Council ‘workers’ told to stop skiving on Fridays

[winkie]

1 minute ago, cbathpc said:

Read the article. They aren't doing compressed hours, they're literally doing 4 days instead of 5 but are more 'efficient' so there is no loss in services.

Of course no one at the council wants to look at the elephant in the room there

There is a lot of waste of time in very many jobs.......sitting around waiting for stuff, something got to be done by others before can do own job....poor logistics and management.....ask a boss if there is another job could be getting on with, they don't want to know, too much thinking for them or organising for them, rather you just wasted time and money........it takes bosses more work to organise a four day week than a five day week....at their beck and call Insitu.

That is why they don't support 4 days full days work, rather have 4 days work in 5 days, more control of your time and makes life easier for them, when they may have to be there 5 days themselves, being remunerated for it of course.

[clarkey]

In my line of work some of the upper management who are also the owners ask how to we get people to stay past 5pm. I often retort pay them overtime which gets scoffed at . The business wouldn’t do a jot of extra work for its clients without billling so why should the employees. Yes the directors work 12-15 but they are invested in the business in a totally different way than the cleaners but they just don’t get this 

[AThirdWay]

41 minutes ago, Lagarde's Drift said:

NHS frontline workers are very very different from council office workers lmao.

Fair enough. My interaction with council workers is minimal nowadays, the odd conversation with the guys that empty the bins and the guys that look after the skips. No problems with them and very helpful. Everything else is done online, not sure what that has done to the workload of employees in an organisation that has a no-redundancies policy, but I can imagine.

Not the workers fault though, is it? Can't expect them to give up a cushy number voluntarily 😉

[onlooker]

12 minutes ago, clarkey said:

In my line of work some of the upper management who are also the owners ask how to we get people to stay past 5pm. I often retort pay them overtime which gets scoffed at . The business wouldn’t do a jot of extra work for its clients without billling so why should the employees. Yes the directors work 12-15 but they are invested in the business in a totally different way than the cleaners but they just don’t get this 

Does your company compete against others where the staff put in more effort? Nationally and internationally? So do the staff feel any responsibility for making the company more competitive?

[Will!]

1 hour ago, Lagarde's Drift said:

Have you ever worked in a council at any level? I've interacted with, and have very good friends working in different councils who have over the years been promoted. Basically anyone decent who works in a council does it so they have free mental space to do side gigs, trade crypto or do childcare. Plenty of departments where 2 days of work stretched into 5. One of my council careerist friends got told off when he first joined cos he completed his weeks work in 2 days and was making other people look bad. 

Those who get promoted eventually have to start dealing with elected councillors which can be 24/7 and a whole different mental ballgame but other than that it's just turn up log in and sit there. Then there are departments such as social care that are overworked and stressed but minority.

Cute outrage from another posted due to my admittedly sweeping generalisations post, but I think in this case it's true. It's why they get up to mischief like buying shopping centres. 

I've never worked for a council, but I've worked for an org contracted by district and county councils, and worked with social workers and housing associations contracted by councils, in different parts of the country.  There always seemed to be a small number of people doing all the work and a much larger number slacking off.  It could take only a small number of the former leaving to cause a service to collapse.

[Sackboii]

2 hours ago, winkie said:

Hours of work not days

Task and results driven outcomes not hours or days of work.

Have a target ? Great, get the work done to achieve it and get paid the salary.

If it takes all week then fine. If it takes a few hours then fine.

I have always found that 98% of the masses take however long it takes to do whatever it is they do. Occasionally along comes someone who does it in a fraction of the time through working smarter and much more efficiently.

Should they be given ten times the work for the same pay as the masses ? No.

Should they be given more pay for being smarter ? Absolutely. And they usually will because they’ll up sticks and progress elsewhere as they’ll be unrecognised in general where they are.

