"Public sector - so no"

[OhpoorMe]

Anyone else get quite frustrated seeing this on threads about Christmas parties/ bonuses / staff perks etc

The public sector isn't one homogenous organisation. I've only ever worked in PS organisations and have always had a paid for staff party, sometimes bonuses, sometimes perks etc.

It's not a given that public sector = badly treated!

Yep, or police, ambulance, social care, prisons.... I'm sure the public think we're all sat behind a desk doing fuck all, refusing to do the day job, watching TV and ignoring phones and emails.

I wonder if it’s some prestigious national museum/gallery in London - they are the only public body I can think of who might have the funds.

The whole public sector vs private sector ill-feeling is pretty depressing.

It's impossible for anyone to really understand what other people's jobs and stresses are like. And for most there were pros and cons, whichever sector they're in.
Some of my fellow teacher friends are spectacularly unaware of the pressures in the private sector, and some of my friends in business are spectacularly dismissive of those of us in the public sector. It frustrates me a lot, but I've largely given up on trying to put the other side.

I was public sector, there were things I envied my private sector friends for. But when I had my children I was very grateful for my generous maternity leave, when my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 incurable cancer I was massively grateful for the leave I was able to take, and now I'm retired, I want to tell my late father that he was right to tell me to "choose a job with a good pension" (which I rolled my eyes at, aged 18)

You can (and I do) calculate what the pension is worth on top.

For example in the NHS you accrue 1/54th of your salary per annum, which is then adjusted upwards by inflation. So if you earn £27k that's £500 per year that you would then get in terms of the pension you get out the other end.

At a 4% safe drawdown rate for a defined contribution pension pot you would need £12.5k as the equivalent (overall growth generally exceeds inflation so it would actually be a bit less, but it will do as a calculation for now).

At 27k your pension costs you 7.7% per year of your salary (this goes up as your salary goes up), so it costs you £2,100.

So the benefit to you on top of your salary is circa £10k.

The other thing to remember is you can take a defined contribution pot earlier and as you no longer have to buy an annuity if you have enough to support a safe draw down rate it doesn't decrease your available pot, whereas taking a DB scheme earlier results in a commutation of the amount you receive. So overall because of both growth and commutation it's not quite as good as the headline figures I've calculated above make it look, but those are hard to convert into numbers.

It's a really massive benefit and a lot of people under estimate when they are applying.

But it still doesn't necessarily make up for the lower pay. I have advanced pretty quickly in my career and make enough money to meet all my needs and most of my wants. But even with my amazing pension, I still make maybe 2/3 of what my friends in the private sector make, so it's not always a total equaliser.

No, as I said, I work for the government, I'm a public servant.

Museums and galleries are not public bodies. They also barely have any funds.

At the high street bank it was 8% up to director level then higher but I can't recall what.

Where I am currently (public sector) it's 10% if you pay 2%, or 15% if you pay 3%+ , I don't think anyone pays 2%. It's the same for everyone, no hierarchy in the pension payments.

You have to admit that you're a bit of s unicorn though. This thread is proof of that. It has to be vanishingly rare for anyone in the public sector to receive regular free hospitality and bonuses.

Well, everyone else in the organisation do too - 600 of us.

And there is another similar department that has pretty similar terms but higher salaries (we keep losing people to them), though I'm not sure how many people they employ.

@VanGoghsDog so state the agency or department you fall under! Most of the rest of us see nothing like that. I've worked for agencies under both DWP and MOJ and not a sausage.

Yes seriously what is this excellent department with all the perks?

I've just checked how many organisations fall under my department and it's quite few, so for obvious reasons I'm not going to state it.

It's public information, nothing is hidden at all. We have lower salaries than equivalent roles in private sector (when I was at the bank I earned more, had the same holiday, didn't have Christmas parties, had lower pension contribution, zero tea/coffee etc not even mugs provided [which really pissed me off], but the bonus was higher and we had things like share save and private medical though I didn't take up the latter), the bonus isn't great compared to the roles people could do where there bonuses would be in six figures. People come, and stay, because of the public service element. But they do expect to be treated well because they could honestly command far higher salaries elsewhere.

