"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!

Dp works in local government and its bloody cushy! He's paid well for what he does, gets a decent pay rise every year and loads of annual leave. Flexible working from home if he wants to. All that and a Christmas dinner! Very different from the NHS or teaching etc, which is obviously totally unfair.

In my last private sector job I had higher pay, the same holiday allowance and only very slightly smaller % pension contribution. My area doesn't have the civil service DB pension scheme, it's a DC with a % of salary contribution, it's a generous % but it's on lower pay so doesn't work out more overall.

Abd while I get a bonus on this job, my previous job had a better bonus on a better salary.

I make my pension up myself by paying more in.

DF worked in the civil service and one year he paid for cake for 500 staff across 3 offices - I remember the logistics of that (in the days before supermarket deliveries) was a nightmare for his secretary.

Most arms length bodies are impacted by the govt pay decisions actually.

Been in public sectors 22yrs, never had a paid for party

@titchy NDPB the clue is in the name, Non Departmental Public Body, yes they are public sector. Many arm's length bodies are the same too, I've worked for an ALB controlled by govt. Not always civil servants, sometimes classed as public servants, usually still have access to Alpha pension scheme.

I work in PS forestry. We got a thank you card and and a bar of pine-flavoured chocolate- I haven't tried it yet. We used to get a Christmas tree and meal paid for but that has stopped (2008?).

Given a party is just another form of morale upkeep/remuneration: similar to offering car lease schemes or allowing people to buy or sell holidays or offering voucher schemes to say thank you for good for or anything else, why would it be an inappropriate use of public funds?

If you think about how much it costs to pay someone £1 in someone's gross pay will give them £0.58 or £0.51 (10% pension ish, 12% NI, 20% tax, potentially 9% student loans).

It will cost the organisation about £1.35 (20.7% pension say [per NHS contributions] plus 13.8% employers NI, plus the apprenticeship levy at 0.5% - call it 35% overall).

So for a £25 contribution to food at a party (assuming we want to get in a tizz about the public sector paying for wine which I personally can't get her up about) would be the equivalent of £9.50-£10.50 total difference to a person's net pay packet, or around 80p a month.

Personally I remain convinced most people would have a greater morale boost and more benefit to the team and the organisation overall from a £25 contribution than of 80p a month in their pay packet. Maybe where I have worked is unusual in that sense but I suspect it isn't.

I feel the same way about not providing tea and coffee or at least milk.

Well I for one am not happy that my tax is paying for that.

But if it improves retention then it's arguably a very sensible use of public funds.

Extreme example - a headteacher spends £5000 on the Maths dept's Christmas party. As a result the school is the only one in the area with a fully staffed Maths dept. New head comes in and decides to save the £5000. Half the Maths dept leaves and the head spends the salaries saved plus a further £10000 on non-qualified supply teachers.

I can’t even get funding for some of the things I need to do my job, no chance we’re getting anything frivolous paid for! I’ll be buying each of my staff a lottery ticket as usual… Rule is if anyone wins more than £100 they buy cake.

@PTSDBarbiegirl Having worked for the Commons, I can reassure you Christmas parties aren't funded by the House. Any events are organised by staff and then paid for by staff. There is literally zero "entertainment" budget. It's embarrassing not being able to offer professional visitors as much as a cup of tea.

This is a misunderstanding of two different policies.

There is the Managing Public Money rules, which obviously does not allow misappropriation of public funds. But it's up to the Accounting Officer to decide what is OK within those guidelines. Ours obviously decides that a Christmas party is OK.

Then there is the gifts policy, which says you should not accept gifts of any value and must declare anything you do accept. Most places set a limit of around £25. So flowers would be fine plus you can simply declare them anyway. It also depends on the relationship and whether the gift could creat an influence or obligation. It's more like for when suppliers send a crate of Champagne!

You are, of course, allowed to accept gifts (including tea, biscuits etc) from your own employer. And there is case law that accepts that these are not taxable benefits.