[winkie]

40 minutes ago, AThirdWay said:

Fair enough. My interaction with council workers is minimal nowadays, the odd conversation with the guys that empty the bins and the guys that look after the skips. No problems with them and very helpful. Everything else is done online, not sure what that has done to the workload of employees in an organisation that has a no-redundancies policy, but I can imagine.

Not the workers fault though, is it? Can't expect them to give up a cushy number voluntarily 😉

Bin men are more often than not private contractors, individually they do not work for the council.

Edited July 2, 2023 by winkie

[bushblairandbrown]

2 hours ago, AThirdWay said:

Just a touch of the green-eyed monster coming through there my friend....

Always surprises me when I hear someone complain about people only working their contracted hours. You should be asking yourself why you work MORE time than you're contracted hours buddy!

I worked as an engineer and then transport manager for the last 25 years of my career, in the private sector, and if I worked an hour more than the 37 in any given week I'd be genuinely surprised. Why? Because I knew my job and did it well.

Amen. Lots of deluded employees out there. Reality check:

your company doesn’t care about you

your job isn’t important

you can easily be replaced 

Your job is transactional. You do some work, your employer pays you. Hours are increasingly irrelevant in 2023. If your manager is happy with your output then they aren’t going to kick up a fuss irrespective of your contracted hours, unless you make it obvious that you’re mowing the lawn during work hours. Labour market is tight now, lots of completely useless employees around, even some working long hours. Management much more interested in resolving that issue than productive staff being awol for the odd hour here or there.

[bushblairandbrown]

18 hours ago, Pmax2020 said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-66075471
 

Anyone that professes to be more efficient or able to contribute more or add more value by working less needs their head examined.

If folk want to admit they don’t actually have enough work to warrant taking a fill time wage, then just go part time and stop robbing your employer and/or the tax payer. 

The measure of success in the article “we saved £300k” is so gormless you realise what sort of management you are dealing with. Take it to the logical conclusion, save a lot more going to 0 days per week. What does success really look like for the council?

[winkie]

1 hour ago, Sackboii said:

Task and results driven outcomes not hours or days of work.

Have a target ? Great, get the work done to achieve it and get paid the salary.

If it takes all week then fine. If it takes a few hours then fine.

I have always found that 98% of the masses take however long it takes to do whatever it is they do. Occasionally along comes someone who does it in a fraction of the time through working smarter and much more efficiently.

Should they be given ten times the work for the same pay as the masses ? No.

Should they be given more pay for being smarter ? Absolutely. And they usually will because they’ll up sticks and progress elsewhere as they’ll be unrecognised in general where they are.

If can work smarter solo can not only get more free time but also a bonus payment for high productivity....thing is most jobs rely on others in the team to get things done in a  productive way, only as strong as the weakest link. 

Edited July 2, 2023 by winkie

[fellow]

If I had one piece of work advice to give my younger self' it would be:

Never rush / stress yourself or put in unpaid hours to complete your allocated work. The company will not appreciate or reward you any more than your slower colleagues but will just expect that level of work from you at all times in the future whilst your colleagues continue doing less work for the same pay.

If you end up being the person who finishes first then guess who gets allocated the extra work or gets asked to help out a colleague complete their taskd (which iusually ends up being the trickiest work they have left until the end).

If you are the hardest worker in your team, you will find your colleagues have had more time to build relationships and learn more about the higher paid jobs and will end up being promoted ahead of you, as you continue being seen as an irreplaceable member of the team you are in.

Invest your efforts in quality, knowledge and networking rather than focusing on quantity.

[Pmax2020]

3 hours ago, bushblairandbrown said:

Amen. Lots of deluded employees out there. Reality check:

your company doesn’t care about you

your job isn’t important

you can easily be replaced 

 

That sentiment is repeated a million times each day on social media but it’s fundamentally untrue.

Yes - some lower paid/skilled workers are easy enough to replace, but even that comes at cost. Hard working, competent people or those with niche experience / knowledge are incredibly difficult to replace. Their otherwise vacant positions can cost companies money, and so too their ability to take on more work.

