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".

In our place our managers said there’s no requirement on how long you’re in, this new tool/app thing they’re going to get will just show if you’ve connected to the office network on a particular day. So to my mind it really encourages popping in for a few hours to show your face. Which tbh is what I have been doing and will do today. I’ll arrive about 9.30 after school drop off and will leave again by 3, but log on at home before and after that so as to make up my hours. On Monday by lunchtime I was the only one in my team left in so I just went home at that point. So silly 🙄

We're being gently nudged to do 40%. Our manager isn't properly tracking it yet but I think he will be forced to soon. I'm finding it ok as I have an office near me with plenty of space. As an organisation we don't have the desk space though due to problems with Raac in a lot of our buildings. I can't see how my organisation will get close to 60%. I get the impression that there's not a lot of support for it from senior management.

No further announcements in my dept but from the top down asked to encourage staff to ensure doing their 40% (which we do monitor) with a view to 60% by spring. Currently we do have enough space, despite staff saying we don’t, so I advised them to use Monday - Friday not just Tuesday and Wednesday. But we are moving in the summer and as yet no indication if there’s enough space. Our most senior official has said last week he favours office working and I do think we will go to 60%.

For me and my teams they feel a bit aggrieved that they are doing 40% and some people never showing their faces (as I can see from this thread). I personally think 2 days a week in the office is a good deal and I’ve always said if it’s abused it will change and it is. All our contracts for new employment say hybrid. I think we have been given enough notice to arrange childcare, my children had to go to the after school club and have survived and thriving and I took a hit on my pension to reduce hours for a few years so I picked up twice a week.
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It’s 40% (or 60 soon) not 2-3 full days. I tend to leave at 2.45 and collect my teenager as I need to be home by 4 to administer meds. Then I log back on, so I make those few hours up by going in 3 days every fortnight. Many of my colleagues do the same and collect children so there’s options for those opposed to the after school club. If people live so far away from offices I wonder why they applied for a job that’s advertised hybrid when it’s such a long journey? If you applied for home working then you’re fine as you’ve got a contract. If you have moved miles away then I don’t understand why people did that when they weren’t a home worker.

Don’t you have a flexi sheet that you fill in home or office for each day? I do and when I leave early it means I have to catch up those hours another day. If you’re not being monitored then I guess why would you, but our team have been doing 40% from March 2022

We do have a flexi sheet but so far the managers have said it’s a crude tool (new tool they’ve brought in specifically to monitor office attendance) that literally just shows ‘days’ rather than %hours in the office. Some colleagues are aggrieved the other way as they travel far so once they’re in prefer to do a long office day but over a period of weeks come in less than 60% of days.
we were already doing 60% allegedly but I was getting away with 2 days a week. I’m on a training programme and we have a lot of self study and online tutorials so it is frustrating as both of those I find easier on home days.
im probably averaging around 50% and will carry on doing my best but if I look to come in and there’s a traffic issue which means my journey will take an hour rather than half an hour, then I change plans and stay at home as it just doesn’t make sense and as a single parent of 3 I don’t have much leeway fitting in my full time hours anyway.

I’m also a minion so am going to just carry on trying and think the worst that will happen is my manager will look at my stats and if it’s a bit below 60 will ask me to try harder to come in a bit more.

Sorry what I mean is we don’t put home or office on our normal flexi sheet so they don’t go by that.
we have attendance spreadsheets where you put your intentions. Then this new tool they’ve brought in for managers to check % days you connected to the office network.

@Zanatdy because when was offered the job I was reassured again and again that hybrid element meant coming in for team days and particular meetings. They boasted about how this meant they now had a more diverse workforce and could recruit from all over the UK. That we would never be mandated a % because there isn't the office space anyway.

I guess they were wrong to say that as it’s not contractual and we have always been told it’s a privilege not a right and can change at any point.

We have a flexi sheet on our intranet we are all supposed to fill it. We don’t have the tool yet. I’ll welcome it because it’s impossible for senior managers to monitor who is doing what when everyone works different days so don’t necessarily see them

Well we've had quite an interesting development. Apparently another office has been trialling 'desk monitor's and this will be rolled out. Its a device that will monitor heat and will be used to get the best results for desk utilisation across the week. Hummm yeah right and also monitor how long you are at your desk for - you can imagine how this one has gone down 🙈🤣. We already do 40% and this is enforced, i imagine the 60% will now be the same.

Reading these last few posts, do they really think this is good use of managers time? Monitoring who's where when for how long!

Currently we do have enough space, despite staff saying we don’t, so I advised them to use Monday - Friday not just Tuesday and Wednesday.

