A “ blitz spirit ” of paranoia embodied the work of the outsourcing company, according to one person who worked there.

When we arrived, we were shown a tour of the test site. It felt like the set of a mid-range TV series about a nation struggling with an apocalypse. There were cones, shipping containers, and checkpoints. There were patients trapped in their cars, surrounded by mummified medics in protective gear.

The severity of the task hit me later that day as I watched two grown men step back when an old man unrolled his window, nervously shouting at him, “Keep your window closed sir, keep your window closed sir.”

There were men and women strolling around, wearing hi-vis jackets marked with the blue NHS ‘Test and Trace’ logo. On the right arm is another logo: Serco, the private outsourcing company that manages 25% of regional test sites and also handles a significant part of the tracing operation.

It was mid-July 2020, a time of relative calm in the coronavirus pandemic, when most of the conversation in the ads revolved around whether everything was in fact over. Or, to be precise, if the prospect of a “world-leading” testing and traceability system would be able to quell the worst of what was potentially to come.

I had to work on a Mobile Test Unit (MTU) – a small mobile team that could set up impromptu test sites in parking lots, parks and rides etc. to respond to local outbreaks in the event of a case.

A team leader accidentally put an entire bag of tests in the trash, then blamed his team for allowing him to do so. Soon after, he was promoted to run another test site.

At the end of the test site visit, a speech was given which has since stuck in my memory. We were told that our work was of great importance and that one day we could talk to our grandchildren about the role we all played. This was not the first allusion to the war that had been made – the evocation of the very legendary spirit of the British Blitzes of “keep calm and carry on”.

It occurred to me that perhaps by pure chance – while browsing job websites at a fortuitous time – I stumbled upon writing a new national myth. We were to be the Spitfire pilots for the day. Or, to be more precise, perhaps the equivalent of the Spitfire pilot would be the frontline staff of the NHS, and the Test and Tracers would be more like those who threw floodlights into the night sky in the hope of spotting the silhouettes of bombers.

For anyone unfamiliar with Serco, his stamp can be found at six private prisons; waste treatment and recycling facilities in 20 local communities; the controversial Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Center; bicycle rental programs in London and Edinburgh; NHS services (“facility management” and vague “care coordination”); satellite systems; and a specialized surface finishing team for RAF planes and helicopters (mainly decoration planes).

The CEO of Serco is Rupert Soames, the great-grandson of Sir Winston Churchill. According to its website, its values ​​are: trust, care, innovation and pride. The company employs over 30,000 people in the UK and does have its fingers in the government’s cake.

As documented by Byline Times, the company is no stranger to controversy. So it seemed to me that I had been placed at the center of a moment of national and world crisis and of an ideological experiment. In such a moment, could Serco be turned into a national treasure, coming to earn his place on the same high-visibility jacket that proudly sported the NHS logo? Could our Blitz be successfully outsourced?

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Chronic paranoia

In the first few weeks, however, the grand rhetoric faded – replaced by a entrenched paranoia, voiced by senior staff, about the leaks and negative media coverage.

The Blitz Spirit has shifted from an effort to fight the virus to a Blitz spirit aimed primarily at defending Serco against criticism.

The contact tracing operation in the country was under fire from the media and we were told about the importance of preventing journalists from filming or entering or obtaining any kind of information. We should be on the lookout, depending on management. Serco’s contract was delicate and all the details surrounding it should be protected.

When it comes to the actual working conditions of an MTU under Serco, it is difficult to say whether things would have been much different if the whole operation had been handled by local public health teams – which has been argued by convincingly. What I can say is that the threat and fear of media exposure has fundamentally shaped Serco’s work.

For example, although we received training from military personnel who previously led MTUs, most team leaders had little, in most cases, no public health experience. There were waves of hires and layoffs – perhaps because there was hardly any job selection other than just being asked if you could show up on a certain day and a certain time.

There was an almost “back to school” playground environment: free lunch; the long stretches of time spent standing in empty parking lots, faced with the paradoxical hope that things will start to get busier and the days will go by faster, while at the same time hoping for the exact opposite – to know what a site is busy testing can potentially mean.

It’s only natural that in a job that demands a lot of waiting, boredom – or trying to get rid of it – becomes a priority. This has led to some drama and above average gossip. Against the backdrop of Serco’s angst at negative media coverage, and by extension the potentially shortened contract, all the gossip had an added dimension to the issues raised. Serco’s paranoia spread through the ranks, spreading through the chain of command.

This created a team spirit quite contrary to the Blitz spirit of camaraderie that has been enshrined in the nation’s folklore: management was suspicious of the staff, seeing them as the unit of a public relations disaster. latent; while staff viewed management as incompetent and disorganized.

A team leader accidentally put an entire bag of tests in the trash, then blamed his team for allowing him to do so. Soon after, he was promoted to run another test site.

Mistakes happen in every working environment. But what happened on my test site was a complete misunderstanding of every mistake, likely due to a distorting paranoia of the prospect. Small errors were often taken out of proportion, while large errors were dismissed as insignificant. For anyone associated with errors, the priority was to assign the blame to someone else.

Maybe I could be accused of scraps. But, ultimately, my experience is not so surprising. Serco is a private company – its main interests are the protection of its image and its finances. In this context, he seemed to focus more on the war of attrition than on the larger national effort.

When my team was asked to share positive stories of working on an MTU, which Serco could use as a PR, I remember a shared laugh of disbelief. There was a feeling that we were “all in the same boat” – but for all the wrong reasons.

This article was written under a pseudonym