Years ago I was constantly begging for pay rises and seldom getting them. More recently as in more senior positions, I’ve had several ‘out of cycle’ pay rises that I didn’t even ask for because my boss is worried I leave. I’m not the only one either - we have a project to deliver and are already a lean team. 

There are lots of good managers and good companies that reward hard working people, so I’d caution anyone that prescribes to that social media tripe about us all being expendable. 

Edited July 2, 2023 by Pmax2020

[Pmax2020]

9 minutes ago, fellow said:

If I had one piece of work advice to give my younger self' it would be:

Never rush / stress yourself or put in unpaid hours to complete your allocated work. The company will not appreciate or reward you any more than your slower colleagues but will just expect that level of work from you at all times in the future whilst your colleagues continue doing less work for the same pay.

If you end up being the person who finishes first then guess who gets allocated the extra work or gets asked to help out a colleague complete their taskd (which iusually ends up being the trickiest work they have left until the end).

If you are the hardest worker in your team, you will find your colleagues have had more time to build relationships and learn more about the higher paid jobs and will end up being promoted ahead of you, as you continue being seen as an irreplaceable member of the team you are in.

Invest your efforts in quality, knowledge and networking rather than focusing on quantity.

You’ve been working for terrible companies then.

Ive worked in both the private and public sector for a combined 20 years. I’ve had about 10 ‘promotions’ to better paid and more skilled roles in that time. Every single one of those moves to better positions was the result of working harder than the people around me.

I agree about not getting stressed and not necessarily working lots of unpaid hours, but for god sake give 110% and it’ll be rewarded by most employers.

I’ve seen it all too often - a team I’m working in get their confidential April pay-rise letter, and I hear everyone moaning about 2%…. they ask me what I got and I’ve had to lie and pretend I only got 2% too…

[Sackboii]

1 hour ago, Pmax2020 said:

I’ve seen it all too often - a team I’m working in get their confidential April pay-rise letter, and I hear everyone moaning about 2%…. they ask me what I got and I’ve had to lie and pretend I only got 2% too…

Maybe they’re pretending too. 😀

[winkie]

2 hours ago, fellow said:

If I had one piece of work advice to give my younger self' it would be:

Never rush / stress yourself or put in unpaid hours to complete your allocated work. The company will not appreciate or reward you any more than your slower colleagues but will just expect that level of work from you at all times in the future whilst your colleagues continue doing less work for the same pay.

If you end up being the person who finishes first then guess who gets allocated the extra work or gets asked to help out a colleague complete their taskd (which iusually ends up being the trickiest work they have left until the end).

If you are the hardest worker in your team, you will find your colleagues have had more time to build relationships and learn more about the higher paid jobs and will end up being promoted ahead of you, as you continue being seen as an irreplaceable member of the team you are in.

Invest your efforts in quality, knowledge and networking rather than focusing on quantity.

How many peters do you find in the public sector, the brilliant teacher who not so good being a head teacher......the person who is great at their job and managing themselves and own diary......but gains no respect from others when desperately trying to manage others......promoted to a position where they are not actually competent enough in doing, doing a job once they loved to doing a job they despise but need the money.....to being off sick for six months then another six months.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

[Pmax2020]

2 minutes ago, winkie said:

How many peters do you find in the public sector, the brilliant teacher who not so good being a head teacher......the person who is great at their job and managing themselves and own diary......but gains no respect from others when desperately trying to manage others......promoted to a position where they are not actually competent enough in doing, doing a job once they loved to doing a job they despise but need the money.....to being off sick for six months then another six months.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

Councils are full of Peters because most teams/departments have zero accountability. No one to call our poor performance. 

In the private sector you rarely get Peters higher up in the business because it’s a results game. Ie. Making money. 

[winkie]

10 minutes ago, Pmax2020 said:

Councils are full of Peters because most teams/departments have zero accountability. No one to call our poor performance. 

