Examples of waste in public sector?

[Hammy02]

I started a 3 month temp contract and they put me on a 2 day induction course. I didn't need to know the minutae of the organisation for a 3 month contract.
Had to fill out a form to get a book of stamps.
Had to fill out a form to get space in Outlook increased. No-one was EVER turned down for this so what was the point in the form?!

That is awful! Most public service bodies have a whole bureaucracy to put people off taking sick days e.g. return to work interviews, trigger points for formal interview and could lead to you being sacked.

What you describe is more like the practice in some american firms.

As there is no such department as Inland Revenue your friend clearly works for la la land instead.

For the record you're either being inflammatory or your 'friend' is a fantasist and liar.

F* this kind of shite really pisses me off.

Well taz I may be out of date but that has certainly been my experience of family and friends who have worked for the civil service. My exH worked for the MOD (over 20 years ago admittedly) for a while and it was accepted as standard practice there. Sorry.

tazmosis, my friend is not a fantasict. What ever the dept is called it was tax collection of some kind, she ordered the stationary , her bosses were tax inspectors (the kind that turn up wanting to look at your books if you are self employed) as I never worked there i dont know the correct name.I have however met quite a few of her work mates who all told me the same thing about the sick days.
As for wanting to be inflammatory you can search all of my previous posts to see i have no thoughts either way on public sector pay, benefits ect.

come on Taz - are you seriously so fussy as to not allow someone to call the non-VAT/ Customs part of HMRC the "Inland Revenue" ?

I was made bankrupt by I.R. so to me the name is almost branded into my forehead, for all the wrong reasons !!

Actually I have just searched my own posts and they mainly seem to be about cleaning the house - I may be obsessed with cleaning but I am certainly not some kind of anti public sector agitator!

It has never been standard practice in my Dept and we are inflexible in the way we deal with anybody who has repeated sick absences - putting people on special measures which can result in their employment being terminated for inefficiency if they take further sick leave.

MOD is clearly an exception - DWP is brutal for sacking people and HMRC aren't much better.

This kind of misinformation really angers me.

On a different thread recently I mentioned my sister having worked for Social Services and someone jumped in feet first to have a go at me as childminders are not checked by Soc Serv any more.

Felt like saying pardon me for breathing, but that was dept she worked for and I have not kept track of job title or employment department name in the last 30-40 years... heck, have only seen that sister 4 or 5 times in 20 years and of those times, 2 were at funerals of close family (brother, mother) so careers were not uppermost in our thoughts!

well on the basis that you don't know the exact specific names for government departments you are clearly a liar and a troublemaker.

Well NWG, I've noticed that children in care are now referred to as 'Looked After'. Presumably because the phrase 'in care' carries a stigma. But eventually once everyone gets used to the phrase 'Looked After' (n.b. capital letters appear to be important) and understands that it is a euphemism for being in care, then that too will carry stigma. So some committee or other will be given a budget to eat danish pastries and drink coffee in a suite at the Holiday Inn Slough, while they discuss what to call it next.

My dept made a load of redundancies a while back. They're not using agency staff at approx 3 times the cost. Bonkers.

Do you mean they are now using agency staff?

I have worked in the public service my entire career and have never seen what some of you are talking about re repeated sick leave and so on. I notice that most of the people defending the public service are those who actually work there, and those with these stories of waste are of that "a friend said, an ex said" variety, so perhaps don't have the same perspective. When you work in any industry you see the whole story - that there is some waste, but there are also cut backs, and people that work very hard and efficiently. When you simply hear these stories through a friend of a friend you hardly have the whole picture.

Yes there is waste, but waste in some areas of the public service does not mean that there is waste everywhere. Every LA/RDA/govt dept has its own workplace culture, so a story your friend's sister's daughter has told you about one place does not mean that everywhere else is the same. I have worked in four depts - one RDA, one central govt dept and two LAs, and can say there was silly waste in one, insane cost cutting in two to the detriment of staff morale, and the other one was neither wasteful nor overly thrifty.

