To wonder why people dislike Civil Servants?

[tequilasunrises]

Disclaimer: I am one.

I’ve only worked in one Government department but it’s mostly filled with people who work incredibly hard and are passionate about what they do. In spite of the fact that they aren’t paid as well as they could be in other industries, have shoddy infrastructure and IT, are understaffed and overworked etc.

Yet many people seem to think we are on some sort of gravy train and just sit around smoking cigars and ripping up taxpayers fivers.

I just wonder why really.

I also know people who join from PS and take a pay cut because they want to make a difference

When will this myth go away? Since the late 1990s the public sector has, on average, paid more than the private sector at most levels up to very senior. That’s before you add in the pension.

You might get the odd board director from a plc who joins the private sector at SCS3 for less money, but that doesn’t support the constant moan of many civil servants that they are underpaid compared to their private sector equivalents.

Most civil servants I worked with would struggle to get the same salary in the private sector, and many couldn’t stand the pace (or hearing criticism of their work). I assumed that the “I could earn much more if I left and went into the private sector” refrain just made them feel better about themselves: realistically they must have known that they had few alternatives.

Sorry, joins the PUBLIC sector at SCS3. Typed in haste!

I don’t think it’s so much public vs private but that big organisations are inefficient.

I'm a CS but have worked in the private sector. CSs who have only been CSs largely have no idea how organisations work outside of the government, the inefficient spending is EYE WATERING, there's just an expectation the money will turn up, when I worked for a charity we knew we were on the brink of bankruptcy and one wrong move would lead to the charity going under and all our jobs gone.

The inefficiency in the spending of public money is frankly disgusting, it's not just CS but local government, police etc too, money is spent very differently compared to commercial organisations I've worked in.

And the pension in the CS is quite excessive really, though my pay would be quite a lot more in the private sector so I'm not concerned by that but it's not like that for every role.

DH works with MOD civil servants and really, really struggles with them. It's hard working with people who have much better terms and conditions than you doing less work.

Apart from the fact we don't go up our salary increments any more (shocking, if I leave that'll be the reason why) the CS has it pretty cushty in a lot of senses and I feel lucky compared to other places I've worked. So maybe it's resentment.

Most Civil Servants on the ground are just as frustrated about ineffecient spending as anyone else yet we can't do anything about it.

For example, we have to book all our travel and accomodation via a service provider that adds a huge mark up - we provide a commerical service and I sometimes have to travel to remote/offshore sites that necessitates booking a flight and because no-one is allowed their own credit card, I have to go on the flight website to find the flight, and instead of just booking there and then, fill in the form so someone else can send the details to the service provider, who then books the flight and when the booking comes back to me, the cost is usually close to double the price on the website.

The service that my department provides is very niche and probably as far from what anyone imagines a CS doing. For example it often involves hard physical work in dirty environments, dangerous substances, UK wide travel and round the clock working.

On the matter of pay, my role pays about 20/30% less than the same role in the private sector, but the hours and workload are probably less. The reason that CS/public sector earn more on average than the private sector is that more people have higher qualifications and a lot of the lower paid roles like cleaners, security, etc have been privatised.

The private sector can also be massively inefficient. I've seen multinationals spend millions on equipment, laboratories etc only to never actually use them for anything, replace them, mothball them, or even knock them down a year or two later.

One of my longest/closest friends has just resigned in disgust from a civil service job. She'd spent the best part of her working life in a variety of small private firms - over 30 years, many of which in logistics admin & planning. I used to work alongside her. She got a CS admin job about a year ago - far higher pay than her private sector small firm admin jobs, plus the CS pension, better holidays, sick/duvet day allowance, etc. She was like a pig in muck when she heard she was successful. All turned sour within days of starting. She couldn't believe how lazy everyone around her was - she'd have done her "day's" work by about 11am whereas others doing the same job had barely even started by then. Her job was to prepare work/day orders for front line staff, i.e. to schedule the work/jobs they had to do each day. She was told to allocate jobs on a "date received" basis based on deadlines. So, say, if there was a 14 day deadline to do a specific job, she had to put it on a worker's day sheet for 14 days' time. Her daily job was to deal with the jobs which had been requested in the past 24 hours. So if no jobs had come in, she had nothing to do. Not only that, but there'd be no jobs for the workers in 14 days' time either. One of the first things she suggested was to review the next 14 days worth of work to see if there were any gaps to bring jobs forward earlier - the others were aghast as the suggestion and her line management point blank refused. She then realised the workers were going all over the place in the working day, i.e. being sent to a village 10 miles away to do a single/short job on the Monday, only to be sent to the same village a day or two later to do another small job - she suggested that both jobs could be done on the same day to save all the wasted travel time - again, told point blank no and to "stop interfering". After a few weeks of her ideas being stone-walled, she took it upon herself to do an exercise showing how the "waiting list" and efficiency (costs of transport etc) could be improved massively just by better planning instead of lazily sticking to the 14 day deadline. She presented it to a senior manager by-passing her line managers. Senior manager appeared very surprised as they'd been constantly getting reports/memos about excessive workload, needing more staff etc, but agreed to read the report/exercise. Next thing, my friend was ostracised/shunned/ignored etc by her colleagues - making a toxic working environment.

