Civil service and flexi hours

[purpleumbrellas]

Are there any civil servants out there who can help me weigh up a job offer please? The salary is low but the location is easy to get to and I think I'd find the work interesting. My query is around flexi hours.

I think I could fairly easily work an additional 3-4 hours each week without it really having an impact (this was mentioned at interview and I know the department is really busy). In the private sector I have easily put in this many additional hours on a weekly basis.

Am I right in calculating that if I work an extra days's worth of flexi hours every fortnight, I would end up with easily another 20+ days' I could take as flexi / leave?

I think I must be missing something because that would bring me to over 45 days annual leave.

You can't carry over that much. Most flexi periods are about month (depending where you work). So if you don't use it within the flexi period then you lose it.

Everywhere I've worked that's offered flexitime limits it to one day off per four weeks. I can't imagine civil service would be different than that but could be wrong!

I’m Scottish nhs/gov and we’re limited to taking two days a month. We also have to take it in the next four week period, so some months it doesn’t help with school holidays.
Also it might piss people off of you are always off.
I think you need to ask how it works.

I’m in an ALPB and our official flexi rules are no more than 2 days a month. When I was at a grade which used the flexi system (a while ago now) it was ‘use it or lose it’ each month. So you couldn’t build it up to e.g. take a whole week off later on.

And don’t fall into the trap of seeing it as additional leave - it’s not - you have worked full time hours, just worked the hours you normally would over a different pattern than the one you’d do in a typical week/month.

In England it is limited to one day per month were I was working and they were shit hot on work life balance.

I think it may vary slightly from department to department, but where I currently am they don’t like junior grades working too far over their contracted hours. Not in a restricting way, but my department are very big on work/life balance so very much of the “can it wait until tomorrow?” mindset.

On a side note I would definitely recommend the civil service for what it’s worth!

It varies within the civil service. We used to be allowed to take 2 days a month off but it’s been suspended during the pandemic. You couldn’t save up all your Flexi and take a fortnight off.

Other departments I’ve worked in have been even more generous.
Flexi is marvellous and I miss it.

I’m local government and we can take two flexi days a month - 24 days a year

You might be better working slightly fewer hours in the first place. I do 30 hours and it means I don’t need to find childcare for a day a week in summer. I then work half a day extra every week in the months before I need to take extra holiday which works well.

Yes, good point that is not extra leave. It is hours that you’ve worked. It also needs to fit in with the team and the resource needs.

I have worked in several civil service departments.

You are mostly correct, though each flexi scheme will have some rules and boundaries. Where I have worked, the flexi rules have generally been;

• 4 week time sheet system for recording daily hours.
• Some systems have core hours though some don't. If they do have core hours then you must work them unless you have booked flexi or other leave. Core hours have always been 10-12 and 2-4 where I have had them.
• Most systems have some restriction on how early/late you can work. Generally you're not to work before 7am or after 7pm without having a chat with your manager. - - This is to stop people working crazy hours and also to stop people working the majority of their hours when their colleagues couldn't contact them/they'd not be available for meetings!
• During each 4 week flexi period you can take up to 3 days (or 6 half days) of flexi leave. Some systems allow a single 5 day flexi leave in a year.
• At the end of each 4 week flexi period you can be in credit by up to 3 days (ish) of hours or in debit by up to 1.5 days (ish).

I have generally used the flexi leave system to take well over my 31 days Annual Leave. Plus flexi leave means you don't have to take annual leave for things like school assemblies as you can just start later that day.

Of course this is all subject to business need. You can't just decide to go in at 10.30 one morning if it means you'll miss a meeting. But if your calendar is clear and you fancy an extra half hour in bed one morning then that's all good

Yep ex civil servant, you can only take the time accrued as a max of one day per month, you can't bank them up and use for an entire week for example

I used to do a couple of extra hours a week then tag a day flexi leave on a Friday once a month. It gave me the freedom to book appointment or just had a day of chilling without it eating in to my holiday. It was great, but I found earning more money far more rewarding ( but that's me )

I’m in local government and we are only allowed one flexi day per fixed 4 week period so 13 flexi days a year. We can only carry 14 flexi hours forward to the next period so basically if you don’t use it you lose it. Not sure if civil service would be similar - you would need to check with them.

