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One of the more annoying modern concepts – mainly because it is very real – is the idea of “workplace culture”. Private companies, with the increasing competition for the best employees, are obsessed with the idea of workplace culture. Google, famously, has couches and recreation rooms for staff. At least one other big Dublin firm has a room with playstations and other electronics in it to encourage staff to take breaks. American companies in particular love the idea of starting early, finishing late, and treating your colleagues as family.
By contrast, some offices can develop a poor workplace culture: An environment where persistent lateness is tolerated, or where skimping on the details and the paperwork is common, or where there is next to no accountability for mistakes.
RTE, it should be obvious by now, has a terrible culture. Evidence of that was supplied this week via a contract between Ryan Tubridy, Renault, and RTE: The contract was in effect, even though only two of the parties had signed it. One party, Renault, signed it in 2019. Another, Tubridy’s side, signed it years later. RTE had not signed it at all. Nor, in the furore over the Late Late Toy Show Musical, was it ever made clear who was ultimately held responsible for the financial disaster that that farcical enterprise turned into. The answer is that nobody was.
It has also been made abundantly clear that the issues now being uncovered did not happen under one management team, or as a result of the actions of a few small individuals: As far back as 2008, RTE was paying salaries that were even more exorbitant than it is paying today. The Tubridy contract spans several Chief Financial Officers. The barter account system was not challenged because, simply, that is the way things were done at RTE, and therefore the way things would always be done.
Switching out one or two staff is not going to cut it. Not while the culture remains.
With the best will in the world, employees steeped in the existing RTE culture will not want to change it. Senior management have been paid well, and operated with impunity, for a long time. Changes that affect them adversely will be resisted, or minimised, or shortcutted because that is human nature. They will have developed an attachment to the way that things are done.
The other problem is that the eyes of the existing management are no longer on the best interests of RTE, but on the best way of keeping their jobs. That means that cosmetic changes are likely to be prioritised over real changes. A wage cut here, a financial review there, and a sacrificial lamb or two on the pyre. Human relationships will also get in the way: People are just generally less likely to take actions that will adversely affect the income or working conditions of people they’ve worked with for years at various levels of the company.
It is probably too much to ask for, even in this environment, for RTE simply to be wound up and abolished. As Minister Martin made clear to Ben yesterday, the Government is still wedded to the notion of “public service broadcasting”, regardless of the fact that this is a largely imaginary concept. That RTE will survive is a political certainty.
That said, the best outcome the rest of us can hope for is a complete cleanout.
If the Government and RTE is serious about a change of culture, then the entire board of directors, and every member of the C-level (executive) team should be fired or pensioned off immediately, and an entirely new board and executive hired. The chain of organizational culture, and promoting from within, must be entirely broken.
Ideally, a new team would be appointed from entirely outside RTE: People who have never worked there in their lives, have no loyalty to the staff or way of doing business, and who have a hearty scepticism of RTE’s mission and methods. The new management should be designed to put the fear of God into the employees and producers who’ve gotten away with “same old same old” for nigh on four decades.
Instead, they should recruit from media outlets and companies that have managed to do more with less: Virgin Media. GB News. ITV. Newstalk. Heck, even from the plethora of well-managed and profitable local radio stations around the country, who’ve been providing public service broadcasting on a shoestring for years.
This is not a situation where small changes are going to work. Sack them all.
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