Another example was at our local hospital. My neighbour works in the admin/reception area of one of the departments. She is a lifelong CS/NHS worker and is happy to "play the game" just as long as she stays long enough (and gets enough promotions) to maximise her CS pensions. Some of the things she tells me is truly crazy re waste. Even though their "diary" re appointments/treatments is computerised, they also print out a day sheet showing who is expected each day, their appointment/treatments times and the reason. When someone arrives, it's one receiptionists job to tick the sheet and write the time of arrival. Then the sheet is passed to the other receptionist who ticks the box on the computer and enters the arrival time on the computer, and then hands the sheet back to the first receptionist. Apparently, that's why they need two receptionists! (And this is from one of them herself!). It's not to cover breaks either as when one needs to go for their break, they call in one of the admin or HCA staff to cover for them at the counter.

HMRC. Our ridiculously complicated taxation system isn’t entirely the politician’s fault.

When will this myth go away? Since the late 1990s the public sector has, on average, paid more than the private sector at most levels up to very senior. That’s before you add in the pension.

You could certainly earn more in the private sector in IT or as a lawyer.

You could certainly earn more in the private sector in IT or as a lawyer.

Depends on your location, experience and trade/profession. You can say that almost anyone could earn more if they became a medical consultant/surgeon, but that's as unrealistic as saying "earn more as a lawyer"! Some lawyers, especially in regional practices don't even earn enough to be a higher rate taxpayer and can only look in awe at the pay earned by lawyers in the public sector in London!

As people have said, the CS includes a very wide range of jobs.
My only direct and tiny experience is that two of my DD1’s boyfriends have been graduate CS in local government. Different roles but both starting on around 27k in their early 20s quickly rising to 30k. Both often had little to do and were regarded as thrusting young talent by doing, by their own admission, nothing more than you would expect and hope. Both saw/see lots of waste and laziness in colleagues that nobody cares about. Nobody wants to spoil a good thing. Current boyfriend does flexible working and works from home a lot, which I think is fantastic and makes sense, however I assumed he would have to be logged into a Portal and there would be some auditing of input/output, but no. He does submit manual worksheets. In quiet periods he can have nothing to do by 11.00 and just cracks on with housework or games.
Lovely for him and great for my DD1 who works long hours in a private sector job and comes back to a tidy house, but not the best use of public money.
He also gets an extraordinary amount of holiday which regularly increases, and a great pension. He’s hanging on for pension reasons for a bit but then looking elsewhere because it’s so unchallenging he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his working life in comfortable mediocrity.

@SerenDippitty I think that's it, professional roles are often paid less. Admin etc seem to do quite well. That's why they created the Civil Service professional streams to try and improve retention amongst professionals and encourage promotion. I am a "professional" requiring certain qualifications and experience that's not yet classed as a professional stream in the CS, I could earn double or even triple in the private sector in a few years. But right now the CS is very good for paying for the additional training I need, flexibility with a young family and is giving me some of the best experience I can in this sector, whether I decide to stick with government long term is yet to be seen.

"My only direct and tiny experience is that two of my DD1’s boyfriends have been graduate CS in local government"

Civil service and local government are different things.

The NHS and local government workers are NOT civil servants.

I used to be a CS and moved to the private sector (City banking). My salary went up by a third. I lost flexitime but was allowed to work from home two days a week which my manager in the CS was reluctant to allow. My managers in the MoD were shockingly bad! One was a dickhead military officer who I put a grievance in against. The civil servant line manager was another dickhead who was being investigated for fraud when I left.

There were some very nice people and also loads of weirdos. One department was very cliquey and they really did think they were something special because of where they worked.

Banking - yearly bonus, nicer people, lovely presents at Christmas - the hamper from Fortnum and Mason was very much appreciated! I got to travel business class and stay in posh hotels for work.

