private sector v public sector

[kblu]

I work for small firm (10 of us in total), private sector, no perks, no pension, no sick pay, no ML extras, no bonuses, no flexi time, threat of redundancy still looms like my public sector friends. Went out with friends recently (public sector workers) who were discussing what package they'd get if they were made redundant (which ran into thousands of pounds) and realised that if I were in the same boat (which is possible) after being there 13 years i'd come out with a paltry amount.

So - i'm not moaning really, but I need a need to stop feeling so negative about my job and try and focus on the good bits. Can someone please tell me the positives of working in private sector as I seem to have forgotten scratches head.

And before anyone starts. I know i'm lucky to have a job :)

Just remembered a positive, can tell my lazy colleague that she's a lazy twat without getting reprimanded/reported to HR etc etc. BONUS!

You can leave and find a new job without worrying that you are giving up years of service for redundancy purposes?

Not all public sector is the same. I get stat everything , do get flexi time but it's the only perk we have and they've just expanded it to include Saturdays

Agree with HarrietJones that you can get really good perks in the private sector, tends to be the big corporations though if you don't mind the office politics and the corporate speak, ie I get 30 days holiday, ML, SSP, pension, dental, BUPA, employee assistance line, childcare vouchers, flexi-time, bonus, 4 weeks per year served for redundancy pay etc.

There are pros and cons to both sectors, but regardless of the sector you are in, I think if you enjoy what you do that helps a lot. I've also worked for small firms.

Pros of the private sector in a small firm - fewer regulations and processes to follow and hence you can make decisions quickly and see their effect; you are an important cog in the wheel; close family atmosphere; more responsibility; more flexibility in pay increases based on performance (not sure if these all apply to your job, but hope a few do apply).

Difference in private sector is that you can work hard and be good and ask for a payrise! Okay that takes guts and you may not get it but it doesn't happen in the public sector...

if you are a manager, as I am, and have been in both public and private sector, you can tell useless people to buck up their ideas a lot more efficiently in the private sector.

also, in the private sector, we had wine on a friday afternoon- no chance of that in public!

But other than that, I prefer the public sector.

But if you are public sector and bad at your job you can still get a pay rise and move up a band depending on the sector you are in.

Also agree with Littlesue- when I worked in the private sector, for a large multi-national, we did get lots of perks such as bupa, gym membership, childcare vouchers. We also had lots of performance related rewards- annual week long holidays to monaco, trips to las vegas, and quarterly lunches to fancy restaurants etc. However, the pay off was extremely long hours and little flexibility if my daughter was ill etc. It was actually a very unpleasant culture to work in, despite the higher salary.

Easier to get rid of rubbish staff in the private sector, and basic salaries can be higher. But personally, I would choose public sector any day. Sorry!

My niece who works for Apple gets several perks as well as a better salary than she would in the public sector such as private health Insurance etc.

I have spent the past 28 years in the NHS without any of these perks BUT I do get a better pension than if I joined now. Still not a huge amount though - less that £8000 a year but woukd be far less under the newer schemes.

Aah, yeah private sector in big corporations you can get perks. I don't have any in my job that I can think of and i've not had a wage rise for five years, pretty piss poor really even though i've asked for one and basically there is none in the pipeline, like ever! However, I do enjoy my job and have a very good working relationship with my boss and i'm allowed to swear at work (but not where clients can overhear obviously), My colleagues are also lovely. These are the only reasons I stay!

It just irritates me a little that my long service without a day off sick never gets rewarded. It would just be nice if now and again he would say at 4.30 pm "get yourself off home, you've worked really hard this week". I can dream on I suppose.

Dillydaydreaming - my sister works for the NHS and gets loads of perks - does it depend what NHS you work for? She gets a full wage when she's off sick (six months when she had an operation), a pension, flexi time etc.

Hmm, I can see perks to both. I'm public sector and Dh was until he changed jobs, private.

His perks: Private healthcare, Annual Bonus (worth several thousand pounds), paid overtime, Great pension (but he did work for a large bank), flexi time, ability to ask for payrises, transport loans, lots of discounts and so on...

Working in the public sector, I get none of these.