I've worked in many many organisations (I tend to do short term roles, though this and isn't due to Covid) and alongside many many more. So I know the terms of huge numbers and types.

Is it not rather contradictory to say that the information is publicly available but at the same time not say which organization it is?

Only to idiots.

It's publicly available because we have to be transparent as does all of the public sector. That was my point. No-one is hiding our pension contributions or bonuses (and other civil servants on this thread have said they get bonuses and I can assure you their career average pensions cost way more than mine plus a Christmas party do).

I'm sorry you either don't believe me or are jealous, but you must surely realize it would be stupid for me to state my exact employer on the internet (I don't even think we're allowed to, we have social media guidelines, obviously). If it helps it's a really toxic unpleasant place to work and turkey once a year doesn't make up for that (nor does the pension).

But if you tell me where you work and send me your CV I promise to send you links to any relevant vacancies.

You are right, I struggle to believe you. Why would you work in a place of such toxicity given all you have said which is extremely uncomplimentary?

In the nhs in hospitals there can be charitable funds for donations for say a ward or department that's for staff use. Eg a grateful patient donates £100 literally to benefit the staff that looked after them
It's a legitimate and indeed appropriate thing to spend that on contributing to Xmas parties for those staff
Not bonuses obviously

It's within the remit of the Accounting Officer in our case. They don't have much discretion but they do on that.

We have a Board and they have various committees who also oversee remuneration and they have input too, of course.

Oh, as well as not getting the public sector defined benefit pension, we don't get any enhanced redundancy. We get statutory only. And we largely have to follow public sector pay award deals, so it was 2.8% this year though there is discretion for high performers.

I work in civil service and we are having team lunch today at a restaurant but we have to pay ourselves. There is an office party tomorrow which is ticketed. Tickets are usually vary by grade but up to about £20.

The party is on the premises also.

Well, because this year my mum was ill from February and I had to spend a lot of time with her and at the hospital so I was able to work from her house and support her, she died in October and I was able to have whatever time I needed and also work from her house while she died at home. Also, I am the executor, so I'm now doing all the accounts ready for probate and will be needing to sell the house, so will be there more again (I can't get into work from there).

In addition to this, I had a leak under the floor in my house, which has meant the whole downstairs floor had to be taken up, all the skirtings off, dehumidifiers for three months, heating completely replaced....I need new floor and total redecorating. My living room contents have been in storage since July and my living room is a black hole. I'm still grappling with the insurers on how to get it all completed (the kitchen floor also needs doing as they are joined, and the heating pipes in the kitchen also needed to be replaced so they have been chased into the wall and that needs redecorating too). I am able to work from home during this time, today I have an electrician and a plumber here. (I live alone so there is only me to manage all this stuff). It's a bit depressing, especially as it will still be nowhere near done by Christmas. My kitchen is a tip because everything is in there that I need because there's nowhere to put anything in the living room.

Also our C-level has changed five times in two years so I've kind of been hoping things would get better at work if we eventually got one who stayed. (For various other reasons work has been horrible this year). It's not the whole org that is toxic really, just my area.

I was initially on a fixed term from Sept 2020, having had my previous contract ended early due to Covid. The role went perm Feb 22 and I really only intended to stay another year while the job market settled down. But then this year happened and I just have not had the time nor mental energy to look for another role.

I'm starting to look now but will probably resign after Christmas anyway as I have 3m notice and I don't want to stay.

Btw, when I was recruited, Christmas parties were not mentioned (I've actually only been to one, 2020 it was done online, 21 I was away, I went last year, was due to go this year but was ill). And when I have been involved in recruitment it doesn't come up at interview. Neither does redundancy pay nor the link to PS pay awards. But bonus does, of course. I didn't even get a bonus until this year because of being fixed term.