Er, yes

Seems to me that there is a difference between the kind of "general civil service/council type" jobs and actual frontline jobs. Certainly in frontline jobs such as police, teaching, social work etc, there is no allocated sick leave. They are terrified of people being off sick, because they are difficult to replace well for a short period.

Most people try to be reasonably sensitive in what they others and keep up with trends and I have seen "looked after" rather than "in care" but sometimes you just aren't right up to date. It doesn't mean you are being abusive. I used Afro Caribbean on here the other day and that was picked up on as a phrase.

On sick leave I want some people on here who work for the public sector to tell me their sick pay arrangements. Most people in the private sector work in small companies. The standard offering is you are not paid at all for the first three days off sick and then SSP kicks in at state rates.Is it the same in the public sector?

There is SSP from day one but nobody I know takes sick leave unless they really have to. The pay is nothing to do with it, there is simply no time to be ill and there is no one to cover if you're off. Maybe some in other areas of the public (and private) sectors DO take the piss but not in my experience.

I am just wondering why the public sector is being criticised for having basic, acceptable terms and conditions. Save your energy for those unscrupulous private companies that don't set aside any contingency money for staffing issues.

And wtf is all this crap about "allocated sick leave"? My only experience of anything like this was a maximum number of days being allowed before disciplinary action could be taken. If you were unlucky enough to get two bad bouts of flu one year you'd be losing your increment. They can't change pay upwards or downwards if your work's exceptionally good or bad, but they can for illness that's out of your control. Crazy, but I never ever came across it being seen as "allocated days".

I will allow that the flexitime system DOES work to encourage days off sick if you choose to think that way. I was really ill in the first months of my last pregnancy. I struggled in every day but sometimes couldn't complete my full hours. I ended up with a huge deficit of time to make up, which thankfully my manager agreed to write off. If I had phoned in sick on those days I would have automatically had all my hours credited to me. THAT is a crazy system and it drives me mad. I can't afford (time wise) to be off sick so I didn't take the days off, but I can see that some would do so.

But PLEASE don't confuse the SYSTEM and the STAFF. Dedicated staff do NOT play the system even if it is theoretically possible.

Sure Xenia - in the NHS if you are long term sick it's six months full pay and six months half pay. I've never needed to use it so don't know how accurate this is at the moment - lots of changes have happened since I needed to know for a mortgage offer. Sick leave is generous imo but have never known anyone (apart from a midwife who was in a car accident) need it.

I have always wotked in the NHS and the waste has at times driven me mad - renaming and rebranding stuff for example - all new letterheads every bloody time.

But.... I have never been paid overtime - EVER. It just has not been on offer in the NHS while I have been there (nearly 25 years). I have lost count of the number of hours I have worked and never been paid for or been able to take back in lieu. I have been abused physically and verbally as a nurse.
All the meetings I attend are "lunchtime" meetings which is good as it guarentees I get a lunchbreak. They are held on site so no hotels or such like.

So yes - waste in the Public Sector exists but so does exploitation of staff goodwill. I would never walk away from a woman who was telling me about an abusive relationship for example - I would stay and I would offer help for as long as it took. I wouldn't get that time back necessarily but WOULD consider it was worth the time and non-payemnt to ensure a mother and children were safe. That's an example I use because it has happened.

Yes - waste needs to be looked at and the constant (or so it seems) re-naming and re-branding what is essentially the same bloody thing is stupid. As the Govt are doing away with PCTs I await the next lot of re-naming, rebranding and the dumping of loads of existing paper etc.

.... and these threads drive me bloody mad.

Multi vendor agreements that go for the cheapest suppliers which then provide very poor quality products and services. Using consultants to give common sense advice that people on half the pay could have given just as easily if only someone would listen. Recruitment panels of three for staff at admin/junior levels. CRBs for anyone who might come within sniffing distance of a child or vulnerable adult when a very very small percentage of paedophiles have been caught so essentially a piece of paper replacing what should be years of experience and good judgement. Monitoring of every discrimination strand when good manners would do just as nicely.

So it's the admin type jobs and higher ranking admin/managerial jobs which drive people mad then and not the frontline staff who are just picking up the flak?