However, I think my job in the public sector is safe, good sick pay, and compared to some a good pension.

My downsides are: no flexi time, set holidays, no chance to increase wage (pay freeze), no paid over time etc.

His downsides to private: Always the threat of redundancies. Eventually he did get made redundant, and he got a brilliant package. Far better than the redundancy package I'm currently being offered and I've worked here longer and get paid more!

So I think it depends on where you work. Simply distinguishing between public / private is too simplistic.

I worked in the private sector, had a final salary pension scheme, bupa, yearly bonus, discounted gym membership, my own office, long lunch breaks often in the pub, cushy job which involved next to no work.

I'm now in the nhs and have none of those things. Oh, I do get a jtf card.

Oh and I don't get overtime anymore, nor are the training opportunities in the public sector (ime) as good as in the private sector.

I guess i'm in the wrong private sector judging by some of the responses!

The difference is you work for a small company. After DH was made redundant, he worked for a small company and had no perks at all. Not even a pension. He didn't stay there very long and moved on to a bigger company. He had loads of perks in that one too, including a very expensive/posh free Christmas party, bupa, childcare vouchers.... The list goes on.

I've worked predominantly in the private sector but for the last few years (and since having children) I've worked for the NHS and I now can't wait to get back to the private sector.

The public sector is fine if you don't mind red tape, inefficiency, no flexibility and a general feeling that the organisation is run by pedants.

I moaned about the private sector for years but as long as you did your job you were rewarded and appreciated (well most of the time). The pay is also better and on occasions when your DCs were ill, it was understood that as long as you got the work done it didn't matter if you took the odd day off here and there. In the public sector you have to account for every minute of every day and if one of my DCs are ill I have to jump through a number of hoops just to get a few hours off (some would say rightly so as the public purse is paying your wages).

Don't be fooled by the 'better pension' stuff and redundancy stuff and if you've spent the majority of your working life in the private sector you may find organisations like the NHS pretty miserable to work for.

If you've managed to stay for 13 years with one company in the private sector, that is a record in itself! Most private sector workers I know change jobs every few years because the sector is so unstable.

I've worked in both private and public sector and the downsides of the public sector for me are:

1. bad managers who can't be fired
2. poor professional standards - most private sector companies, larger ones at least, are quite strong on ethics policies, HR standards and expectations of professional conduct. It's more common in the public sector to see unprofessional behaviour, bullying, harassment etc. That's been my experience anyway but maybe that's just a bias from where I've worked
3. boring work - there is less dynamism in the public sector and I found I ended up doing 'non-jobs' where no matter what work I did, I never felt that there was much of a concrete outcome. In the private sector, everything has to have results or it wouldn't be done.

That's my tuppence ha'penny anyway! Redundancy packages aren't always great in the public sector either. Some of the shadier sides of the public sector such as quangos try to skirt around what they owe employees as well now. Hope this cheers you up a bit...

Thanks :)

I have been reflecting a bit and although I have no monetary perks i.e. no wage rises, no pension, no sick pay - all the basic for everything. I had to sort out my own maternity leave and pay as no one in the office had been pregnant for about 20 years!! Wage is pretty shit too but....I do enjoy it most of the time. It's a ten minute drive from my house, I get free parking. I always leave on the dot of five come what may. I love my colleagues, they are fab. My boss is all right most of the time (even though he's a bit of a tight arse) and we have a good working relationship.

My DH is works public sector and is always moaning about the red tape etc and having to watch how he speaks to his colleagues. I couldn't be arsed with that!

Small organisations tend to be crap in both sectors, large ones tend to have similar perks in both (and similar amounts of bureaucracy and management wank...)

The public sector body I was in that 'couldn't afford' to meet basic H+S reqs on the grounds new employees were cheaper was as dodgy as any struggling private company - and MrNC's perks for a multinational private firm are even better than mine now as a civil servant. And he's had more pay rises than me recently - I've had one of 0.5% in the last five years. He's had about that twice!

Both of us have excellent flexible working and generally the attitude is 'here's a deadline, get the job done, we don't care about when', but there are crap managers in both sectors and teams who just want to justify their own existence.