Staff morale is rock bottom at HMRC

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

The Treasury Committee has express concern at the "dire" results for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs of a staff survey that ranked HMRC against 10 other government departments – out of a total of 67 questions, HMRC was ranked last.

The financial crisis and economic downturn put pressure on HMRC in 2008-09, the committee said, and it was difficult to draw accurate conclusions on how successful it was. However, in the survey just 11 per cent of HMRC staff felt that change was well managed in HMRC and employee engagement was 32 per cent – 16 per cent lower than the average score across the 11 government departments.

HMRC management needed to publish a clear and detailed plan to provide focus and direction to their efforts to re-engage with their workforce, the committee said. And bearing in mind that there was a rise in customer complaints, with on average just 57 per cent of calls to HMRC contact centres answered during 2008-09, HMRC needed to improve its customer services. At the same time, HMRC should release more data so that its performance against targets could be measured, the committee said.

Chairman Michael Fallon said: "We are particularly alarmed by the low of staff morale and engagement at HMRC and its effect on performance. We are deeply troubled by the apparent absence of any plan to ameliorate the situation, and call on HMRC management to re-double their efforts here."