I can't understand how you can say you are a public sector organisation and get a bonus? I'm not in the UK, I'm in Ireland (work in a university), but I can't imagine it's that different - there is no possibility of a bonus being paid in public sector roles here, because the clue is in the name: public sector.

I also worked for over 10 years in the private sector, it was of course completely different, pay increases based on performance, bonuses twice a year, also performance-linked - but also more insecurity and a completely different ethos working in a profit-driven environment.

I don't feel 'badly treated' in the public sector. My salary is lower, I don't get some of those aforementioned benefits, but it aligns more closely with my own value system, and I feel my work makes a difference in a very defined way that I can see, and I enjoy that.

Can you tell us more about the organisations you worked in that provided a bonus?

I’m 58 and work in the private sector. I haven’t had a paid for Christmas Party, drinks or whatever for over 25 years now.

'Pine-flavoured' chocolate - that's amazing! Are you being serious or is it a joke?!

@EarringsandLipstick the departments I work for link it to grade and bonus. So last year I was high performing, people at my grade got £600 (gross), I usually get 2 x £500 in year bonuses but I did get £1000 one year (I believe this is capped so you can't get more than £1000 in one year even if you are nominated for several). We don't get any salary progression though, we don't work through our pay range, which is shite so at least we have some kind of financial motivation for working harder, although not gonna lie the thought of an unpromised £600 isn't what motivates me at work ha.

I’ve worked across 8 different government departments and 3 ALBs. We’ve often had Christmas parties but only ever paid for by the SCS, never by the organisation. For team Christmas lunches the senior staff will usually pay for the booze, but the rest is up to the individuals, although in some teams the G7s/6s will pay for the most junior staffs meals as well.

In one ALB they even cancelled an away day (in a government run conference centre) because they thought it would look bad from a tax payer perspective. That I did think was ridiculous, but I’ve never been frustrated by the lack of parties.

I've spent most of my working life in the public sector (2 govt departments, 4 local authorities and a nationalised industry) and never got a penny towards a party or anything.

I work for a not-for-profit now, and we get £10 a head towards a meal or night out. We get unlimited free tea and coffee though, which is also something I never got in the public sector!

My tax pays for it too. I consider it a rebate.

If you don't like it, write to your MP, it's the kind of thing they enjoy.

We have huge retention/turnover problems, so if the government wants us to deliver the stuff they demand of us, we have to have benefits in place to keep people happy and retain them. These are jobs that require a lot of technical expertise, and the people who do them could easily get far higher paying jobs. It's the benefits that keep them. We know this from exit interviews and the employee survey.

Each area has to make its own decisions, within the rules.

I really don't think that's usual.
I used to work in local government 20 years ago and even then there were no bonuses, no paid for Christmas meals etc
We even had to provide our own cups to hold the tea that we had to provide.
We weren't even allowed to keep the boxes of chocolates etc that some of the firms we dealt with gave at Christmas - they all went into a raffle, so we couldn't be accused of taking bribes!
I tell you some of the abuse I got dealing with planning applications I was owed more than a poxy box of Quality Street!

NHS. I work across 3 teams so have 3 Xmas parties, all self-funded. Also expected to buy a gift for my direct reports. Total cost this year £100. Next year will be at least £150 as I’m getting a bigger team.
NHS pension isn’t all it’s made out to be, especially if you’re a late entrant (post 2014), work FTCs or don’t spend your entire career in it.

Economic and conduct regulators are an example of the types of public body that can have more freedom over staff pay and perks.

I have worked for a couple where you get annual bonuses, free tea and coffee, free Christmas parties, private healthcare and staff rewards (usually £100 - £500 voucher payments to say thank you for hard work/completed projects).

The difference is whilst they have a "parent" government department and the budget is set by that department, they are not tax payer funded.

I've worked for quasi PS orgs (like network rail) and had paid for boozy parties.

“We even had to provide our own cups to hold the tea that we had to provide.”

Ha! I haven’t work in anything other than the public sector since 1993, so this just seems entirely normal to me. Does the private sector provide mugs?

I’ve worked for NHS (5 trusts), a state primary school and in the police. I’ve never had any form of Christmas perk.