This is taken from Ariel, w/c March 6 2006:

QUESTIONS YOU ASKED THE DG ON THE SURVEY

Mark Thompson said he would like to know what people thought of his response to the staff survey - so we asked you and put the points to him.


Q There's a big difference between listening to staff, hearing what they say and agreeing with them. Which do you think managers need to do and how will we know if they have got the balance right?

A Perhaps the key word is not listening but hearing and when you hear someone it means that you take what they say seriously. I think it would be wrong for me or other managers in the BBC to guarantee in advance that we would implement everything that staff said to us. Our job is to weigh lots of different interests and the interests of staff are an important part of that. I think one way staff will know that we're not just listening but hearing is whether we can point at things we have done that have had input from them.

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Q How can you prevent the farce of pretending to consult people and then ignoring them? It sounds as if this is going to happen again over creative future.

A In some ways, almost everything I am trying to do at the BBC has been inspired by things that people have said to me. I do spend a lot of time going round listening to staff at every level and some of the things I'm trying to do have come out of that. Creative future has already involved hundreds of people. What people will hear in a few weeks time are some of the headlines and the question of how this will affect people across the BBC is absolutely up for discussion. The whole point about listening and taking people's views on board is that, while of course it's for me and the top team to make some of the final decisions, it's also important that people up and down the organisation feel they have got room to manoeuvre. We already delegate a great deal of editorial power and we should do the same when it comes to efficiency. This is the challenge - you tell us how we should do it.

The reason why the listening/responding relationship is such a difficult challenge for senior managers - and why people can feel sceptical about the outcome - is amplified by a follow-up question from Jennifer Clarke whose intervention about the number of job cuts in radio current affairs we covered prominently in Ariel a few weeks ago.

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Q I asked you the question at the news festival about the impact of the budget cuts on current output, in particular radio. At the time you said you would ask Steve Mitchell to investigate whether the cuts had been too severe. Has he looked at this, if so what are his conclusions?

A I have asked and I hope I can come back to her. Clearly Helen Boaden and Steve Mitchell and the team in news thought carefully before announcing their plans for news. I passed on what she had to say to Steve and I'm sure he's taken it seriously.

One questioner wrote to say he had been on a freelance contract for more than three years as a researcher/ap on a programme that has been commissioned for at least a further 12 months. He says he has not been offered a continuing contract because of a summer break in filming each year...

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Q What is the point of making promises to demonstrate a commitment to people when the reality is that the BBC will use any loophole to wriggle out of that responsibility?

A (Mark Thompson did not know the particular circumstances but was prepared to comment on the principle.)

I think a mixture of different lengths of contracts is right for the BBC. Our needs in some parts of programme making vary. I would defend the fact that we want to employ people flexibly, but if anyone wants to draw my attention to what they think is bad practice, I would like to hear about it because I don't think that's right. I have looked into one of two examples brought to my attention already. I think we should employ people fairly according to what we need. It may not mean a staff contract but it may merit a long term contract.

A questioner from BBC People picks up on comments in Mark Thompson's email to staff and suggests that the reason why there is 'uncertainty and frustration for everyone' is because the director general chose to listen to advisors who could not say 'I believe in the BBC and what it stands for'.

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Q The treatment of staff in BBC People has plumbed new depths. We are not stupid. We can all see the vast gap between rhetoric and reality.

A We live in a world where other businesses outsource a lot of finance and human resources functions and that's what we have done to reduce the costs and put the money into programmes. Capita [which won the outsourcing contract] has offices around the country where they do an enormous amount of work for other companies. Capita's proposition made the best sense as they already have a team working for us in Belfast in audience services. Does that have tough consequences for people inside BBC People? I think it does. It's one of the toughest things we have done and it's a very difficult period for them. I accept that the changes that we're going through have had a more profound impact on BBC People than on any other part of the BBC. I hope that even though there will be fewer people in BBC People they will have a more rewarding job with simpler systems and processes. I know that people in that division and in other support divisions feel proud of working for the BBC and I would just ask everyone to see that we have an enormous number of things we have to do. The staff survey shows that staff understand we have to meet the new needs of the audience and we can't stand still, so we couldn't stand still in terms of human resources.

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Q Do you think there is a sufficiently robust view of the ideal characteristics of an excellent manager in the BBC?

A No, I don't. I think one of the big tasks for all of us in the next year or so is to agree with our managers what they think we should be doing, what we expect of them and what we don't expect, what training they need, what support they need from their bosses and from their teams. We need managers who are great leaders, we also need managers who are good managers. I think staff have a right to expect certain things from their managers, a clear brief about what is going on, regular feedback, proper annual appraisals, honesty about performance, praise when they are doing a good job, early warning when things aren't going so well. The days when a manager could say I'm not interested in finance, it's not my job - that's over. I think people like me should have sympathy for what it's like to be a manager as we go through change. Some of the biggest pressures play on people in the middle of the organisation.

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Q Decisions like chopping down World Service and setting up an Arabic tv channel should be discussed with staff before implementation rather than the other way round.

A It is quite difficult to see how you can throw open decisions like that, particularly when they involve the employment of people and external stakeholders. In this case, many of the post cold war countries had multiple free media and tv and audience need had changed. Meanwhile in the Middle East and the Arab world a need was growing, so the idea of transferring a resource from the first to the second is a reasonable one. To the questioner I would say, where we can, I think the idea that staff should get that sense of context, should have a chance of input before management have made up their mind what the recommended strategy is, is a good idea and I think we should do more of it.