The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

  • Home
  • Blog
    • People
    • Data
    • Process
    • Wild Cards
    • Index
  • Podcast
  • Book

Politically Correct

12 February, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

In response to the political scandal about MP’s expense claims, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (ipsa) has been set up.  IPSA will consist of 80 members of staff and is expected to cost £6.5 million every year.  This is on top of the £1.5 million that has already been spent on audits and enquiries into the scandal.

To put this number into context, MP’s have been ordered to repay £1.2 million in expenses claimed since 2004, or £0.2 million per year.  You can see all the facts and figures on the BBC.

By my (admittedly simplistic) maths it will cost £6.5 million every year to prevent £0.2 million of excessive expense claims, or £32.50 cost / £1 over-claim.

This leads me to two questions:

1.  Exactly why do you need 80 people to manage an expense policy?
2.  When is it politically correct to challenge political correctness?

Photo by Heidi Sandstrom. on Unsplash

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: bureaucracy, government, over-processing, political intervention

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

www.squawkpoint.com/

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Explore

accountability assumptions beliefs best practice blame bureaucracy capability clarity command and control communication complexity continuous improvement cost saving culture customer focus data is not information decisions employee performance measures empowerment error proofing fessing up gemba human nature incentives information technology innovation key performance indicators learning management style measurement motivation performance management poor service process control purpose reinforcing behaviour service design silo management systems thinking targets teamwork test and learn trust video waste

Receive Posts by e-Mail

Get the next post delivered straight to your inbox

Creative Commons

This information from The Squawk Point is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Creative Commons Licence
Customer Experience Update

Try This:

  • Solutioneering

  • Circles of Influence: Do You Want Your Team Flexing Their’s?

  • Fish Bone Diagrams – Helpful or Not?

  • Why Were You Late for Work?

Connect

  • E-mail
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • YouTube
  • Cookies
  • Contact Me

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in