That’s a pretty ridiculous position to take. Of course people all want to come in on the same days. If the whole point of forcing people to come in is the opportunity to work with other people in person, then insisting that they come in on quiet days just to meet quota is ridiculous.

@Ilikewinter similarly desk monitors are ludicrous. They’re both unreasonably intrusive as a monitoring device and entirely miss the point. You book a desk for the day because you need a base in the office. But surely it’s a good thing if you have several meetings etc away from the desk.

These examples illustrate the problem with some stupid uniform decree about attendance. And of just being petty about compliance.

Have any of you read this master piece?

www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-people-plan-2024-2027/civil-service-people-plan-2024-2027-html

Recruiting the best talent - what while you're monitoring whether they are at their desks or not!

Performance related pay- thought we already had that!

It's hardly inspiring! But yes improving office attendance is right up there!

Performance related pay- thought we already had that!

Do all Government departments have PRP?

@UnremarkableBeasts we already have a desk booking system, but apparantly these new heat seeking monitors (!) provides data to show utilisation across the department across the week..... what a load of crap!

Some departments have been using these for years even pre-covid

No, not all depts. I don't have PRP. We didn't even get the £1k lump sum last year because we were lumped in with front line operational teams who also did not get it.

Does MOJ get PRP? And what does that mean? If you hit targets you get a bonus?

No PRP in my sector of MOJ at least!

It's absolutely nothing to do with punitive targets and is about the level you are assessed at at the end of year review. So your annual performance in all the various parts of the job, not specifically output but quality of work, ability to work at pace, a year without pissing off all your colleagues etc.

If you're on a PIP you won't see a PRP bonus in most places.

Thank you for explaining!

I worked at HMRC & am currently MoD both have had various schemes of PRP.

Currently about meeting objectives but if you do one exceptionally well then your line manager can nominate you for a 'bonus' the money for this was taken from our overall pay pot though!

The previous scheme was dreadful, a certain percentage had to be bottom even if they had met their objectives - there were awful meetings where you had to decide who was the worst even if they were all pretty good! And those poor sods didn't get a pay rise at all!

I even had people saying things like I'm retiring this year it doesn't matter I'm happy to be bottom if it saves someone else! 😕

Needless to say they had to stop that one!

Too many civil servants (grown exponentially since lockdown) - so if they cut out the underperformers (ask anyone who tries to use a civil service information/help line) there would be ample desks for those who actually work.

You all seem to look at it from your own POV - that it saves you lots of money (do you still get the London weighting?) rather than giving the taxpayers who pay your salaries the service they deserve.

Performance pay is just a way of reducing everyone’s pensions.

It’s taken from the overall pay pot as a rockstar said. Which means the pot of money available for salaries (which influence how much your pension will be) is that bit lower. The individual bonuses are non-consolidated which means they don’t contribute to your individual pension.

We had that X% don’t get a pay rise scheme at one point too. Disproportionately more women than men were placed in the no pay rise box.

If you track civil service numbers Ruby you will notice that the numbers increased mainly due to the Brexit referendum.

And the people answering helpline calls are probably best placed to be at home, as long as they have a headset & access to IT & their scripts they're good to go. And their time on line & calls taken is very closely monitored.

The problems with service are probably down to the fact that the Civil Service struggles to recruit people to do these roles, they are paid minimum wage & they almost need permission to go to the toilet and monitor them to within an inch of their lives!

Who wants to do that? Especially against a background of being slagged off by the press & the Govt everyday!

And the reason we might be a little worried about how much it's going to cost us is because a lot of us didn't have a pay rise for 10 years and some were recruited on the premis that they could work from home & are now being told to head to the office for 60% of the time when the office may be 2 hours away or more.

Which departments need to be cut down then? Under performing individuals are indeed the first on the chopping block. Which job do you want to see go?

Shall we make all the prison officers and probation officers redundant? Oh wait, we have a massive recruitment and retention crisis across HMPPS and things are dangerous.

Passport staff? So you can wait longer for your passport? DVLA for driving licences?

DWP so it's even harder for people to get their UC adjustments made, appropriate benefits paid or advice?

Communities and Housing? Cabinet Office? FCO, HSE, MOD, Border Force, Education, Rural Affairs, Business, Transport, the Treasury?

Where, exactly, would you start? Most departments are on the bones of their arses.

For example in my dept under a recruitment freeze, internal restructure with a whole level of B9 management being made redundant and volunteers requested for redundancy across the bands and grades. They all leave in 8wks.

Most specifically covid related jobs were temporary contracts (management of the testing, modelling, analysis, etc) , so they aren't working in the CS any more. There was a big section of the CS working on post Brexit untying of bureaucracy, but most of that is also over and people moved on / moved back I to their previous roles.