Sick pay was the same as the CS going up to 6 months full pay, 6 months half pay. Oh and private healthcare!

I suspect the majority of joe public doesn't really know or understand what a civil servant is / does!

My mum has an old saying she likes to quote that goes:

" Does he work?"
" Nah, he's got a job wi' the cooncil"

Multiply the "cooncil" up to the civil service, and you've got a lot of people's opinion of this line of work.

HMRC. Our ridiculously complicated taxation system isn’t entirely the politician’s fault.

Tax/accountancy is my profession and has been for nearly 40 years. I fully agree it's not the politicians who foul up the wording of the laws they propose. It's the back-scene civil servants who botch the actual wording which creates the loopholes and anomalies. Some of the legal wording looks like it's been drafted by a child rather than a so-called CS treasury expert. Though that's no excuse for the MP's who should actually read and understand what they're voting for.

There was a classic a while ago. To paraphrase it, there was a section in an Act of Parliament which defined a non business asset - it was something like "a non business asset is an asset which isn't a business asset". Wow, really helpful!

We also have different definitions between capital gains tax and inheritance tax, so an asset may be a business asset for inheritance tax puposes, but not a business asset for capital gains tax purposes (or vice versa). That was never the intention of Parliament, never even discussed in Parliament. Just simply, different civil servants chose to use different definitions when drafting the different legislation, without any proper scrutiny by Parliament who just "nodded through" both sets of legislation. Then the result is obviously lots of confusion, appeals, tribunal/court challenges, etc. All would have been easily avoidable had the Treasury civil servants actually bothered to check prior definitions rather than making up their own.

Same happened with the changes to "retirement" relief for small business owners, when it changed first to taper relief and then to entreprenneurs relief. Different definitions, different conditions, etc upon each change for no obvious reason and without Parliamentary discussion. Again, simply because the Treasury law drafters didn't follow through the same "rule book" from one system to another, so not only did they change the "headline" policy which had been properly discussed/agreed, they also changed loads of "behind the scenes" wording that was never intended.

Oops yes apologies for that. They are public sector but not civil service.

Depends on your location, experience and trade/profession. You can say that almost anyone could earn more if they became a medical consultant/surgeon, but that's as unrealistic as saying "earn more as a lawyer"! Some lawyers, especially in regional practices don't even earn enough to be a higher rate taxpayer and can only look in awe at the pay earned by lawyers in the public sector in London!

But not all the civil service is located in London. A public sector lawyer working for say a devolved government would earn a lot less than a if they were working for one of the big law firms outside London.

The reason that CS/public sector earn more on average than the private sector is that more people have higher qualifications and a lot of the lower paid roles like cleaners, security, etc have been privatised.

With respect, this is beside the point. The majority of civil servants I have worked with (lots; I was one) earned more, on average, than people in equivalent private sector roles

I know at least 3 in the last year that have joined the CS and have taken a pay cut. One was for work life balance (I think she regrets it) and 2 were because they honestly thought they could make a difference.

That you know three people who have chosen to take a pay cut, for work/life balance or whatever reason, which probably means choosing a different, less demanding role, does not change the fact that, generally speaking, a role in the civil service is likely to be better remunerated than an equivalent private sector role.

“ Since the late 1990s the public sector has, on average, paid more than the private sector at most levels up to very senior. That’s before you add in the pension.“

That’s not the case once adjustments are made for qualifications.

I don’t think that the civil service pay scales are specially reduced for people who don’t have particular qualifications!

I realise that it is difficult to let go of the comfort blanket (‘I’m underpaid and could earn much more in the private sector but choose not to do so because I am so public spirited. I’ll make up for it by whinging though’)

"That you know three people who have chosen to take a pay cut, for work/life balance or whatever reason, which probably means choosing a different, less demanding role, does not change the fact that, generally speaking, a role in the civil service is likely to be better remunerated than an equivalent private sector role."

This is not my experience with IT/Scientific/technical roles. I could walk into a role earning 2-3X higher privately, my DH in the MOD likewise would earn significantly more also in his logistical role. We like the security, pension and locality of our jobs currently though, no martyrdom to society here!

Also our HR (as we don't use central services) is woefully paid compared to a lot of the private sector. At O-EO level at least.

@Kazzyhoward wow that is shocking. If that is some people’s experience I can understand why some would have negative attitudes towards civil servants!

Being honest with myself I am a bit at the way some things are done and yes, there a few weirdos. But I’ve met weirdos in private as well and been annoyed at certain processes!