictly controlled by an independent regulator, meaning MPs have no way to compensate staff expected to routinely work beyond their contracted hours and duties.
“I was a union rep in the last school I worked at,” he added. “If the head teacher asked the staff to work an extra two hours a week and not get paid for it, I’d be jumping up and down, and saying we’d walk out and see them at a tribunal.”
But one parliamentary staffer — granted anonymity to speak openly about the issue — cast doubt on whether MPs would benefit from the scheme.
“The problem is MPs are not managers and it’s not a business,” they said. “It’s taxpayers’ money, which some begin to treat as if it were their own.”
Suddenly propelled into a position of power and handed a national media presence, many “begin to believe their own hype,” the staffer claimed. “And while parliament is still more often a place for more noble causes than low skullduggery, the palace can change people. And usually for the worse.”
But with the U.K. being a “nation of accidental managers,” Wilton insists those problems are not unique to Westminster, with CMI research finding that 82 percent of those taking up management positions across the British economy do so without any formal leadership training.
After years of failed attempts, the CMI hopes its new crop of MP “advocates” will finally be able to advance that case — even if Wilton claims the Labour government’s decision to cut a management apprenticeship and instead focus on “sexier” skills around AI and construction does not bode well.
“It’s almost like the Labour government were saying that actually managers can look after themselves, and we want to prioritize socially disadvantaged and younger people,” Wilton said. “Whereas actually you very much need both.”
Esther Webber contributed additional reporting.
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