To ask about being fired from public sector

[Bringbackspring]

This may be very unreasonable to ask, and there isn't much point to it as nothing will come from this. But AIBU to ask if anyone on here has ever known someone lose their job in the higher education (HE) sector? I'm not talking about a fixed term or casual appointment coming to it's natural end and it not being renewed. I'm talking about staff from any of the HE 'job families' (not just lecturing, there are 100's of job types in HE) being given the boot either mid-contract or from a permanent contract.

I have worked in several UK universities over the past 20 years. I have worked with mostly brilliant people who really go above and beyond, and lots of good people who just get on and do their job to the letter. All fine. I love the work and it makes it easy to get about of bed for as it's work that helps a lot of people.

However, I have worked with a handful of absolute waste of space coasters. People who are incompetent (despite being given training, and endless amounts of support), people who are lazy and will seemingly sit back and just let everyone else pick up the slack because everyone else is too conscientious to just let it all fall apart. One person could not follow even the most basic health and safety protocols (think spilling toxic chemicals regularly and just wandering off to let someone else find and sort it) and was generally a walking hazard!

Not once have I ever seen a case of one of these people losing their job. Only once have I seen a line manager escalate someone to HR (following procedure) and the senior dept. leaders turned on the line manager. The useless employee was protected, and apologised to, and the line manager ended up handing her notice in. So we ended up losing a brilliant member of staff in order to keep a useless one.

I am getting a bit fed up of everyone, including very senior people, being very well aware of these people's short comings, and the impact it has on the teams who work with them. But nothing is ever done about it. It's like HE is terrified of firing people because it's not a very 'wellbeing' sort of thing to do. What about the wellbeing of everyone else!!

In the private sector, I get the impression that coasters wouldn't last long. But maybe I am wrong?

I’m in the private sector and absolutely someone useless will be managed out swiftly. Or at the top of the list when the redundancy lists come out.

Honestly the way to get sacked in the public sector is to be conspicuously dishonest - then they can't get rid of you fast enough.

I had one women accuse me of being a racist once because I challenged her on not doing some work. She hadn't done it and it was a very public embarrassment.

Instead of owning it she wrote two pages to my manager that I was a racist. Impressively she was dismissed nearly instantly for lying and gross misconduct; because she lied wholesale, and enough to destroy my career. She was barred from the office by security.

I did make me pause because in retrospect I wonder if she had done it before. It struck me as a ballsy move.

I work in the public sector and it is really hard to sack an employee. There was someone who were using public resources to run a side business for ten years plus and they had loads of evidence but it took two years with appeals to sack them. They kept the pension too.

It's increasingly hard in the private sector to deal with this as well but at least we do. There's a massive fear of being sued and exploring other avenues first. It takes 6 months plus unless it's an immediate and dangerous gross misconduct.

I have a second job working in the private sector and do think public sector employees take the piss comparatively speaking.

Yanbu. This is the biggest problem with the public sector, lazy idiots are never fired, merely managed into a different role. Because everyone changes roles so often, managers can never be bothered to deal with it. And because it’s all public money there’s no real accountability.

My civil service job was 9-5. A junior colleague would arrive between 10am and 10.30, immediately go for coffee with her friends aka ‘networking’ then work for an hour or two, take a long lunch, pop out for an afternoon cuppa then leave early. She used to complain about her salary 😂 the little work she did was usually bad. I asked my manager why on earth she hadn’t been fired and he said ‘oh just put down on your appraisal form that she has performance issues and you’re mentoring her, on paper basically the entire department is mentoring her. She’ll move on to a different team in a couple of years, don’t rock the boat.’

In the private sector you’d be fired in days for that kind of behaviour.

No one who works in the public sector (NHS, local authorities or education, for example) ever gets sacked for incompetence, laziness, bad attitude or poor attendance.

I worked for the NHS in a former life and now work in education. It is definitely difficult to get rid of people. There is a long and drawn out process that has to be followed. Endless meetings, 'coaching' sessions and action plans have to be completed and a lot of evidence that you have put 'support' to improve their performance is needed before you can sack someone. But it can and does happen. I've personally worked with the following

• Consultant sacked for gross misconduct
• Junior doctor sacked for incompetence
• Nurse sacked due to sickness
• HCA sacked for sickness
• 2 TA's sacked due to sickness
• 1 HLTA sacked for gross misconduct

That's not counting the many NHS managers, and school middle leaders and senior leaders I've come across who have been 'managed out' or quietly demoted. I agree that whistleblowing, or even indications that you might blow the whistle, seems to be the easiest way to find yourself out on your arse.

My ex within the last two years got a senior leadership position at a university, and shortly after mysteriously disappeared. contacts at the uni had said that the department was ‘trying to rebuild, after some colleagues being scared for their safety’. I contacted him to see what had happened and he said there was an NDA in place so couldn’t say anything. Few weeks later- higher position in an RG uni. The Peter principle is alive and kicking in HE, it would seem.

only ever seen people get paid off to leave in HE, no matter how absolutely incompetent they might be.

I have worked in HE for 2 decades. I have never known anyone sacked. I imagine the process is a legal minefield.
But I have seen a Pro Vice Chancellor (equivalent to board level in a company) be made to resign as he was not up to the job, in a surprisingly short timescale. That saved a lot of future embarrassment for him and everyone else. I was actually surprised how quickly it happened, which shows HE can get rid of even very senior people when they need to although he should never have been appointed in the first place.
We also had a very short lived HR director who apparently spent a lot of time out of the office getting her nails done etc....

