Civil service 60% mandate

[meagert]

What have your managers said to you? Do you think your department/SCS/line manager will be strict on this? Or do you think it'll be like the last time they tried a departmental push where it was a bit ad hoc?!

Possibly too soon to tell, our SCS haven't said very much yet and will "be in touch soon".

@LadyDaisy42

Just remember that you are meant to have childcare in place even when working from home. Whether you can even nip out during the day to do a school run is very job specific.

The emergency wfh during covid was quite different to normal wfh requirements

Yes thanks I am aware and have managed for the last few years to do so with my current employer.

Working in the office is distracting and non productive. We are told to come in and be social when you do you are told off. Its strange we managed to work from home during the Pandemic with great results and we kept the country running. Its about control which for the minimum wage is being treated worse than a child when we all do a great job and work incredibly hard. What about those that have a disability, workplace passports are put in place for a reason. But this is now being ignored which is tantamount to bullying. we are told this is not mandatory but if we dont come in we get disciplined. To all those people who work hard, shame on the government for treating us all this way.

Interesting today’s Dailyfail reporting some Depts can’t do 60% as they don’t have the capacity. I know many posters have said this but the message is now going up the chain back to Jacob RM.

Historically the CS has expanded and shrunk headcount on a fairly regular basis. The norm was to rent out empty floors during periods of lower headcount and then utilise them as headcount went up. The Government changed this and for the last decade they have been selling offices off so there is no capacity to expand for increased headcount. They have also been working on ratios of e.g. 7 desks per 10 employees with part time and WFH meaning there should be a desk for everyone.

So GMT policy has come back to bite them.

JRM doesn't have a ministerial role anymore so it won't be going to him.

It’s bizarre timing to have such a mandate come out in the CS just at the same time as the announcement that disability benefits are going to be looked at because there’s now such a. Prevalence of wfh opportunities…

Says it all about

DD can’t do her 60% because there’s not enough desks where she is

This message is aimed at the CS who refuse to go into the office regularly once or twice a week. Its also aimed at managera of new starters who don't realise that the whole 'for a reason' thing includes when you have new staff, you should be in 4 or 5 days a week for the first couple of months with a new starter and it isn't happening so we have lots of people starting and leaving very quickly

But for lots of people - even new starters - they will be the only person in their team based in that location. It’s just going in to sit in a less well equipped and less comfortable space to sit in Teams meetings all bloody day.

What is the point?

Why would they be the only one in the office?

Because of dispersed teams. Whether an experienced team member or a new starter, they could easily be the only person from their team based in that particular office building. So meetings would be conducted via their laptop whilst in the office, the same as if they were working remotely.

There’s no business reason to travel to an office building in order to spend all day in meetings on your laptop, and no benefit to conducting those online meetings from an office building rather then from home, if no one else from your team is based on that office.

New Starters are one of the obvious reasons why they and their manager should be in the office several days a week. This is to help on-board them and to provide training & development and help them settle in and build relationships. It’s not long term but a pragmatic approach.

I'm a new starter (5 months) living 2 hours from the office with 2 kids under 2. No way I'm making it in 4 or 5 days a week! All induction training was online and everyone set up a teams meet to introduce themselves. Boss is thrilled with me, I go in every few weeks. I work in a team that is spread across 4 sites and when I'm in I'm usually sat on teams in a noisy office.
Our desk ratio is 1-10.

Hi all, I hope you're all getting on ok. I have had a flexible working request approved so fingers crossed I should be ok, although I do feel a little hemmed in now. Our department hasn't started monitoring but is still talking about it, it'll be interesting to see what the new year brings. I hope you are all managing ok.

So far so good for me too!

I've always treated having a new starter as a reason to be in the office I have to say, at least a month of in Monday to Thursday with Friday at home to do their on-line training! Just so that they get to know other people and what they are supposed to be doing, who to go to for what!

So I have the odd day when I have back to back meetings but people who spend all day every day in TEAMS meetings, what are you doing? What's your actual output?

Just curious really - not having a pop!

@rockstarshoes my role is advisory, I'm unusually a G6 with no line management responsibility (which is a wonderful change) my 3 modes of working are usually a) meetings; introductory project chats, updates and advice b) reading legislation and policy c) writing up my advice and recommendations for boards and SLT.

The only time I really benefit from in office interaction are times we do workshops to workshop ideas if we are needing to rethink a new process or the way we deliver our team's service, that kind of thing, which doesn't happen more often than quarterly. So I genuinely work much better at home.

Exactly this. OH went into the office to support a new starter over the summer. The rest of the team are spread over the country. So they arranged a few weeks and a ‘rota’ to support them with either them travelling to other other locations or the existing staff so nobody had excessive travel or too much disruption. He offered the summer slot as we don’t have children so it was less disruptive to us. Shock horror. Acting like professional grown ups.

Thankfully they’ve just announced their ‘in for a reason’ isn’t going to change due to pressure on estate and geographically diverse teams and the fact IT WORKS.

This whole thing has been very strange, caused huge stress and upset and really damaged morale. I fully understand if a role is customer facing or hugely collaborative but a lot of roles are quite insular and output based and actually harder to do in a noisy faceless office.

Anyone had anything recent from their offices on this.? All quiet at MoJ...

No nothing yet

All Q here too, but they've all had a break for Christmas, now they'll be focusing on end of year budget balancing.

In fact our single annual departmental event has been cancelled suddenly because someone realised it would fuck the budget this year....

All quiet in MOD at the moment.

Watching with interest as I’ve just started. I’m the only one in my team at my local office.

I just don't see the need for this change

How's everyone getting on? DH's department has said that G7 upwards need to be in by the end of Jan, and it will cascade from there. (Fortunately for us, no mandated calculation yet for how to decide if 60% has been hit).

DH said that there were no spare desks today and a couple of people who hadn't pre-booked online couldn't get one. So there is absolutely no bloody way they can accommodate everyone at 60%.

At least the pre-booking means you know not to travel if you don't have one, but how do you then hit the target? What if you don't?

Our government department is undergoing a complete org redesign so there are a lot more people coming to site attending workshops, small group activities etc.

That plus people doing their normal day jobs, my general impression is that there are a lot more people coming back to site on a more regular basis just because of the number of cars in the car park.

there are many factors playing into this - the risk at the moment of the site being at capacity is probably minimal but it's winter which has an impact - numbers will rise in the spring, preCOVID it was very much a bums on seats culture, our site is massive and could just about cope with that many people, but then they introduced a smarter working policy just before COVID hit and the total number of desks was reduced as part of that policy on the expectation they'd have to accommodate fewer people. Now we have this new curveball of the target for 60% attendance, the lower number of desks is going to be an interesting one, if more people do start coming in over spring and summer ....

ultimately I doubt very much managers are "keeping a spreadsheet" not least of all, our redesign is giving us all the clear message to stop wasting time on non-value add activities, so hopefully common sense prevails. My manager certainly isn't tracking our weekly days in the office, but then we're all coming in regularly so no concerns ergo no need to track us, we're all trusted to do a great job 👍

as long as people aren't swinging the lead and carrying on like the country's still in lock down, it's crack on and get the job done, in our govt department.

I drove 2 hours in and 2 hours back on Monday to sit at a desk on teams for 5 hours. That's left me down on Flexi for the week which is annoying as I really struggle to fit any extra in with little kids. No booking system so I was lucky to get a desk.
Obvious 5 hours is nowhere near 40% but I can't do longer days in the office due to childcare so in theory I'd have to drive down 3 days a week to achieve it, but would then be 12 hours down from the driving. Crazy!