The following was submitted to http://www.workplace2020.org.uk/your-ideas/ on 3/9/2016.
I would like to see managers be elected by workers. In the common case where managers need to be hired from the outside, workers should have at least one representative on the hiring committee.
If Labour is to renationalise strategic parts of industry, we need a plan to make sure, and enable those industries so they do not fall into sluggish soviet-style bureaucracies, where there is no urgency or motivation to succeed outside of the minimum requirements.
Having elected management will bring a dynamic force that is hungry to succeed. The difference here compared to private industry is that managers will not be able to “crack the whip” so hard, by which I mean more successfully exploit workers to increase profits at the risk of losing worker support. Managers and workers will need to work cooperatively to succeed.
It is important to understand this new paradigm from the managers perspective. Management would no longer be a career, and the company would have to gently parachute a manager that has lost an election into a role that is suitable for their skills.
One of the best places this could be trialed is in education where senior and head teachers are actual teachers, in my experience. The school staff should be able to vote for a member of staff they wish to be head teacher, if the current head teacher loses the election they become teachers in their current school.
I do not think it is fair that once a person becomes part of management, they can forever be a manager. This is often the case, no matter how they perform at their job, or how they treat their staff.
I would also like to see something similar with the BBC. The heads of departments should be voted for by workers, license payers should also get to vote.
Going further I believe that managers that have authority over people should be required to see psychologists to check that they are capable of working with people in a respectful way.
