Paul Murphy Questions CEA Structure and Culture Audit Findings

Thanks a lot, and thanks for coming before us. I just want to go back to the issue of the structure of the Corporate Enforcement Authority. So, as you've outlined, you've been the sole member of the Corporate Enforcement Authority since it was established. Prior to that, you were the Director of the ODCE. And obviously, one of the distinctions between the ODCE and the Corporate Enforcement Authority is the fact that that was a structure with one Director. This is a structure that, according to the Act, can have up to three members of which one is a chairperson. And yes, four years will have passed between the time of the establishment and then, well, we have a full complement of what's possible of three members. In that time between the establishment of the Corporate Enforcement Authority and now the Act of Recruitment of two more members, have you ever made any representations to the Minister in relation to the filling of those positions? Either advocating the positions should be filled, that that would assist you in your work, or alternatively saying, you know, I think it's better that there's just one of us, if you ever had any interactions with the Minister in relation to that. Thanks Deputy. My recollection is that I did back when Minister Varadkar was the Minister for Enterprise at the time, and I think at the time he, I think he had visited the ODCE or CEA at the time, I can't remember which, sorry, it must have been the CEA, and at that stage he asked, and I said I'd come back to him on that, and then I wrote to him, and I said at that particular time I didn't think there was any need for the appointment of any additional members, but that in due course, as the organisation continued to expand it, that was likely to be necessary, as reflected in the fact that it's been inbuilt into the legislation in any event. And that was roughly when? Oh Deputy, I don't, I have no idea, I mean he was the Minister for Enterprise, I'm guessing, I must have been 22, I don't know for sure. Early enough, so at that stage you had communication saying, I prefer for now that we stick with one, and then did you ever have any communication at any later stage, saying now on reflection with the greater caseload, and we're up and running, and now I think it would make sense to move to three? Yeah, that was last May I think, or thereabouts, and I wrote to Minister Burke at that stage, at that stage I requested that he give consideration to the appointment of one or two other members of the authority to bring it up to, but to increase the scale of it obviously. And then subsequently the recruitment process for those two additional members? Yeah, I was requested to furnish some clarification, which I did, and thereafter Minister Burke decided that he was prepared to accede to that request, and then as I understand it, he embarked upon the request for sanction process with his counterpart in public expenditure, and then subsequent to that I was advised that that sanction had been forthcoming, that Minister Burke had decided to appoint two more, and then I was asked to give some information around possible job specs and things like that. Okay, thanks a lot. Just to go back to the issue of kind of employee satisfaction, the point was made earlier about having an evidence-based approach to this. You conducted a, or a cultural audit was conducted in the course of last year. Can you tell me why was that done, and the headlines of the results? Sure, yeah. Back when, I think it was probably around the time that the CEA was being established, or prior to that, we had planned to do this in any event, but then for a variety of reasons, we did a lot of chopping and changing at that particular position, with special leave and with someone in a temporary secondment and so on. So to be honest, it's just something that we didn't get around to. So then, actually I'm going to ask Susan, or Suzanne rather, to just to elaborate on around the timing and so on, before we did proceed with that. Yeah, so I think part of the reason was, at the timing when we first looked at a culture audit, that was in approximately mid-2023, a survey or a culture audit, and at that time there was still recruitment as part of our statement of strategy. For that period of time, it was to build capacity within the organisation. We've gone through a rapid expansion since then, so it was timely then to actually do that in this year, last year, sorry, last year. So we engaged through a proper procurement process, we engaged Great Place to Work to conduct a survey for us, and then based on that then we decided to support that even further, putting the emphasis on the employee's voice. So what we've done is, we've brought in an external consultant, and we've done one-to-ones, staff workshops, leadership meetings. Just before we get there, what were the results of the survey? So the results of the survey, we got a 70-plus response rate, and we got a 54% trust index score or satisfaction score in the organisation. That would be, when you're implementing surveys for the first time in an organisation, that would be pretty standard. It is underneath the benchmark for the public sector. It's reported that staff, we're told, is well below the public sector average. It's 20% on average below the public sector. There's some parts with that are quite strong, so our diversity and inclusion is quite a strong metric, and there's other parts that need to work on. However, what happens is data is data, so it's a set of data that we have to work with that comes out of these. And the only way that you can find what is behind that data is actually to talk to the staff. So instead of the leadership team having an input into the action plan, we wanted the staff front and centre to see what are the issues that you're experiencing. And the survey would have been conducted anonymously? Yes, it was indeed, yeah. I mean, there is a difference between talking to the staff, isn't it? The staff may feel free to say in a survey I'm not satisfied when certainly hypothetically it's possible that they may not feel free to say that to management. Yeah, totally appreciate that, Deputy. So what we did then was to ensure, because it was the first time we were bringing it in, we actually procured an external consultant. So that then was going to be an independent person that was going to be