Civil service - will you strike?

[Probablygreen]

My department has been informed today that we must now return to the office at least 4 days a week. I only joined CS 6 months ago after applying for a role that was advertised as 60/40 hybrid (2 days in the office per week). The pay is nowhere near what I’d get in private sector but I didn’t join for that, I joined purely for the flexible benefits. We’ve already been told we’ll get a maximum of a 2% pay rise this year after years of freezes, I was willing to go along with that but I draw the line here.
I can’t afford at this moment in time to be doubling the amount I pay for parking and the amount I pay for commuting. In addition, I just don’t want my work/life balance to go back to how it was before, I was run into the ground working full time from an office, raising 2 young kids (one with SEND) and running a home. Yes, I have a partner that does 50% but he works full time too. With hybrid working I could drop off my children and pick them up 2 days a week. That will be gone now. On top of the increased commuting costs, I’ll also have to find money for childcare an extra 2 days a week. I think there’s an element of discrimination against women because, let’s be honest here, we’re the ones who will be leaving in droves because we can’t reconcile the benefits any longer.
I know there are people who don’t have the benefit of hybrid working, but that’s a choice. I chose hybrid and now it’s completely out of my control even though I have followed to the letter what was asked of us.
If you work for CS and the union ask you to strike, will you?

@MyNameIsMrsNesbit what did you want the unions to do about a situation that affected everyone? Civil servants were at least counted as key workers

Funny you should say that, because one of the things I’d have liked them to push for was counting us as key workers for school/nursery places if they also wanted us working 12-hour days. Another one would have been pushing ministers to have realistic expectations of what their workforce could achieve, and perhaps maybe considering dropping a couple of policy priorities rather than “no, everyone do everything except MORE.” Peak lockdown was fucking hellish.

Good for you if this wasn’t an issue where you work, but it was for a lot of us. And the FDA did… pretty much nothing. The very whisper of anything about offices though and they’re all over the papers about how great hybrid working has been for parents and carers. Yeah thanks, lads, maybe show up a bit earlier next time.

I would probably have more time for the unions on this current push if they hadn’t been so useless back then, to be honest. “Oh God, another lockdown, how the hell are we going to cope this time? Oh good a message from my union about supporting us! Brilliant! Oh, it’s a desk yoga webinar.”

Aaaaaanyway I like hybrid working and would very very much prefer hybrid working to stay. But I worry it’s not going to happen if the whole thing is a fight between the ‘lazy public sector slackers!’ spiel and the ‘nobody should ever have to go back the office ever’ people and nobody cares about finding a sensible nuanced compromise. Except Institute for Government who don’t get listened to!

Agree with PP that Civil Servants are an easy target for Tory Ministers stoking culture wars ahead of local elections. Hopefully it will settle down after they get a pasting in May.
Our department are holding firm on hybrid working at the moment, though are 'encouraging' more attendance at the office. However we have backlogs similar to the Passport office/DVLA and while they don't affect the general public in the same way they could be used as a big stick to beat us with/force us back in offices/threaten privatisation (again).
I have been way more productive since WFH. Should I be told to go back in the office 4 days I'll be reducing my hours - I had increased from 18 to 30 hrs, plus am 50 hours in flexi credit due to WFH/no wasted time commuting so can start earlier/nip out for school runs (kids 8 and 10 so no wraparound care required). I can physically only work 18 hrs if I have to attend an office.

I was going to start a thread about this as well. I work in a dispersed team in a non customer facing role. Pre covid I was able to work flexibly and usually did 1 day a fortnight in face to face meetings in offices all around the country, the rest from home.

Now we’ve been told we’ve got to do 2 days a week in the office. So I could go to my nearest office where I know no one to sit on the phone all day. But there’s no point to that. So instead I’m going to travel to meet colleagues in my team to satisfy the 2 days a week rule. At a significant cost which will be paid for by work. Its silly.

