Being kind to people – the new challenge for the public service

When Labor was re-elected in May, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used his acceptance speech to describe the type of country he wanted to lead.

He spoke of how the Australian people had voted for fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all:

For the strength to show courage in adversity and kindness to those in need. And Australians have voted for a future that holds true to these values.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese election victory speech declaring the Australian people had voted for Australian values.

Noble sentiments from the prime minister.

But can this translate into real change in government organisations? How much work do they have to do to live up to Albanese’s mantra of fairness and kindness towards those in need?

Bureaucracy can be kind

It is important our public institutions, such as the Australian Public Service, are kind, even when they are deciding who can access limited public resources.

We conducted a review of academic research on organisational kindness to understand how organisations can be more generous to those they interact with.

We discovered public service processes often lack kindness, which causes distress and sometimes significant harm. Many people would be familiar with unkind interactions with public services that should be there to serve us, but sometimes make us feel like an enemy.

Kindness has positive benefits not just for the people being served, but for organisations themselves. Our research has found kindness contributes to profit, productivity, performance and favourable community perceptions.

A kinder organisation is also a more trusted one, which is essential for any public service – funded by the public – to retain legitimacy.

Lack of trust

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a case in point.

Other research we have conducted shows individuals find it hard to apply for the NDIS.

In part this stemmed from previous traumatic experiences with accessing government agencies, which resulted in a lack of trust in other public services.

A study of NDIS participant experiences has also found complexity, poor communication, and confusing or inconsistent rules causes distress.

Recent media coverage has focused on National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) decision-making processes that participants and families believe to be unkind. This includes surprise plan reviews where people feel unprepared and unsupported.

Another example is the combative approach by the NDIA to people’s complaints, which makes complaining distressing and adversarial.

Complaints are a legal, necessary aspect of a any organisation that services the public. But making it tortuous to complain is a lose-lose situation. It is not just unkind to the individual but problematic in effective running of public services.

What makes public services unkind?

Organisations may not set out to be unkind, but may become that way because of the way they work and think. They may see themselves in service of the public purse, rather than in service to the public.

Particularly in times of budget constraint – such as the 8% growth cap to the NDIS – helping people access services may be seen as undermining cost savings goals. This can lead to practices that degrade or even demonise people who deserve help.

Streamlining ways of working, cutting costs or even making decisions “fairer” by applying the same rules to everyone can be dehumanising.

Individuals often face a “machinery of government” approach based on automated decision-making that lacks warmth and understanding, even where the decisions can be life-changing.

This was most clear in the Morrison government’s Robodebt scheme. Assumptions were made about people based upon incomplete information gathered from administrative systems that did not fully reflect the lives of individuals. This had devastating consequences for many people, as outlined in the Royal Commission findings.

Institutions may also be influenced by political narratives about deserving versus undeserving welfare recipients which prejudice how they are viewed. The “lazy dole bludger” is a classic trope.

These narratives can result in unkind treatment when people need to access unemployment or disability benefits through Centrelink.

How can public institutions be kinder?

Being kind does not mean giving everyone everything they want, or even need.

While hard decisions are sometimes necessary, they can be made in ways considerate of the people receiving the decision.

We identified key barriers and enablers to organisational kindness.

The main hurdles related to organisational culture and entrenched practices which make kindness difficult.

Enablers for building a more generous approach include entrenching kindness as a core value within how organisational policies, processes and practices are structured.

Kindness must be built into the organisational fabric not just enabled at the point of contact with individuals accessing the service.

A kinder community

The values of public services should reflect community values. However, sometimes communities lack kindness as an implicit value or, as noted in the earlier example about welfare recipients, may lack kindness towards particular groups.

Broader kindness movements operating internationally include Kindness Singapore and Kindness UK. These movements aim to make kindness a core social value.

Australian public institutions have received a strong cue from the prime minister that kindness should also be a core business value when serving clients, especially those in need.