21/11/2020
Priti Patel should have been removed from her post as a result of her comments about human rights lawyers, which led to a violent racist attack on a legal firm in London (something I wrote about in October - click on the image below to view that post).
However, she survived the outrage caused by her comments and Boris Johnson even reinforced the negative tone about immigration lawyers.
Now, a report has confirmed that she has been acting in an unprofessional manner in the work place; that she had bullied staff, not only in the Home Office, but possibly in three different departments.
Sir Alex Allan's report identified failings in the Home Office, including that it was "not as flexible as it could have been" and that Ms Patel has "not always felt supported" by the department. Hover, the report also found that Ms Patel's conduct had fallen below the standards expected of government ministers and cited examples of the home secretary "shouting and swearing" at civil servants.
During my working life I faced people managers with a wide range of relevant skills and extreme variances in management styles. I worked in retail as a teenager, as well as clerical roles in financial services and telesales in a grocery wholesalers. In my early twenties I embarked on a career in financial services, which lasted almost three decades before a benign brain tumour brought it to an end.
I had good managers and bad managers. I also had some really bad managers.
In all my working life, I only had one manager who used intimidation as a management tool. She was set in her ways, having worked at the firm for over 40 years, and definitely hadn't embraced changes in management approaches. I challenged her when her behaviour affected my own direct reports, but not when it was (as was frequently the case) targeted at me.
None of these managers; good, bad, worse or intimidatory, used shouting and swearing as a tool at work.
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I know that some people in some industries will think that shouting and swearing is 'usual' in the workplace. Perhaps they work somewhere where such aggression is commonplace. That doesn't make it 'okay'.
Patel's behaviour is completely unacceptable in any workplace and the standards we should expect from our senior politicians should be such hat they can be seen as an example of good habits, not bad.
Patel's refusal to acknowledge properly her guilt and her attempts to paint her behaviour as passion to get the job done are simply evidence that she believes herself to be above the rules. Unsurprisingly, our mop haired buffoon of a Prime Minister also seems to be keen on protecting her, rather than those who work for her - he has a history of failing to do the right thing.
So, whilst hugely respected civil servants are feeling pressure to resign their posts, Patel gets to stay in her role and, given her failure to acknowledge her faults, gets to carry on bullying staff members.
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