When a new opportunity to pick up some expertise in running some important programs came knocking, I got pretty excited. It sucks that when I answered the door all I saw was a rope ladder being pulled up out of my reach.
I’ve been a public servant for a few years now, and I’m good at what I do, with some successful projects to show for it. I’m ambitious to learn more and get further in my career so I can do even more for public service delivery. But it dawned on me with a new piece of work that my ambitions are completely blocked.
Our department has been given the role to set up an important piece of work that will help people in many remote and regional communities. Only, in line with the way things seem to run these days, my boss outsourced the work, rather than have the organisation handle most of it internally.
Outsourcing opportunities like this seems to be a way of life now. Losing opportunities to get stuck into work like this means I’ve been deprived of an amazing chance to build and test the skills and experience I need to progress up the ranks, to make more changes for the better.
But my boss got the chance to build his skills and career that way. He built up his expertise over a decade or so, learning as the opportunities came up and seizing them.
That’s not so much the case for me and my colleagues. My boss and others like him pulled that rope ladder up behind them before any of us could grab a hold. I’ve seen this happen to many of my colleagues in the past couple of years: an interesting piece of work comes up, and it’s handed to an NGO.
Sadly all of this means that if I want to achieve my goals and get further in the organisation, I have to leave the place to develop the necessary skills. And that just seems absurd, but it’s not like the outsourcing of good opportunities is not going to slow down.