running this, which meant that it was going to give that independence in relation to hearing their voice. There is a steering committee as well for that. So we take this very seriously and we want to, obviously with rapid progression in a complex organisation, we have skill sets across the board and we want to hear from everybody in order to make it a great place to work. Management and leadership scored 47%, strategy and direction scored 44%. Those compared to public sector averages on those of 73% and 70%. So there's even greater gulf when it comes to those issues below public sector. And therefore, earlier on, I think it was you who was saying we need to have an evidence-based approach, but the evidence there isn't good. It does suggest there is dissatisfaction. Absolutely, absolutely. And where I'm going there is the evidence based on what came out of them is more in relation to communication. So it's the style of communication that they want. They want to be aware of things. There's discontent with some people that came out in the workshops in relation to what's been portrayed in the media is absolutely not the way that they feel that they are in the organisation. I think that's quite important. So therefore, it was that we need to emphasise their own input, because they're very critical to the organisation going forward. And if that's the case, that we have to do town halls. One question. Were the Gardaí included in that survey or not? Yes, they are. They're part of that. Everyone works there. They're a CEA officer of the organisation. We don't make distinctions in that. Every single person in the organisation has a part to play in making it successful. Okay. And then in terms of communications, I saw it reported that Mr Drennan used a series of rugby analogies to motivate the workers, pictures of Ronan O'Garr and so on, after to kind of contextualise these results and say we can do better and so on. How did that, did it work? Thanks, Deputy. I'm not sure the intention of it was to motivate them. I think it was rather to, I suppose, to add a degree of levity to what is a serious subject. Sometimes a picture paints a thousand points and it's just a useful way. I suppose some of the pictures were around commitment and some of them were around the fact that, you know, the fact that, you know, people at any level in an organisation, you know, there can be tensions between people, but we still have to pull together as a team. So that was really it. I mean, I think it engendered a degree of amusement, which was the purpose of the exercise to, as I said, to try and inject a degree of levity into it. And do you think if a survey was done again now, let's say, starting now, do you think it's likely that the results would be a fair bit better than they were last year? I think, I'm going to take that. Sorry, do you, sorry. Yeah, sorry, just, we are actually doing pulse surveys. So the plan is to do pulse surveys to take a temperature of the organisation. And I do believe, and then I'll refer you back then to Ian, I do believe that the results will be a lot more positive now if we've done them. And already what we're doing is we're implementing town halls and different things, and we are doing a session with the staff, and the external consultant is doing a session with the staff in early February. And that's in relation to seeing if they're happy with what we're going to have for an action plan going forward. Thanks. I just wanted to supplement that, I suppose. The purpose of the exercise was to get a benchmark. And as Suzanne has said, the benchmark will typically not necessarily be brilliant. So, you know, we're not, to answer your question, I mean, I don't imagine if we did it tomorrow, it would be, you know, significantly improved. I mean, it's a journey, it's a process we're on. What we wanted to do with the workshops that we did afterwards, I suppose the first thing is, as you touched on, Deputy, the survey was anonymous in nature. We haven't seen the comments. People were allowed to feed comments into it. We've never seen those. We gave an undertaking that we wouldn't. But we really wanted to understand in the workshops, like, what's driving these results? Because if it's, you know, if it's a heavy level of disconsent, that's a different issue. But a lot of what's coming out, and Suzanne can correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of it is around communication, that we can do better in talking to people, do better in terms of giving people an understanding of what's going on within the organisation. There are certain, clearly there are certain challenges in the context of what we do. Certain of it is confidential in nature and shouldn't be disseminated across the organisation. But there are things that can be done in terms of work, town halls and that sort of thing. Well, I have a kind of a bit of an analogy to that term. But I mean, the presentation and the set of slides and so on is designed to sort of start that ball rolling, if you like, in terms of bringing everybody together. The other thing is, you know, it's been touched on, we've got, you've got people working shifts, you've got people working nine to five, and that can be an ongoing challenge. And trying to get all those people together into the same room. We've a lot of new people as well. You know, some of the people have said to me afterwards, oh, I met so-and-so. I didn't even know they worked in the organisation. So there are things we can do better, obviously. And they're, they're sort of easy wins from our perspective. But I mean, Suzanne will elaborate on this, but certainly the sense that I'm getting back is that, and we had the, we had some feedback from the consultant, is that people find it a nice, pleasant place to work. That's very different how it's been portrayed externally, obviously. Um, but ultimately what we want is an organisation where people feel fulfilled, happy, um, believe that what we do is important. And I mean, I think I, I neglected to mention it earlier on, but when we did the, the recent competition for Gardaí, I mean, we had about twice as many applicants as there were vacant positions, notwithstanding the, the narrative. And in addition to that, when we're advertising positions at the moment, for most recently for lawyers and so on, they're being oversubscribed as well, and we're getting really good people. Thanks a lot. Thanks, David.