Co-creating a good public appointments process

Boards Wales takeaways:

This was an exciting, inspirational event that charts the way to a better Public Appointments process in Wales
It was exciting to be in a room with so many people who are working for positive change
This is an important milestone, but also an early point in an ongoing process

A fresh start

Those of us who have had any involvement with the Public Appointments process in Wales know that it could use a little ‘va va voom’ to bring it up to good practice elsewhere. It does the job, but there are areas where it’s lacking in functionality. That’s where this event, held at the Principality Stadium on 5 November, came in!

The brainchild of Hazel Page, head of public appointments at Welsh Government, the event aimed to bring ideas from a wide range of people about ways to improve Wales’ public appointments system.

Hazel deserves huge credit – not just for organising the event and aiming to improve the system, but also for leading Welsh Government to hold up it’s hands and to acknowledge that improvements are both possible and desirable.

Sometimes it’s not easy to admit when we need a bit of help; the implication is that we will then receive criticism for getting it ‘wrong’ beforehand. I take the opposite perspective. As Charles Mackesy puts it in his beautiful book “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse“, asking for help isn’t giving up, it’s a refusal to give up. Welsh Government is demonstrating its collective resolve to do better on governance for the people of Wales by accepting that the process can be improved, and asking for help on how to do it.

A hand drawn image of a horse sitting next to a mole, a boy and a fox. The text reads "asking for help isn't giving up" said the horse, "it's refusing to give up".

The event

I was excited to attend this event. As a governance nerd, I love hearing about the experiences of others. And as a practising Chair of a public body, I am always keen to learn how to do my job better. It’s an infinite journey that hopefully leads me to better outcomes.

The programme certainly looked good and was interactive. The day kicked off with an introduction by the Minister, Jane Hutt, who talked with passion about the commitment of Welsh Government to do it’s best for the people of Wales through the public sector, underlining the importance of Boards in delivering good governance to support service delivery.

A woman dressed in a suit stands speaking into a microphone. A woman sits in front of her on a table.

We then entered the workshop phase of the morning. We self-allocated ourselves to various aspects of the public appointments process. I selected ‘feedback’ from the process, because I wanted to share my experience of being rejected from public appointments and compare it with good practice in the private sector.

It’s really chalk and cheese; no indication from the current Welsh Government system about whether you were in the ballpark for the job, so it’s likely that I won’t bother applying for *that* organisation again. However the private sector job I applied for gave me detailed feedback on how good my application was, and how I compared – not only to the successful applicant – but also to the average applicant.

Some text saying " How your skills compared overall We keep track of what skills are tested by each question, so you can (roughly) break down how your answers did against others for each skill. The top scores shown may not all be from the same person, so don't be disheartened." Then a spider diagram showing how my scores compared with the top scores, and with the average score.

Wow – data that I can do something useful with! They also gave me my scores against each written part of the process. That’s great because it points out exactly where I would need to improve to be successful next time.

I know I’m going to get asked, so I may as well say that the platform used by the company I’d applied for is ‘Be Applied‘. This is definitely not an endorsement of them – there may be others that do it better – but just to highlight the gulf between what looks like good practice to me, and the current public sector offering.

After lunch we had a brilliant pep talk from Sherrie Woolf, who I first met last year when she was on one of my training courses. She utterly impressed me at the time and since with her enthusiasm and no-nonsense approach to governance. She is blazing an amazing trail in Wales and I know that I will be able to learn tonnes back from her in the years to come 🤝

After another workshop session we had the closing talk, and what a masterclass it was in understated brilliance. Professor Elan Closs Stephens gave a tour de force in her life quest to improve governance, starting from the Welsh society at her university, and continuing non-stop.

A woman with glasses and grey hair stands at the LHS of the picture. She is speaking into a microphone. The RHS of the picture shows people sitting around tables listening.

It included the funny anecdote about it being front page news that a state-educated Welsh speaker had been appointed Chair of the BBC! Can you imagine such a thing….all of which says far more about the Telegraph than state-educated Welsh speakers (of which I am proud to call myself one).

Headline of a newspaper saying "New BBC chairman is a state-educated Welsh speaker" and a picture of a woman with grey hair.

What next?

The emphasis of Welsh Government throughout this event was on practical action, and I’m delighted to report that they have been in touch with attendees describing the outcomes for the day and the steps that will be taken to improve the public appointments process.

I’m really interested to see how this proceeds – there is plenty of scope for improving the system, and I’m encouraged by the transparency of the approach and the ongoing communication. They have asked people to stay involved and are setting up a working group to help steer improvements.

Huge kudos to Hazel and her team for organising, and a special mention to Carys Williams who compared with gusto and skill. May we all have the chance one day to serve on a Board with somebody like her!

This blog post is the personal opinion of David Clubb. No AI was used for any part of creating or refining this blog post. It’s entirely the product of my own brain.

Photo by Populimedia – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0