AIBU to ask how you get along with consultants if you work in the public sector?

[KoreyBay18]

I'm honestly at breaking point. Informally managed by a consultant who is in from the private sector for a set period. Her expectations are fucking ridiculous.

I've spent 3 days working on a piece of work that is ALWAYS "not quite right". I've done 14 hour days to get it to where it is and I'm still now getting messages "can you just move these arrows 2mm to the right? Can you put this heading in italics?" And other meaningless things like this.

All the information and content has been perfectly accurate since yesterday morning but we hours later and I'm still wasting time making it aesthetically perfrct for my Senior Civil Servant who I KNOW just does not care. She cares about the content and knowing the right information. I appreciate the consultant wants it to be perfect but omg it is such a waste of tax payers money to have someone spending a whole working day moving things 2mm to the left or right. I'm not a junior member of staff either, I'm a Grade 7.

AiBU to be hacked off by this? I just want to crack on with the actual important work I have to do (and am gunna have to do a 60 hour week this week to catch up on!)

@DaisyNGO yep, and to be fair I wouldn't have asked a client counterpart to do the formatting. I'd be finding an analyst on the bench to do it lol.

If the client was quite junior I might do it as it's one of those work lessons you only learn if taught. You can always spot an ex consultant by their slides lol

My reading of OPs original post was a goalposts always moving type of scenario

This is exactly it. To give a more detailed example from a couple of weeks ago:

• She called me at 7am Monday morning asking me to add URNs to a table of approx 200 milestones and then update the milestone map with these URNs. I suggested one way of numbering, she told me to do a different way. First part was easy, but adding each of the numbers to the map (with only one laptop screen) took a lot of time.
• at 1pm, she tells me that there are 5 new milestones to add, which means I need to update all the URNs as these new milestones need to go in the right place and has a knock on effect on the numbering of the following milestone. So had to do the whole piece again.
• at 4pm, she says she doesn't like the way I've numbered it and suggested a different way.....the same thing I had suggested at 7am. She then asked me to re-do this piece of work for the 3rd time that day and that she needed it for a 4.30pm meeting.

Also, I have no objections to making my own changes to work and submitting something tidy and neat. I don't consider myself too senior for any of this. But when I have offered solutions that would look a lot better and automatically neater (for example making our dashboard one big table and splitting colums where we need to) and she says not to do that and stick with her individual textboxes that have to be perfectly re-aligned every time you edit the content, it wears thin.

I got mine sacked. I told the boss that if she didn’t get rid of the consultant she wasn’t going to have a team to deliver the project, and the consultant was the reason that two members of the team were off with stress. She was gone the next day. Despite having been taken off the project at an early stage, she put herself forward for an award (think Women in Science or something - it wasn’t science) and won it for delivering this amazing project.

@Suzysuz

I thought as a contractor/consultant they can't manage you HR wise so are you just reporting to her on this specific piece of work? I'd definitely be diplomatically pushing back above her or to your actual line manager, what a waste of time (as someone mentioned above it's taking more time for her to email you on these things - on their mega consultant rate no doubt) and what this time is costing in your own G7 salary to do these changes - I honestly think a lot of consultants, in my experience in gov, make such a bigger issue of things as a way to try and keep / justify their own role....

Exactly this. I honestly don't understand the point of about 90% of consultants. I'm just hoping that now they all want to wfh and aren't around to talk themselves up people will more rapidly cotton on they're a complete waste of ££

Completely unreasonable if you are a G7. I don't allow co sultanate to manage civil service staff. It doesn't work and consultants are usually crap at it.

If you get on with your SCS then just send it to the once you're content it's right ignore the consultant- if they want to faff about with italics then they can do that themselves.

OP you need to let your boss know and this consultant needs to get booted

@KoreyBay18

My reading of OPs original post was a goalposts always moving type of scenario

This is exactly it. To give a more detailed example from a couple of weeks ago:

• She called me at 7am Monday morning asking me to add URNs to a table of approx 200 milestones and then update the milestone map with these URNs. I suggested one way of numbering, she told me to do a different way. First part was easy, but adding each of the numbers to the map (with only one laptop screen) took a lot of time.
• at 1pm, she tells me that there are 5 new milestones to add, which means I need to update all the URNs as these new milestones need to go in the right place and has a knock on effect on the numbering of the following milestone. So had to do the whole piece again.
• at 4pm, she says she doesn't like the way I've numbered it and suggested a different way.....the same thing I had suggested at 7am. She then asked me to re-do this piece of work for the 3rd time that day and that she needed it for a 4.30pm meeting.