Scottish government dept here we can take 4 flexi days in a flexi period so you can take 48 flexi days in a year. It really depends on the department you are working for.

Civil Servant here and no flexi whatsoever.

I’m civil service. We can be over or under by 2 days at the end of each 4 week flexi period. You can take a maximum of 2 flexi per period. We don’t have core hours. Quite often you can swap flexi for annual leave so your annual leave can last a bit longer. Civil service generally has good terms and conditions, good employment practices and good support systems.

I work in local government, not CS. We can take one flexi day (7 hours 24 mins) in every 4 week flexi period. It used to be 2 days but it changed.

At our work there are limits on how much you can carry over each month (16 hours I think).

Flexi was a god send when I had small kids who caught stuff at nursery all the time. We were allowed to save it up and take blocks off if wanted, but that was 15-20 years ago so might be different now.

Our Flex is in 4 week periods. We can carry over 2 days to the next period and a maximum allowance of 2 days in any 4 week period. It has to be agreed by your manager, it is discretionary.

It is brilliant for me, I have a lovely manager, brilliant collaborative team and it offers us all a lot of flexibility for our various commitments.

If you have a bad manager and a individualistic team it will not work so well.

Can I jump on this to ask a similar question? I currently work in the private sector but have been considering a move to the public sector for better hours/flexitime/etc. I have reasonable contracted hours but for various reasons usually clock about 5-8 hours (unpaid) overtime a week, so typically total about 42 hours per week. However aside from making sure I’m at meetings and meet any deadlines, I can organise my time as I see fit- outside of covid times I had WFH days and could do extra anytime it was needed, do school drop offs most days, go to any appointments/assemblies/etc without needing to use annual leave. Would I see any benefit from flex etc?

In the Department I work in (England) it's 2 max per month but you can spend two and earn two and then spend two more (so max 4 if you take all 4 in the month).

If you're happy working extra hours per day, you could ask to work condensed hours. Then you work four days a week and have three off. Lots of people in my Department does this and it works really well.

If you do work flexi time instead, be careful as some departments have limits on when you can work to claim (e.g. Only between 7am and 7pm etc) if you go over, your manager will reprimand you and ask you to remove any out of hours overtime you did. This really sucks 😅

It depends on the department. I have had up to 40+ flexi hours and as a general flexi month I will have a minimum of 20 hours flexi just because of the way things are. Especially due to covid and wfh - thankfully I could carry over my extra annual leave last year as I just can't use it.
But generally I try and use at least 1 flexi day a month. Half term/holidays I use more.. I use the flexibility of hours to work 'different' hours during holidays. Pay might be low BUT the flexibility makes up for it for me.

To echo others, it very much depends on which department you work for, but mine wouldn't allow you to carry that much over. On the other hand, despite meticulously keeping a record of my hours and flexi accrued/owed my manager has never, in the four years we have worked together, asked to see it. I'm pretty sure he'd notice if I was taking an extra week or two off every year though...!

To the poster above - again, it depends on your department but my experience has been that the CS is incredibly accommodating of commitments outside of work and is pretty generous with the flexible working policy. As long as you aren't missing key meetings etc, I'd think you would be perfectly allowed to work around school runs, doctor appointments and make up any time as and when suits you (although medical/dental appts are paid anyway, so no need to make up!). And any overtime you work is "paid" as flexible leave.

I hated my fairly boring CS job before having children and now I can't imagine moving back to the private/third sector. It's the first org I've worked in that treats me like an actual human being, rather than a piece of machinery.

It was two days max in the four week flexi period where I worked. Use it or lose it. It couldn’t be carried over.