Civil Service staff networks to only meet outside working hours and have all events signed off by senior managers

[IwantToRetire]

New rules have been issued to all Civil Service staff networks to ensure their activities remain within the Civil Service Code.

Read in full at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/civil-service-staff-networks-to-only-meet-outside-working-hours-and-have-all-events-signed-off-by-senior-managers

What are the recent reports of inappropriate events?

However, Ministers and Civil Service leaders have been concerned by recent reports of inappropriate events being conducted by some networks in the Civil Service.

The guidance also provides further clarity for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) networks specifically. Including the need to promote all view points equally, and ensure their role - to promote equality and inclusion in the Civil Service for everyone - is not lost in pursuit of a particular issue.

I'm guessing this is the reason for the new guidance.

Nobody ever invites me to the inappropriate events. Our PiPP network did a lunchtime teams session on the origins of Polari but it didn't seem particularly inappropriate and was actually quite interesting.

There’s a thread on this already, I believe

I am assuming this is a result, recognition of SEEN networks.

Wasn't the first one a Government one?

I don't think it's because of that. I think it's because of this:

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/hmrc-nonsense-guilt-being-british-seminar-5Hjd8Sj_2/

That's a meeting which if you respect free speech is not an issue, even if you dont agree with the intent of the meeting.

The Government guidance is about networks, whether in or outside of work hours, effectively becoming a lobby group that then distorts the work environment for example insisting that everyone has to declare a gender identity, and denying that sex is a biological fact.

And because of the result of the work place not being able to recognise that, is how the SEEN got set up.

I don't have a problem with them holding that meeting. I just think that the resultant press from that (reported by the daily express, daily mail and others that I found) is what may have prompted this.

I dont think they would have implemented it that quickly.

Suspect there have had to be all sorts of negotiations to get it to the stage of a public statement.

On one level I think if you have a Staff Network you shouldn't have to get a Senior Manager to okay what you are going to do.

So I suppose the rationale is if these meetings are in Staff paid time.

Rather than meeting down the pub, or prefered coffee shop.

Link to the original thread about this:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5415871-crackdown-on-inappropriate-civil-service-staff-networks?reply=147362800

When I think of things I've heard these groups doing, I am not really surprised that they are being told not to use work time. It seems like there are people who made it a major part of their day.

And there are others who benefit hugely from the support, knowledge, development and mentorship they provide. For every LGTB+ network there is also a carers network and an early careers network, a disability matters network, a parenting network and the racial inclusion network 🤷🏼‍♀️

So much for order index in latest added.

I blame the new blue, not my lack of attention!

Haven’t they been told to ‘bring their whole, authentic self to work’? How about people just go to work, do their jobs, go home again, and leave their activist shenanigans to the weekend?

In fairness having worked in the public sector some people would just trundle from random event to random event and never do any work given half a chance.

There are plenty of people in the civil service who do great work for not very much money. There are more who treat it as middle class job seekers allowance and don't move the needle a millimetre.

Moving all these events out of paid work time is the right thing to do.

Careers and training things, mentioned above, should of course be in work time, they are directly work related, the others should not.

I've spent far too much time inside the civil service trying to improve their ways of working, too often they are dogmatic, myopic and wedded to doing things the same way they always have, because they always have. It's a job not a social club IMO.

Agreed. I know there are many who work really hard. But there are pockets/individuals who still think they get paid the salary just to turn up /login, and doing any additional work is doing their employer a favour. And they aren't always managed out.

I managed out the one person in my team who had this attitude, the rest of the team worked really hard but we often came across people in other parts of the organisation who would try and shift their own work onto us, and who joined video calls looking like they had just been roused from a nap

It’s a very privileged stance to think that a carer for a profoundly disabled child can leave that part of their life behind to just turn up and do their job day in day out.

supporting young, disadvantaged but ambitious and driven people to progress their careers and access development opportunities and provide exposure to the types of careers paths they could think about is an important facet of these types of networks. I could go on.

Perhaps we should argue that the roles filled by what are essentially peers and volunteers should be the responsibility of the employer but then we’d have people crying about wasting taxpayers money when civil and public servants should be nose to grindstone in a cell like office for the duration of their working day.

99% of people have no idea what 80% of the civil or public sector actually do. And the constant attacks from the media, from the public, from our own departments based on the anecdata from a person who once worked in one department for a couple of years and saw a lazy toad “getting away with it” does an enormous disservice to every single person in the country who relies on the civil service to support society in ways they can’t even imagine.

None of that means that systemic abuses should not be investigated, though.

systemic abuses 🤣

a group of people having lunch together once a month after returning to work having had treatment for cancer is what staff networks look like in the real world.

Jim emailing Sarah a list of resources to help her teenager following her ASD diagnosis is what really happens.

The people from within minority backgrounds agreeing to walk to the station together after work because they need to go past the hotel where people are waving flags and yelling about immigration.

its almost like this needs a sensible grown up approach and a knee jerk reaction based on a few isolated incidences reported in the gutter press had the potential to disadvantage loads of different people in loads of ways 🤔

I sympathise - teachers and health care professionals will share many of your views. Unfortunately weak leadership in the public sector faced with aggressive political activists have shown themselves unable to implement the Nolan principles and enforce political impartiality.
This isn't the odd rogue individual - it's organisations full of gender loons bullying others into removing fundamental rights and scientific principles. It's why we've dangerous maternity services distracted from their core purpose by removing the language of women and basic biological facts from maternity care. Some schools arrogantly transitioning children in secret from their parents and others forcing teenage girls to undress alongside boys in PE changing rooms. The Ministry of Justice determined to place men claiming to be women in women's prisons - despite the SC judgment.

That's why the Civil Service has to be told to stop the activities of these political activists in work time and to focus on the day job.

I can't but help note that this "owning the trans activists" measure now means that parent networks (read mums networks) have to meet after work at the same time as looking after children. Victory!

That's a meeting which if you respect free speech is not an issue, even if you dont agree with the intent of the meeting.

There is no such thing as free speech within the work place. Your employer is totally free to direct that you must not criticise them to their customers, that you must be cordial, that you do not raise controversial topics so long as they are not discriminatory in doing so. And if you are a civil servant then the code requires you to be impartial and implement government policy. Meetings that suggest British people should feel guilty within the home office clearly breach that.

As substandard maternity care unfortunately predates anyone doing a search/replace on a breast feeding pamphlet, that's an absurd claim entirely unsupported by any form of causal logic.

Substandard maternity care is down to the misogyny of those who also demand women are reduced to body parts or erased from leaflets. These two things cannot be separated.