Public sector workers what would you change?

[cunoyerjudowel]

So there's a lot of talk about how the eee is a massive shortfall in the budget and how bad it is in the public sector.

So where do you work (as in teaching / council / hospital etc)?
How bad is it?
Where do you think savings could be made?
What do you need to provide the service the public need ?
What would you scrap?

I personally don't think many people realise how critically underfunded the public services are

Can we get people who use our public services to stop saying “I pay your wages” when they can’t get their own way, or our hands are tied by “the rules”? Because y’know ‘ in that case, I’m paying my own wages, as I also pay taxes etc 😏😐….
I’ve had that said to me when I worked for the NHS and also as a Teaching Assistant.

In my opinion, there needs to be a huge change in attitude to education. Schools cannot do everything, it’s just not possible.
Not only are they expected to teach and get results, but they now have to contend with virtually being a branch of social services and the health service. Any time a’disaster’ or ‘event’ occurs it suddenly becomes up to schools to deal with it. How can you keep adding things when there is barely enough time in a timetabled day as it is?

Parental expectations are either ridiculously high or too low, and many children have a horrible sense of entitlement. There are those who know how to behave, far outweighed by those who don’t, and who disrupt teaching daily ( time taken up with dealing with it).

Having said that, I do enjoy my job on the whole. It just needs some joined up thinking, to make it less mind bogglingly stressful.

I would honestly give managers more powers to sack under-performing colleagues. There is a huge amount of dead wood in the public sector who are just a drain. They would not get away with it anywhere else.

I can assure you that it isn't. We're all flat out and I literally cannot live on the wage I'm paid so despite loving the job I've got to move ☹️

I worked in school admin, mostly as business manager in a large school for 10 years. Yes, it's busy and can be hectic, but not like similar "practice manager" roles in the private sector IME.

Since then I've worked directly for the Local Authority and I don't know anyone, including me, who's earning their money.

I literally have lost 1 days pay a week, in real terms.

Our pay (gov dept) has become ludicrous. I would ban % pay increases. The top boss in my dept gets the equivalent of my yearly pay when we get a pay rise. Which is obscene. The rich do get richer . Also a lower director ( for want of a better word) got a bonus of the equivalent of TEN of my role. Yes, TEN. I wasn't even aware anyone got a bonus below top dog in the government depts!

I will be leaving as soon as I can.

Time wasting meetings, ‘collaboration’, sickness policy, the recruitment process.

There seems to be no decision making or actually getting on with the bloody job in my area of the public sector. It’s just meeting after meeting where everyone is too scared to make a decision/ press ahead with anything. So much wasted time! Everything has to be discussed to death (in the name of ‘collaboration’) instead of actually getting on with it.

People take the piss with sickness absence too. I know people who are off every other week with something or other. It’s not uncommon to take a week or two off with a cold, even though we can work from home.

The recruitment process is incredibly long winded and seems intent on discovering whether the candidate will fit in with the ‘culture’ (middle class, piss taking, time wasting culture) rather than do the job. It’s all about social capital and zero to do with experience or qualifications. Know the right buzz words? You’re in!

Clearly the public sector was the wrong choice for me ( I worked in the private sector until 5 years ago) but once you’re in it is hard to wave bye-bye to all the perks - WFH, bonuses, yearly pay rises, flexible working, paid sick leave, pension etc. IT

Mental health- support primary and secondary case services which directly support people. Put people inpatient beds in private hospitals. Get rid of a lot of the research and fluffy stuff.

I work for a regulator. We are hugely understaffed. We could save money by doing less but that would be breach of our statutory duty. We either need a different statutory remit or more staff, as at the moment people are leaving in droves for the private sector where they can do similar work for 3x the pay.

Where I work doesn’t even have flexitime anymore.
I think general public have no idea how much of local authority budget is taken up with adult social care and children’s services. The amount left for the things people like to complain about - potholes, libraries etc is minimal.

Oh, I would invest in quality training too. In our workplace or is all on the job training (learning from the mistakes of your predecessor/ making it up as you go along) or a couple of crappy online videos. Years ago we used to have real training companies come and deliver training to all staff. Training that led to actual qualifications!