What value is she actually adding? So strange

@Lightswitch123 she has undoubtedly whipped our project into shape, and we are in a significantly better position than we were before she started so I can't fault her for that. But her constantly changing her mind on things means me and my team (who I line manage) are doing a lot more work than we need to be. I've already done 55 hours this week and its still Thursday.

I appreciate consultant's can deliver products to an exceptional standard. But the snazzy PowerPoint etc are just not really required to deliver the actual project, and I'm being paid a fraction of her salary and am not willing to put in the same number of hours she is to the detriment of my son.

I have spoken to my CS line manager so he is aware. We spoke this afternoon and he is going to support me with asserting my boundaries. Stopping the condensed hours was a snap decision but a good one as I no longer benefit from the extra day off now that my little boy has started school, I'd rather spend Friday working and have my evenings back with him.

Good update OP - you just need to be really strict with yourself - work your hours then log off laptop, phone on mute and no checking it - if she's trying to give work then be firm in what is achievable for you and your team in working hours.

Who does she report to on this work, sorry if I missed that, is it the SCS1?

Yep she reports directly to the SCS1.

I think calling her a consultant has maybe confused things- she is, but her responsibilities are more that of a contractor, in that she is in to fill a vacant post until we recruit it.

@KoreyBay18

Yep she reports directly to the SCS1.

I think calling her a consultant has maybe confused things- she is, but her responsibilities are more that of a contractor, in that she is in to fill a vacant post until we recruit it.

We would call that a secondment. If consultants aren’t adding value why are they there? The thing about formatting becomes very apparent when you have a number of people contributing to a report and submitting their ideas to a tight dead line and everyone has submitted in different fonts and titles etc - contents page etc is a nightmare and there no need for it - it’s just sloppy writing - css as ll it someone else’s job - say it’s beneath your pay grade but no one wants to read a report in 20 different text styles and think and believe it’s been properly brought together - write it properly to begin with and save everyone’s time - surely you’d get this and promote this to your minions by grade 7!

And I am aware of the irony that predictive text made my sloppy writing comment slightly ridiculous

I've had a similar experience @KoreyBay18 during a covid role. To make it worse I didn't have a CS line manager, as I was seconded and was being managed by an inexperienced contractor. My advice run for the hills ASAP...

@Autumnbaths it's very easy for me to change allbthr font and font size so it's consistent, it takes seconds, so that's not a concern.

We are a small team; me (responsible for planning and reporting), a HEO (responsible for governance) and an EO (responsible for secretariat). We are all at full capacity and I won't subject my team to having to work late into the evening to complete something to forever changing goal posts.

[quote KoreyBay18]@Autumnbaths it's very easy for me to change allbthr font and font size so it's consistent, it takes seconds, so that's not a concern.

We are a small team; me (responsible for planning and reporting), a HEO (responsible for governance) and an EO (responsible for secretariat). We are all at full capacity and I won't subject my team to having to work late into the evening to complete something to forever changing goal posts.[/quote]
Forever changing goal posts is poor planning and instruction on the consultants part and I would feed that back to them and ask them to up their game - clearly in less inflammatory language. We always try to keep the communication pathways open and honest - problems occur when shit like this gets on top of people. It's very possible that the consultant is temporarily out of her depth - we are always thrown into new situations with new problems, it's part of the job but not everyone copes well with it, maybe she needs more support from her team?
Either way - don't ignore this, there will be a solution if you are willing to work together and be honest with each other, you will find one.

It doesn’t take 14 hours to make minor graphics changes.

I had a similar issue recently - not someone in my own team in a managerial position but a consultancy team who were major stakeholders on £1k a day telling my HEOs what to do and micro managing them, even though the consultants are contracted to a different civil service department! I don't have a G6 at present so am filling both the G7 and G6 file temporarily, and my DD was really unhappy at the situation but couldn't influence them to change because it wasn't our contract. I ended up speaking to the DD counterpart in the other department and threatening to stop my team working with the consultants altogether if they couldn't be more reasonable, as I wasn't having them doing over their hours just because the consultants had cocked up and we held the committee relationship with the public.