And I don’t like the assumptions about what happened during covid. No one in my department had a key worker status. I was working 12 hours a day therefore on top of looking after / homeschooling the kids. Which I appreciate is not unique and is what so many other parents had to do

Me and my mum are both civil servants. I’m in the probation service, on maternity leave at the moment but I’d of heard if the hybrid working situation had changed from the group chat I’m still in. When I went on maternity I had to go in 2 days a week but generally went in 4 as I hate wfh. Mum is HMRC and they’re 2 days office 3 days home and so many people are kicking off about that. Plus it sounds like their contracts changed to reflect this anyway.

Our department certainly wasn't given key worker status!

We are still told to be in two days a week. I’m not doing that as I’m part time so have assumed one day a week is fair with my hours and I will be sticking to that. Because of levelling up and moving everyone out of London most of my immediate team are scattered around the country so I’m not sure why me going into an office with no one else on it is useful.

the JRM notes did make me laugh tho. He’s cutting a bit of a pathetic figure as minister for two intangible and not achievable things. ‘Brexit opportunities’ and ‘government efficiency’ reduced to leaving pass-ag notes in peoples’ desks!

Maybe we could all go in on a Friday, instigate 'wine Friday' like those CS in Downing Street or a Thursday with a cheese & wine afternoon?

Honestly I have been a CS for 30 years, my role atm in is in a Dept that isn't customer facing! If they tell me I'm going back to the office 4 days per week I will leave!

I'm in the South East, we really struggle to recruit CS as it is because the wages are so rubbish compared to Private Sector, especially Digital staff!

We have spent thousands kitting people out to WFH, kitting out rooms for hybrid meetings with people in the office & people at home on Teams!

When you do go in, 80% of the people in the office are sat in noise reducing headsets in Teams meetings anyway & we have reduced the number of desks!

And finally if anyone thinks I give one single fuck what JRM says then they are deluded!
If I need to go to work for any reason at all I will go, like I did through all the lockdowns, letting myself into an empty building doing what I needed to do & then going home again!

I am not going to queue for bloody petrol, travel 12 miles in 50 mins through HS2 works because JRM has decided I should do

Those of you who say ‘well they could all be replaced’ - aside from the fact that, actually, that’s not true, do you have any idea how much it costs to recruit people? It would be a big waste of your tax money to replace us all.

We're still meant to be in 2 days in my department ... but lots of us worried about them increasing that. I think a lot of these replies from non civil servants show a lack of understanding of who we are and what we do. I'd add that I wasn't counted as a critical worker - worked 7am-9am and then 5pm-9pm, plus essential meetings, through both nonschool lockdowns for weeks as my job was the most flexible to doing that. Grateful for the flexibility, which is now at risk.

I fear all employers are going to gradually take away hybrid working.
I'm in the private sector, but was previously with a big global employer and worked from home every day for years as my stakeholders were not based in my local office (including pre covid).
In December I got a new role with a smaller regional firm purely because I was attracted by their hybrid working policy.
My manager has now indicated a couple of times that the firm's hybrid model "might not be working" because some members of staff aren't productive enough when they're at home.
If they shift us towards being in the office 5 days a week I will immediately apply to work part time while I look for another job. It may even be the push I need to go freelance. The worry is, if all employers are headed this way, we won't be able to find replacement jobs.

I think people forget how scattered we are, due to previous policy decisions. I have team members in 5 locations as part of the move to cheaper office space outside London and (more recently) levelling up and seeking to have more civil servants in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

All of us going into our separate local offices just adds travel time (about 2 hours less working time each day, per person), the broadband is worse than people have at home, and we sit there all day on headphones in Teams meetings. There is value in us all meeting as a team every so often, and we do, but it’s expensive (trains, plane, overnight hotel stays for the majority for whom it’s not their nearest office). And lockdown proved that it’s entirely possible to run a happy, high performing team without ever meeting in person, so it’s becoming harder to justify the expense.

The infuriating thing is that, for central departments, no one has been able to articulate the rationale for going in 4 days a week. I totally agree that it's helpful to go in once or twice a week (assuming your team is mostly based in the same office) to see people in person. In-person away days are also valuable, and in my experience Ministerial meetings are better in person, for those of us who have them.