I think there needs to be an understand that in many cases, the public sector is effectively a recruitment agency.

It keeps people economically active and allows them to learn skills etc which might help them with their careers if they choose to move on.

They may not be overly productive but it keeps them off benefits and gives them a pay packet at the end of the month which goes into the economy. They’re not reliant on social housing and they’re not spending their days watching Loose Women or GB News.

I know a few people who work for the council and they all say they don’t really do anything - they’re lucky if they have more than a couple of hours work to do each day.

I know a few people who work for the council and they all say they don’t really do anything

Blimey-the people I know at council don’t say this at all.

Re-introduce pay progression, I don't know if most people realise that in many Depts/Agencies there is no pay progression, you come in at the bottom of the grade band and there's is no way to move up, so a colleague in the job for 10yrs who is rated as 'exceeding expectations' every year will earn the same amount as someone who has just started and needs full training. Re-introducing pay progression would address the erosion of wages, the high turnover of staff and increase motivation to do a great job.

Should have mention re my post above, we can't get things done, projects off the ground etc because we've lost so many highly qualified staff to the private sector where they do the same job for double the salary.

Local Authority. Posted about this elsewhere today. Worked in Local Government for thirty years and there is still massive waste due to plenty of staff not having enough work because of poor management. Managers see status in having staff but there is no accountability to make sure staff have enough to do, let alone are developed. Poor staff management, poor oversight and accountability of managers is a major source of waste in the public sector. And no, an Investors in People award, does not address this problem. There is no will or culture to deal with failing managers.

What do you mean by inefficient? Have you got any actual evidence for your claim?

We spend less per capita on healthcare than the US, if you include all spending it's roughly half as much. Yet we manage to run a universal healthcare system which just about manages to keep our life expectancy at about average, unlike the US.

What's happened since 2017 do you think?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40608253

But do they have 10 years experience or one year of experience 10 times?

I think the public sector should be looked at as a vehicle for people in those positions to jump off and enter the private sector if they succeed. And stay if they don’t.

Surely the answer to this is to promote within.

It sounds like an excuse.

I’m in the private sector and we’ve lost very talented colleagues in the past. We don’t just turn around and say “sorry, can’t do this”. Those projects get off the ground and people adjust.

Its really mixed. You get overstretched teams or overstretched staff and then those with next to nothing to do. I once investigated a team who were doing nothing everyday. Turned out the work of their team had been outsourced 18 months ago to another government agency and they literally had no work as a result. It was client based work, so they could not create something useful to do instead. Everyone knew this - their (very senior, very well paid manager) knew this but instead of disbanding the team and reallocating them or making them redundant, he did nothing, despite the fact the department was desperate to save money. I suspect he was trying to hold onto staff to shore up his own position and not lose his own job.

Since then I've worked directly for the Local Authority and I don't know anyone, including me, who's earning their money

I suspect this is a big part of why LA have embraced home working and their staff are so reluctant to go back to the office. Where I am now the staff are fighting going back to the office tooth and nail whenever there is the most tentative suggestion that they should go in a bit more. ( huge open plan office with only a handful of people in it each day). If you don't have enough to do, of course you want to work from home.

This is similar to what I’ve heard, and it’s pretty common knowledge that it happens.

I don’t know the fake indignation of that other poster comes from.

Call "mental health" by its correct name "psychiatric illness. Everyone has a "mental health problem" these days and the boundaries of normal behaviour and anxiety/ ADHD/ ASD/ depression have become so fuzzy there are far more people wanting someone to counsel them/ give them tablets/ give them exemption from something than there are people wanting to do the counselling.
When it was called psychiatric illness it had the disadvantage of often being a stigma but at least everyone didn't want to have it

France - which has a highly rated healthcare system spends 3x as much as the UK on management. The NHS is often undermanaged because it is politically difficult to invest more if its not on Doctors or Nurses. The NHS is in a mess largely because the UK population is older and sicker

It's the same when people advise others to move to cheaper areas of the country and then complain that all "Londoners" come to their area and inflate housing prices. People lack critical thinking, unfortunately.