I haven’t worked in higher education but did work in the Civil Service for over a decade. I only ever saw people get dismissed for taking too much sick leave (months or years), never for poor performance.

There was no incentive or encouragement for line managers to fire people, it just led to so much hard work and grievances against them and difficult meetings with the unions etc.

It was a running joke in our office that unless you literally walked in and assaulted someone, you could not be fired. And even then it wasn’t a certainty.

Isn't this more a case of it being difficult to sack union members - and there are more of them in the public sector?

I was a school governor & the Head admitted to having sex in the stationery cupboard (yes really ) with another member of staff .... apparently that's not a sackable offence .... ?

I think line managers need to take responsibility too. It's no good not addressing the problem for months/years on end and then suddenly deciding the person needs to go. By that point it's much harder to exit them, especially for low level performance/conduct matters

I'm in HE, Ireland. So processes might be different.

We have overall, a reasonably good HR team.

But such limited support in terms of managing performance issues before they become problematic.

I line manage 8 people. I have learnt over 7 years in the role how to work with people's strengths, manage areas for development - and to have honest conversations (there is way too little of that in my workplace). Finally I'm seeing results.

But HR don't act in a proactive or preemptive way in my opinion. They wait for the shit to hit the fan, and then are only interested in the process.

That being said, I've had the misfortune to be involved as a manager in several complicated processes. And I do admire their tenacity at working through each cumbersome stage & the challenges / roadblocks that the employee (and union) puts in their way.

The union issue complicates matters yes, but it's not just that. It's the attempt at utter fairness & opportunities to address issues (theoretically commendable) which allow basket cases chance after chance to game the system.

One of the people I was dealing with knew well how it worked. He'd have a stressful few weeks going through the process, get given a sanction; which in theory he'd 12 months to address & then would happily sit back & do FA for 11.5 months. Meanwhile I'd have to meet him, document everything, put up with his shit ... I was the one who really felt the effect of the sanction, not him.

In the public sector, some of the reason is it has a culture of giving people 2nd chances for things (which isn't always a bad thing but it can go too far, for too long). There is a grievance culture in the public sector - counter claims against managers of bullying is just par for the course when managing performance and that slows things down too. Some of it is fear by management at all levels of employment tribunals - especially for claims of discrimination which can get a lot of local negative publicity. Local Authorities are very very scared of being accused of racism for example.

Excellent points.

I worked in the civil service. I sacked two people for incompetence (went onto performance management and then dismissed when their work didn’t improve) and one for taking the piss - claiming to have been in the office when we knew she hadn’t from the pass system, and working from home when her laptop wasn’t logged on. Oh and I sacked another one for fraud - he falsified his claims when he was travelling. I’ve also known people lose their jobs when they have failed security clearance, and have seen senior people dismissed for BHD. So it does happen.

@LemonGelato

I agree very much with your points.

Even with all the challenges I've had, I'd still rather work in the public sector than private.

I saw, and experienced, brutal treatment of women, especially around maternity leave & return to work. Even in a company I otherwise really liked.

I do agree in principle with the public sector 'second chance' approach. I had someone on my team who was extraordinarily difficult to manage. I worked very hard to understand the dynamic at play and managed to work with her to address challenges she had while being clear on my expectations. She's like a different person now, and I don't even think of the past challenging behaviour.

Yes, I work in HE and I have seen people get sacked. One was asked to leave and he was gone by the end of the week and the other was strongly advised to take voluntary severance before capability kicked in.

It's not easy though and lots of not very good people end up staying in relatively well paid jobs.

One was asked to leave and he was gone by the end of the week

That's not possible without a) due process being followed and b) a settlement reached.

I'd say the difficulty there is how much of a proactive approach the organisation lets HR take.

Certainly in my organisation the expectation is very much that line managers do the day to day people management and would only receive more hands on HR support, e.g., a caseworker rather than one off advice, once things are at the formal stages.

That's a lot of pressure to put on managers who may not have the skills, experience or time to do this and may not be adequately supported by their own management.

Personally I'd like to see managers receive thorough training and coaching once they get promoted into a line management role but that's a whole other argument.

In education, it’s often the case that experienced means expensive and therefore a target to be managed out.

I'm not convinced of this, I work in HE and for all the stuff they put out about difference, diversity and inclusivity, in only the last week I have witnessed covert racism and homophobia. What HEIs say they stand for and goes on are two different things. Yes I reported both through the channels set up for such things, but will anything happen? No.

This exactly. I've had staff in my teams who would do no work, complain that I didn't like them more than other team members, put in constant complaints about people, and take months off. Getting rid of them took me years and it only happened in the end because I said it was negatively impacting my mental health and they went or I did. The university still paid them to go though

And HR we're completely useless at all stages

I've worked in HE for a long, long time. To get sacked you basically need to murder one of your colleagues and even then, depending on how popular your victim was, you might only get shuffled to a different department...

Yep!

I feel your pain OP. I worked in the private sector for 25 years. The deadlines became ridiculously insane and everyone IMO ended up hating working there!

One of my best friends has worked in the public sector for the same years. The stories she's told...OMG...cosseted doesn't begin to describe it!

But she hates it. There is just no development or inclination, it's just statis as far as she's concerned, and she desperately wants to leave, even though she has a really good salary.

Unfortunately they seem to be two absolute extremes and each one has their problems.