If you work in the Civil Service, how flexible are flexi hours?

[muskateerfour]

Hi, I’ve had a provisional offer for a role within DEFRA. It’s project management so operational and I’ll need to be in the office fairly often. I’ve been advised by HR I can definitely do a couple of late starts each week and have some flex on my working hours. Didn’t delve deeper with HR at this stage as the offer is still only provisional and I would accept the job without flexi hours if needed.

However, I’m already thinking about childcare for school holidays and covering morning school runs, and I wondered how flexi time works for other civil servants? For example, would I need to set out my hours in advance and stick to them without chopping and changing, or could I clock in and out at my discretion as long as I make sure I’m completing my contracted hours each week?

Also wonder if anyone has successfully negotiated additional unpaid leave for school holidays? I’ve heard pro data term time contracts are common, but I would only need to take off some of the school holidays, say 5-6 weeks a year rather than 13.

Thanks in advance.

Cs here too, we also have part year working which is excellent for working parents, you can have between 2-10 weeks and your paid on a pro rata over the year.
Our probationary period is 1 year.
We are also able to take 4 flexi days off in your 4 week flexi period.
Work anytime between 7am and 9pm, depending on your role whether you have to inform your manager if your working weird hours.

Ex-MOD here.

Core times were 10AM-til-noon and 2PM-til-4PM.

You clocked in using a swipe card and it recorded your hours from the moment you entered the building to the moment you walked out. The working week was 37 hours rather than the standard 37.5. So if you worked the standard 37.5-hour week (7.5-hour days), you would be half an hour in credit. Work longer and it was easy to build up flex, up to plus or minus 15 hours which is basically 2 days. If you wanted to leave early one day, then you didn't have to give any notice as long as it wasn't before 4PM, as that's when core time finishes. If you wanted half a day off from flex, that would affect core time, so you would agree it with your manager a few days beforehand and he would normally say yes it's ok.

It entirely depends firstly on the requirements of the role, secondly on the departmental policies and then on the manager. Each govt dept has its own policies so someone in DWP can’t help you with how things will work in DEFRA. (I don’t work in either dept but a different one and have worked in several).

I’d think you wouldn’t have any problems with start times accommodating school runs unless your role involves running a service with set start and end times. I flex my working time around school runs with no issues but in my role I am completely in control of when meetings happen and my work is not customer led.

If you expect to use unpaid parental leave to get time off in school hols all the time that might be a problem. It’s not fair if you always get x weeks unpaid in the school hols and that means other people can’t have time off. As a hiring manager in my current team I would never agree that because it would mean that other team members with kids wouldn’t be able to take time off because of your working pattern, but this is based on the work we do.

Some depts offer the possibility of term time working, but again it depends on the role. It’s rare enough that in 15 yrs I’ve only heard of it once and never met anyone who actually did it!

People are talking on this thread (and do on MN in general) as though 'CS' is one homogenous mass with one set of rules and T&Cs whereas in fact there are nearly half a million civil servants across hundreds of different bodies and what goes for one does not necessarily go for all (except for things like statutory unpaid parental leave which is laid down in law and applies across the whole UK regardless of employer/sector). Even within DEFRA it's a huge department with multiple different ALBs/agencies under it's 'banner' and I can guarantee there will be variance within that, dependent on the business needs of the individual work area, so people confidently saying 'oh yes it's flexi hours between 7-7' or 'it's core hours 10-3' may or may not be right - I've known CS roles where those answers were totally correct, and departments where it was strictly 9-5 hours, little flexibility (for good reason), or where it was shift working 24/7, and everything in between, even within the same 'parent' department.

CS is usually a flexible employer esp for admin roles, so I would guess there will be some flexibility but the only way you can find out the exact situation for your own role will be to ask your line manager - just have the conversation OP, it's unlikely you'll be looked at askance for asking the question...

I used to work there and it is flexible. As long as you do your 7.5 a day and as long as you’re getting your work done they didn’t mind you doing any combination. As I recall it was in any time between 7-10am, leave any time between 3 and 7pm. Everyone had to be in work for core hours of 10am to 3pm though. At one point I did compressed hours too, I worked 5 days hours over 4. It is one of the perks of civil service!

Obviously the higher up you go the less flexible you get to be, of course! I left as an SEO and things were much more flexible as an EO. But in one department we had to be in when they needed us but you’ll know if that’s the case at application and interview. Jobs at the political sharp end like private office liaison or press office are definitely less flexible!

I work 37 hours and can start at 6am and work until 7pm. Minimum of 6 hours and a maximum of 10 per day.
Work have suspended flexitime now we are WFH so we have to do our 37 hours each week but before that we could accrue time over a 4 week period and take up to 2 days off each month. I’m not best pleased about this as it was a major reason for me returning to the CS.

Sometimes we need to cover a rota but in general we can start between 6 and 10am start and finish between 3 and 7pm.

DH is also CS but a different dept and has continued to work flexitime while WFH. His dept are much stricter with allowing leave during busy times - no more than 70% of staff allowed to be off.

What I have also found brilliant is that they allow me to claim back half of the time I use taking dependents to hospital and Doctors appointments. I’ve been caring for my elderly parents and they have been great about me taking time out to take them to appointments.

I wouldn’t be so certain as pp saying its a given that flexibility decreases with seniority. About 18 months ago when Defra was under pressure to scale up massively (brexit), a friend of a friend asked for, and was given, a term-time only contract at grade 6. Good luck getting the hours you want.

I worked at the CSA between 2002-2008. Our core hours were 10.00-14.00 which I thought was really good. In a previous office job, before I started working in a hospital, it was 09.00-15.30, how on Earth is that really flexi??

I'm still not clear why the OP won't be able to use holiday clubs?

I used to run a department in Whitehall and my husband runs another department.

We were very flexible around hours and working from home - as long as childcare was covered. But we frequently had to turn down requests for parental leave in the summer - and annual leave sometimes - because of business needs. We had other busy times around October and end of the financial year as well. So one hand I could be extremely flexible with staff....on the other extremely rigid.

My husbands department, until covid, was the complete opposite. They needed to be in the office 9-5 but practically shut down in August!

Neither were DEFRA. So it depends.

I’ve also worked for an agency under Defra’s remit. Flexi was provisional in so that you had to make sure there was a certain level of cover in a team and it did mean refusal at times. If you needed to leave at a certain time certain days of the week, I would get this agreed before starting.

I now work for a different CS dept - not under Defra, my flexi is actually properly flexible now.

Have just joined the CS, and we have no flexi and only 30 minutes for lunch.

I agree with others who say it entirely depends on your organisation, directorate with the organisation, role, and sometimes line manager. I’ve worked in a variety of flexible ways in several govt depts, but I’m not sure sharing any info about that would give you any guarantees.

However, you’d be entirely reasonable to ask the line manager.

@SecretSpAD - amused to read that you ran a department as a Spad - as civil servant for almost 20 years I’m afraid Spads really don’t run departments . I think only the Perm Sec or SofS (or CEO in an ALB) could claim they “run” the department, and frankly they only really know about 5% of what’s actually going on day to day, in the large depts I’ve worked in (albeit the 5% that’s in the papers that day)...

@SecretSpAD Unless I have made a big assumption that your username means you were a Spad, but actually you are a Perm Sec who secretly wants to be a Spad, or perhaps your username bears no resemblance to your actual self, in which case I apologise!

@Wigeon @SecretSpAD In my experience, the entire country is run by a cabal of very savvy Grade 5s who know exactly which strings they’re pulling and when...