I am 55 and it's been nice to have a decent payment into the pension, I also put 38% of my salary so I am at the stage where I could draw down and just stop work, especially as I'm about to inherit about £300k.

Not all decisions are based on one thing.

I'm public sector. We don't have paid for parties or bonuses but we have a lot of good things available to us (discount schemes, very flexible working etc) and a huffing great big employer pension contribution so I'd take that over having to make small talk over sausage rolls once a year.

Believe it or not, there are a few of us that have worked in the both the public and private sector.

I understand the dismissiveness of people in business towards the public sector in that there is an incredible amount of commercial naivety at senior levels. However the private sector simply does not have to deal with the shear amount of red tape, micromanagement and political interference that the public sector has to deal with, especially around procurement which is the single biggest reason why it is so slow and so expensive to get anything done in the public sector.

However, in the public sector there is more scope for other forms of value to be considered more fully in operational decisions and, whilst significantly tempered by politics, an opportunity to make longer term decisions. This actually adds a lot of complexity to decision making as does the much higher levels of public scrutiny.

Overall I haven't found my job in the public sector easier than in the private sector but just that there are a very different set of challenges. Senior management is unambiguously worse though, but if you look at the huge pay disparity at that level it is easy to see why. CEOs running entire NDPBs are being paid private sector middle management salaries.

Believe it or not, there are a few of us that have worked in the both the public and private sector.

Well yes. But it's fairly easy to tell which posters haven't, and which live in a bubble of friends in the same professional arena (I have to say that some of my fellow teachers are really bad for the latter, which makes me wince).

As for the rest of your post @Eleganz , I think we agree, don't we?

I’ve worked in both sectors (and volunteered at a senior level for charity). Private sector was easier work for me, big emphasis on employee morale, decent pay, nice workplace. Very long hours but work, although pressured, wasn’t hard really. Much free food and booze on most Fridays!

Public sector is much more flexible, working at home and focus on getting the work done rather than office presenteeism. Although that might change now (thanks Mogg). My team used to be 7 strong though and thanks to cuts it’s now 2, with a hugely increased remit. Pay freeze now for over 10 yrs. Definitely more stressful. Absolutely no consideration to morale or staff retention. Christmas parties aren’t the be all and end all, but I do think some level of thanks however small makes a difference.

There seem to be a few people here that think a career average or final salary defined benefit pension will pay out what that final or average salary was. In fact it only pays a percentage of that depending on the individual scheme.

A typical scheme is 1/60th, so for every year you work you get 1/60th of that salary in your scheme. So if you work there 30 years, you'll get 50% if your final or average salary as your pension. Assuming a typical working career of 40 years, you end up on 2/3 of your final/average salary. Never the full amount, as I don't think you can pay in more than a certain number of years (I know central Civil Service and NHS are max 40 years)

I remember doing some maths when I first left the central Civil Service (long time ago). My salary at the time was around £25k, and the equivalent job in the private sector was around £35k. So my Civil Service defined benefits pension, assuming 40 years, would be a little under £17k. At that time, you could assume that a half decent defined contributions pension would give you around 50%, so the equivalent of 40 years in the private sector job would be around £17.5k. Add into that the extra £10k a year I was earning, and it didn't seem that the Civil Service pension was worth the years of much lower pay.

Then add in better pay rises (civil servants always got much lower rises than private sector average), medical and health insurance, bonuses, free drinks and occasionally food, availability of all the things you needed to actually do your job, and it was a no brainer at the time.

As it happens, I currently work for local government and the LGPS pension is based on a 1/49th of your salary which is pretty decent.

But the salary is pretty pants. To indicate just how poor many public body salaries are, a typical local government administrator earns maybe £2k above minimum wage, a line manager (depending on grade) maybe £24-26k, with social workers earning maybe £27k which is £4-6k less than NHS social workers as a starting salary with little progression possible.