If you are an EO within the civil service…

[EObutwheretogo]

...and don’t mind sharing, can I please ask what your day to day tasks are? How heavy you feel your workload is, how much responsibility you feel you have and whether or not you have line management responsibilities?

I’m trying to work out how my job compares to those on the same pay grade within other departments.

This is long, but if you’re interested in what I do, feel free to read on.

I am a clerk of court. My job involves being in the courtroom all day, calling cases, taking court minutes, processing all the relevant paperwork for each case eg. Prison extracts, bail papers, letters to Accused persons etc. My caseload can be anywhere from 20- 60 cases per day, sometimes more depending on the type of hearing. I am not legally qualified, however I need to know the relevant areas of law and advise the judge if asked any questions and ensure any disposals are legally competent.

When not in court I have to be on hand to answer phone, email and in person queries from the public/stakeholders. I have to work quickly as the courts are heavily loaded yet accurately as any mistakes in court paperwork can have severe consequences if anything is incorrect- think wrongful arrests, incorrect sentences being carried out. I feel it’s a considerable level of responsibility. In addition I line manage one other AO.

We have flexitime but can’t really get the benefit as you have to be in the courtroom for a long as the court remains in session which depends on the number of cases and how long they take to get through. Then you have to go back to the office to process all the related admin and can’t leave until it’s all done.

I receive £28k per year

Written down, I’m not sure that it really seems like a lot of work for the money. However I and many of my colleagues feel like we have a heavy workload. I feel like I’m sometimes struggling to get everything done. I worry that I’m going to make a mistake and get a bit stressed out sometimes.

Just wondering how this compares to other EO jobs in the CS?

Obviously I’ve name changed for this as it's seriously outing but I’ve been here for years.

Neither, thankfully!

At D/EO, initially I was an IT systems manager with no staff, covering, LAN and WAN systems in a regional office and supporting stand-alones across offices in the south west.
As I ‘modernised’ the systems, connected up the stand-alones etc I cut down the needs of the role and took on managing some of the staff. Then as systems rationalised I lost the specialist parts of the role becoming a stakeholder in national systems

The number of staff rose over time as more sections came under me

I became line manger to 4 sections,
A= 2 x AO/E1
B= 4 to 6 AO/E1
C= 2 x AO/E1 & 2 x industrial skill zones
D= 4 x AO/E1
So I was managing and reporting on up to 16
But I also took on the long term temporary role of department head during restructuring, responsible for my staff plus 3 regions, directly managing 1 each in those and being responsible for up to 150 people throughout

After restructuring the regional areas reduced and went under another area, ultimately getting contracted out under TUPE and sections A-C fell under other managers centraly before the roles were centralised as well (leaving the 2 industrials in situ locally)
I was left managing team D of 2 due to gaps,

Moving on under promotion to C2/HEO I went to a team of 2 (rising to 3) with no staff and I was under a C1/SEO
In this role I was responsible for a subject area and when the 3rd arrived we split the country.
In addition I was the Army policy lead named in policy documents - this was overseeing the service provided by the regional department I had come from, and was subject to review
A different government department were responsible for the service and should have run the restructuring study - they had gaps and with my experience and Army being the largest stakeholder I was ‘adopted’ to run the review on their behalf, they chose from the recommendations

Having run a complete overhaul of that service in Defence, and with later Army restructuring my main role came to an end which on paper left a need for me to be a very unemployed Army policy lead
I declared it as not required, settled on suitable existing roles/people and made my job redundant
I did remain as the ex expert point of contact, but would caveat my responses as lacking authority - only my opinion of the policy that I had set applying to the specific question

Now I remain at C2/HEO in data/information with no staff in a team of 2 with my line manager

Oh my word @tommika! That's sounds like a phenomenal workload and amount of staff to manage. Were you happy doing all that? I don't feel like I have a right to grumble now, given what was expected of you! Was it manageable?

Mostly work was transactional and everyone was mostly easy to run
The management side was being the responsible person for them.
For annual reports I’d get them to write their own first draft which saved writing every report from scratch

It wasn’t much fun having a lot of staff if there were issues, but mostly things were good.

It was rewarding to see people move on
Two joined from school, one of whom went on to be a mother so we had a few conversations on her plans with a preference to stop work but not being able to fully afford doing so. We went through all the options of flexibility to balance things on her return from maternity - but then civil service cuts and voluntary release were brought in so we went through it all again
The other went from quiet teenager doing some admin, supporting me through practically becoming my PA in the major restructuring processes, and ultimately taking on my job.

The Friday that I left I wrote her an email (telling her not to read it until after I was gone) on how I’d seen her progress over the years - but on the Monday morning she sent me a photo of the office door with my name scribbled out and hers replacing me!