But I haven't see a single argument for enforcing 3 or 4 days a week on everyone. It makes no sense and senior leaders are clearly well aware of this.

Not the big ones really. I work in a global corporation and we only went back late 2021 for two days and the max we will be in is 3 days. Most other similar companies are the same, and again I refer to huge multi nationals. Great benefits, flexible working, private health care, annual pay increases (not huge, but annual).
And we do all get dressed every day despite working from home, thanks. However, I'm amazed that you know what the DVLA staff are wearing whilst WFH and that you think it impacts their ability to deliver on whatever service you require .... or was that something you just picked up from the daily Mail?

The economy is in trouble due to Brexit, covid and a war. It's a great sound bite to blame the workers (themselves struggling with the cost of living crisis) but it's very naive to believe going into the office a few extra days will make much of a dent ....

Not surprised you're having issues with bin collections if they're working from home. Oh wait, it's almost like not all issues with delivering services are because of staff working from home.

We're currently being expected to travel to the office 'on average' two days a week.
My role isn't public facing, not to mention that I'm the only member of my team based in my location. We are all scattered across the country so wouldn't routinely see each other even if in the office. In fact I have never even met half of them face to face yet as they joined during lockdown! We've all managed fine so far.
When wfh I can start and finish any time and do extra when needed. When in the office I'm restricted to the train timetable and that's assuming they run on time or aren't cancelled.
Please explain to me the benefit of being in the office for me, or for my department for that matter?
It shouldn't be a one size fits all approach. It gets my goat that we're treated like school children, because one person seemingly isn't following the rules we all get punished.

I heard Defra had been told 2/3 days a week. I’ve also seen their guidance that all new jobs need to be based at one of the four hubs which I can’t imagine will help recruitment. A lot of people will be at least 2 hours away.

I work for an ALB and we haven’t had the guidance but there is concern about it. My team are all over the country and I rarely have meetings f2f (maybe once a month) so I don’t see the point of being in the office to be on teams calls. My WiFi is also better than in the office!

Well DfE have had people 100% WfH for a decade+. If this return to the office has political will then they will want to be seen to do something but that doesn't mean for every member of staff, just enough to not be the bottom of any league table when compared with other Departments, and some of that increase will be from staff who want to return. Don't panic and make it clear to your line manager then HR that the job was offered on a WfH basis and duck and weave. Mention your DC with SEND. Join a decent union quickly. Try not to focus on why this is a story and who benefits from the 'look over here, not there' and who might lobby to address the shift in commercials such as reduction in spend in city centre retailers and in valuations for real estate investment firms. Good luck.

I'm a CS but 100% in the office and always have been with no option to WFH. I would love a day to work at home. I'm getting kind of tired of being called lazy by the media when myself and my colleagues work so hard with the public and feel absolutely emotionally drained at the end of the day after having various people's problems piled on top of us.

The issue at HMPO is that they are one of the worst paid departments and are mostly run by agency staff therefore they can't retain trained staff. I would imagine DVLA are the same.

It might be interesting to have some objective insight into whether the IT systems and operations infrastructure and staffing have been invested in and have adequate capacity in HMPO and DVLA or whether the expenditure constraints for many years are the real constraint to timely delivery? If the latter then whether outsourcing will make things worse when Capita, Serco and suchlike then require a commercial return on the necessary investment and, as with some historical outsourcing, this leads to worse VFM and/or performance? It will achieve the main objective of 'look here, not over there', as perhaps leg crossing and outsourcing immigration management to Rwanda have achieved.

I think a tax cut scheduled for 2029 might do the trick, just before the next but one election so people have something to look foreward to, Like Summer and Christmas. The future must be even more predictable just before the next election, much like 2024 is more predictable than some people not having enough money now. Pesky energy prices over the next 6 months, unpredictable little tykes.

Would you all be posting on Mumsnet during a working day if you were in the office?

Civil servants occasionally have these things called lunch hours. We are allowed to eat/read/walk/talk/shop/browse the internet......
I am wfh but I'm on MN in my lunch hour.