Things are better now but it did take very firm boundary setting and me being very prepared to have the argument with anyone senior - not a nice position to be in but I'm protective of my team. It sounds like you need your DD to step in if you can't sort it informally - can you approach them with evidence and explain why it's adding inconvenience and stress, and the solution you think will improve it? I've always had a proposed solution when taking problems to my SCS.

(By the way its not Deloitte by any chance?)

Ugh typos. Communication not committee.

It doesn’t take 14 hours to make minor graphics changes.

I know it doesn't, but when I send her a product at 10am, then do a full day of work calls, and she gets back to me at 5pm with changes that "need to be done now as this needs to go out this evening", and then there's another four hours of me making changes, sending to her, her calling me to talk through it and insisting I make more changes...

@KoreyBay18

It doesn’t take 14 hours to make minor graphics changes.

I know it doesn't, but when I send her a product at 10am, then do a full day of work calls, and she gets back to me at 5pm with changes that "need to be done now as this needs to go out this evening", and then there's another four hours of me making changes, sending to her, her calling me to talk through it and insisting I make more changes...

Just tell her the hours you are available and say if she needs you to do anything - you will only be able to do it then. My guess was McKinsey.

@VienneseWhirligig

I had a similar issue recently - not someone in my own team in a managerial position but a consultancy team who were major stakeholders on £1k a day telling my HEOs what to do and micro managing them, even though the consultants are contracted to a different civil service department! I don't have a G6 at present so am filling both the G7 and G6 file temporarily, and my DD was really unhappy at the situation but couldn't influence them to change because it wasn't our contract. I ended up speaking to the DD counterpart in the other department and threatening to stop my team working with the consultants altogether if they couldn't be more reasonable, as I wasn't having them doing over their hours just because the consultants had cocked up and we held the committee relationship with the public.

Things are better now but it did take very firm boundary setting and me being very prepared to have the argument with anyone senior - not a nice position to be in but I'm protective of my team. It sounds like you need your DD to step in if you can't sort it informally - can you approach them with evidence and explain why it's adding inconvenience and stress, and the solution you think will improve it? I've always had a proposed solution when taking problems to my SCS.

(By the way its not Deloitte by any chance?)

Fairly junior consultant on £1k a day - I'd have thought at that grade everyone would be telling them what to do.

This is exactly it. To give a more detailed example from a couple of weeks ago:

• She called me at 7am Monday morning asking me to add URNs to a table of approx 200 milestones and then update the milestone map with these URNs. I suggested one way of numbering, she told me to do a different way. First part was easy, but adding each of the numbers to the map (with only one laptop screen) took a lot of time.
• at 1pm, she tells me that there are 5 new milestones to add, which means I need to update all the URNs as these new milestones need to go in the right place and has a knock on effect on the numbering of the following milestone. So had to do the whole piece again.
• at 4pm, she says she doesn't like the way I've numbered it and suggested a different way.....the same thing I had suggested at 7am. She then asked me to re-do this piece of work for the 3rd time that day and that she needed it for a 4.30pm meeting.

OP that's not ok! That level of criticism and micro management and basically giving you an impossible task is bordering on bullying.

I would start documenting everything in writing with her. Ask for a separate meeting with her. Take examples like this. State you have x tasks a week and work 35 or whatever hours so each task is allocated approximately x hours. By doing things like this she is extending tasks that should take x hours for a good enough version into y hours for a perfect version. This is not giving you enough time to complete your other tasks. You are not expected by the company or paid enough to work x hours over your stated working hours every week and in fact it's against their work life balance or whatever initiative. What does she suggest you do about it? Come up with some options and ask what she prefers eg
Do everything as agreed to a good enough standard
Do everything perfectly and less of it and she takes work off you
If she changes her mind about things she can do it herself
She gives you time off in lieu for every hour you spend working outside your hours
You spend longer up front discussing the exact specification of what you're working on but then it cant be changed

Etc

And also in that example I would email her back. I.e just to be clear what's expected of me:
I suggested doing abc and you said no
You asked me to do x, it took y hours
Then you decided to do a instead, it took b hours
Then at 4 pm you are now asking me to re do the whole thing like I suggested originally even though this will take another4 hours

At least you will have it in writing and it might make her think about how she is acting

All these people building careers on making things look nice! Spending hours and days formatting documents! Paying consultants money to help make things look nice!

Just get on and do some real work, who cares about font and 2mm!!! As long as its readable and understandable.
What a lot of shit jobs there are.

The point of a slide is to impart information to the reader, I can't believe some people are paid to work for 60 hours a week to make them look nice.