This article is written by Victoria Camp, Transformation Manager for Caerphilly County Borough Council

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I recently finished reading Lucy O'Brien and Skin’s book It Takes Blood and Guts, and the phrase inspired me to write this piece about what I think it takes to be successful in the public sector.

My public sector colleagues are tired, frustrated, angry, demoralised and fed up. And that’s not just a Covid thing. They log on, dial in and turn up day after day after day to do their very best. It’s never enough.

Against a tide of social media, changing policy, austerity, transformations, member commitments, policies and strategies, most of us spend most of our time wondering what on earth we are delivering?

But they are also incredible and capable individuals who time after time deliver such astounding results: policies written overnight, social media campaigns in a pinch, procurement feats that baffle, real time care and support to the most vulnerable in our communities, thousands of bags of our stinking rubbish collected every day in every weather.

The secret to all this is that every single person I have met in my public sector career; members, senior officers, refuse collectors have two fundamental beliefs that make them successful in the public sector:

  • The world can be a better place, and

  • My efforts, no matter how small and insignificant, are worth it because (see 1)

My background is in banking: American Corporate Banking. Working in that industry, I lived in a lovely warm blanket of privilege. We saw and dealt with what we wanted. Our circles were not made up of refuse collectors or care workers.

They were predominantly white collar workers. Another world existed, and my eyes were opened to it in 2011 when I was elected as a City Councillor in my hometown.

It was such an honour that people who didn’t even know me had trusted me with their vote to make a difference. I was petrified. Those first few years I found a whole swathe of people for whom life was not easy. The system wasn’t geared to help them, but to obstruct them —  as per housing policy, which states that you need to be homeless before your local authority can help.

The formula I’d grown used to in the private sector — work hard, achieve your goals, get rewarded — didn’t apply in the public sector

Yet now I could help. I could read letters, interact with the organisational beast on their behalf, say useful things and often ask difficult questions. I was largely ignored. My hair wasn’t grey enough and my vagina wasn’t penis enough. My cosseted city life was ripped away and I couldn’t turn back. I needed to help because I am, at my core, a hope addict, and one of my core values is progress. Like my colleagues, I believe the world can be a better place.

I’m almost 7 years in now and I’ve worked for some of the most incredible organisations, from Essex Council, to Monmouthshire and now Caerphilly. Each unique and challenging in different ways. The highs do unfortunately match the lows.

Being told your project is approved after working tirelessly on it for 9 months is incredible, and then there’s being told there's no money for a bonus because only 1 person in a team of 23 is allowed a bonus each year, and that's because...austerity. The formula I’d grown used to in the private sector — work hard, achieve your goals, get rewarded — didn’t apply in the public sector.

That formula goes something like this: Work hard, don’t have total clarity on your goals, work even harder than you could ever have imagined, achieve even less, don’t get rewarded but relentlessly keep going because you are fighting a noble fight!

Had I known that my work in the public sector would see me considering a return to the bottle after 7 years of sobriety; that I would spend 2 years in therapy having worked at a local authority in the most toxic environment; that I would work alongside elected members in a City Council with institutional dinosaurs who exerted a level of control bordering on dictatorship; and that I would need to explain to senior operational colleagues in a Local Authority why it wasn’t acceptable to have a topless calendar in the office; I would have stayed.

A small part of my hopes and fears for the future is in every conversation, every report, every email I write, and so it is for my colleagues

I would have stayed in the private sector, in my Canary Wharf office with my good salary, international travel and structured performance reviews. I would not have welcomed the challenge because I only rose to it by being thrown directly into it.

So why do I stay? Why do I now deliberately take on more challenging roles and wade deep into the trickiest of areas; transformation and culture change? Because I have implemented policies that have changed lives, because I am working alongside people that have dedicated their entire lives to the same aim as me, and that this can make the world a better place.

I know that even on the the days I spend staring at my colleagues via MS Teams, Zoom or across a room, where millimetre by millimetre we inch forward our projects, we are all turning up and not only giving our best, but also giving part of ourselves. A small part of my hopes and fears for the future is in every conversation, every report, every email I write, and so it is for my colleagues.

I cannot tell you whether or not to choose a career in the public sector, and if you do, I cannot tell you how to be successful but I can tell you that if you believe the world can be a better place and that every action, no matter how small, is helping to achieve that, then no matter what you do you will be succeeding at being human. And that’s probably a good enough start.

Skin considers what she would have told her younger self and similar thoughts have helped me when work becomes a battlefield; “Don’t think you are better or worse than anyone in the room (and we all do sometimes) — that’s what ruins your spirit and sense of community in the world”. — Victoria Camp

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