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".

We are still receiving our monthly report stating how many days we have been in the office, I.e. how many days that are not the weekend or a bank holidays that you have connected your laptop in the office. You are not penalised for logging on at the weekend but if you log on on a work day even if you have leave booked it skews your individual report so now don’t log on to do a few things if I have a day off. My report wasn’t corrected when I attended a conference. - you have to fill in another form if you are working out of the office but not at home, i.e. meetings with partners and stakeholders etc. They don’t need heat monitors as we are all complaining about the cold!

Civil servants who are providing face to face services to citizens - border control for example - are all in their respective workplaces 100% already.

Civil servants who have to physically be in a particular building to be able to carry out their role are also in that building every day. For example, during lockdown there were high Covid levels in DVLA because of how many of them had to still keep coming into the building.

Staff on helplines are going to be amongst the lowest paid, so staff turnover is likely to be an issue there, similar to private sector helplines. Getting through to my credit card provider for example takes between 45 minutes to 90 minutes.

The civil servants who are working from home are those whose role involves using a laptop all day. Same as in many other private sector roles. They don’t need to be in a particular office building to use a laptop, produce reports, send emails, do Teams meetings etc.

There already weren’t enough desks for everyone pre-pandemic due to cost cutting, the difference being that you would leave your workstation and go to a meeting room, which meant staff could desk share whilst colleagues were off in a meeting. They took out even more desks once homeworking was brought in. And desk sharing when more staff are in the building than there are desks is more difficult now as meetings are usually all at your workstation via your laptop.

The increase in staff numbers was due to Brexit, because of the various functions transferring back to the UK from the EU. It just happened that the pandemic came along hot on its heels. So they talk about pre-pandemic staff numbers rather than pre-Brexit. We haven’t seen exponential growth since the pandemic by the way - civil service numbers are not 16 times what they were in 2020.

And here we have it!

Quote from the People plan I linked to earlier:

In the long term, however, we need to maintain a relentless focus on tackling unnecessary bureaucracy and improve the use of technology, to make the Civil Service more productive and act as a lean, agile, and cost-effective organisation.
Compared to the above post where people in the real Civil Service are being made to fill out forms giving their locations for every hour of the day!

Meh sorry about the formatting on that!

Maybe the 'improving the use of technology' is the heat sensor desk monitors! 🙄🤣🤣

Exactly @rockstarshoes. Adding pointless, ineffective and even counterproductive bureaucracy wherever possible. And finding new technological ways of making things worse if possible.

You read the nonsense rhetoric but what actually happens would never have delivered on that rhetoric anyway.

I've only got 3 years to go ( with 33 done) but that feels like a long time with all this nonesense goi g on!

Hi, do you mind me asking how you got that approved?

I am preparing a request under statutory right to request flex working but I am getting the impression from peers that they almost always manage to use one of the 8 reasons to refuse it. In my case I really don't see how they can, but they will probably try to do so as otherwise there will be an avalanche of requests like mine.

Did you find it hard to get this request approved?

Perhaps an unintended consequence of monitoring office attendance - most T&S for L&D and internal meetings now banned as budget exhausted for the FY.

We're on a recruitment freeze as well! 😕

Even though we have lost lots of staff already since certain areas started to bring in the mandate!

For new recruits any suggestions to avoid the 60% rule? There is no way I can do 3 days in London.

Compress hours, and cut them slightly?! 😃

The main considerations for office attendance - notwithstanding the 60% target

1. does your role require you to have face to face time with your manager and colleagues as a function of the role you perform - if so, it may not go down well at interview stage for a ft role to propose reducing your availability by compressing the days and reducing the hours just to get round the 60% target.
2. is the role advertised as full time, if so, trying to shorten the duration of your week when the workload will require a ft person will be frustrating to the recruiting manager and you risk not being offered the job.
3. Caveat: if your skills are rare, particularly specialist and therefore sought after, the opportunity to negotiate becomes greater than if they get 100 applicants and struggle to sift down to 30 (there will always be numerous people willing and available to work in London or whatever their location is.

in short, given 60% office attendance has been widely publicised, they will be looking for candidates who can meet the target. Negotiation may be possible if they have a scarcity of sought after skills and even then, the recruiter will be cautious about favouritism that leads to accusations of one rule for some and another rule for others. Tread with caution on this one.

You can risk asking but you may not like the answer they give. 60% may seem illogical and unfair, but being in the Civil Service means we're always in the spotlight and held up as an example because we're publicly funded.

Very good advice but to be honest, I’d be telling anyone who asked me to find a better job, literally anything. Most people I know accepted the rubbish wage, red tape and utter incompetence from leadership due to the flexibility and WFH.

Without flexibility and WFH, the civil service is a ridiculously under paid job which often pigeon holes you into a certain role you can’t escape, full of woke social justice warriors (who let’s be honest; dominate the office as they thrive on an audience) whereby you will be bullied daily by either the D&I team for some new nonsense or alternatively Ministers to placate the Daily Mail and Telegraph readers who seem to think we all work at Whitehall on mega bucks. Don’t forget every time a new leader comes in there’ll be a ‘transformation’ project that is never completed and you the lowly peasant will be blamed as they move higher up the grading pole. Failing upwards seems to be the way of the CS.

Most of us are barely scraping by on under 30k and to expect us to commute into major cities to sit on the edge of a desk due to offices being sold off - no thanks. I’ve known people being sat in hallway corridors because there’s been no desks or plan for this 60%.

Personally I believe this has been orchestrated to reduce headcount without redundancy cost. Labour will get in this year, hire an expensive consultancy firm (probs a mate of the party) to find out why things aren’t working in the CS, they’ll be told they need to recruit X skills they can’t afford (likely digital due to all the AI chatter gov are banging on about), so they need to offer other benefits such as UK wide recruitment with WFH and the whole process will start again 🙄 But hey ho…

@Lilifer sorry for the late response I'm not on MN much atm.

So it wasn't difficult no, the organisation I am in whilst pushing the mandate (40% this month, 60% from April) are keen to demonstrate flexibility. It is hard for them to use any of the 8 reasons tbh because of the nature of my role, that said I don't think they made any attempt too. My reasons are my son's (potential, waiting list) neurodiversity and home life situation which means I am often a sole carer. They only started me off with a 6 month trial though, need to continually assess that my situation hasn't changed and that it's working for the business.

If we get a formal diagnosis for my son I'd like to try to push for a home working contract after my trial as it's the only way I will feel secure I think, this doesn't seem as impossible where I am vs how I know it can be in many departments, only 2 people in my DD's area applied for flexible working which I think has helped.

Thanks @meagert . Did you get your application passed then?

Mine went in at end of Jan and have had my first meeting with my manager to discuss it. He would grant it in a heartbeat but unfortunately it's not his decision ultimately it will be decided at G6 level and above, deputy director at least has to ok it as far as I know. They don't know me from Adam so I'm anticipating a refusal and will then have to appeal etc

@Lilifer yes it's been approved on the basis we do a 6 month trial and regular review (tbh I don't really know what "approved" even means, nothing has happened to my SOP account, which is why I am wanting something a bit more solid like a contractual change). All requests have to go through DD at the moment for us too (wouldn't normally), to ensure consistency apparently. My DD doesn't really know me either, but thankfully my manager was very supportive and fought my case.

That's great, I hope it works out for you that you get the contract change. It is hard to feel at the whim of whoever happens to be DD at the time, just have to hope for a good outcome 🙏

@Lilifer my fingers are firmly crossed for you, let us know how you get on.

Aw thank you @meagert I will do! 🤞🏻