In the private sector you rarely get Peters higher up in the business because it’s a results game. Ie. Making money. 

When they know they can't do it they pay outsiders to do it for them.....that is not cost effective..consultants are not cheap at the best of times...good for consultants, not good for tax payers.

[Si1]

12 minutes ago, Pmax2020 said:

. 

In the private sector you rarely get Peters higher up in the business because it’s a results game. Ie. Making money. 

Well you do but they go bust. Unless they get bailed by the govt. 

[bushblairandbrown]

2 hours ago, Pmax2020 said:

You’ve been working for terrible companies then.

Every single one of those moves to better positions was the result of working harder than the people around me.

I agree about not getting stressed and not necessarily working lots of unpaid hours, but for god sake give 110% and it’ll be rewarded by most employers.

Fwiw, most companies in the UK are terrible.

Also, a general rule some may find useful: There is absolutely no correlation between hard work and earnings. Most minimum wage jobs are harder work than higher paid jobs for example. There is weak correlation between being skilled and earnings. There is strong correlation between earnings and having a job that determines how capital is allocated.

Just to be clear, I put in an effort at work. I’m not advocating laziness. But let’s get real that beyond reasonable effort there are diminishing returns. If you want to earn more, do training relevant to a more highly paid role than putting “110%” into your current role.

[Will!]

6 hours ago, bushblairandbrown said:

The measure of success in the article “we saved £300k” is so gormless you realise what sort of management you are dealing with. Take it to the logical conclusion, save a lot more going to 0 days per week. What does success really look like for the council?

What does productivity really mean in the public sector?

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s speech at the Centre for Policy Studies of 12th June.

Quote

Public sector productivity

Let’s start with the public sector. It is the sector over which governments have the most direct control - and that matters because, excluding benefit system transfers, it accounts for about 20% of our national output.

The long-term pressures, whether an ageing population or the need for stronger armed forces, won’t change.

But the way we meet those pressures can change. We can be much, much more efficient.

We start, I am afraid to say from a low base. Public sector output is 5.7% lower than pre-pandemic compared to private sector output which is 1.3% higher.

What does that tell you? Our innovators, job creators, entrepreneurs and risk takers have bounced back but the public sector is still feelings the effects of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

But now, with that pandemic behind us, we need a renewed focus on public sector reform.

Patricia Hewitt’s review into how we significantly reduce the number of top down-targets in the NHS made a series of recommendations to help empower local leaders, something I am pleased the NHS has already started to take forward.

A recent review by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has already identified that 443,000 officer hours are spent filling in forms and dealing with unnecessary administrative tasks.

And it was recently highlighted that 10,000 public sector workers are focused predominantly on equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, with nearly 800 of those in local councils alone.

Breaking down barriers for disadvantaged groups should be everyone’s responsibility not something you tick a box to achieve at further cost to taxpayers.

So I have asked John Glen, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to lead a major public sector productivity programme across all government departments which we will report on in the Autumn.

He will assess how we can increase public sector productivity growth, both in the short and long term, and look at what it would take to deliver that additional 0.5% every year that would stop the state growing ever bigger as a proportion of our output.

We also need to be better at measuring productivity.

The UK is one of the few countries to include public sector output measures as well as input data in its productivity statistics, which is a good start. But we can still do better.

Crime, for example, is down approximately 50% since 2010, great achievement. That excluded fraud and computer misuse (which wasn’t measured then.) But it barely makes a dent on their policing productivity figures because our productivity figures don’t capture crime outcomes.

Likewise on defence we measure what we spend, but not how safe that makes us.

And where we do measure outputs and the quality of delivery, mainly in the NHS, we count the number of hospital treatments but not the value of preventative care, even though that saves lives and reduces cost.

So I have asked the National Statistician to review how we can improve the way we measure public sector productivity which he has agreed to do.

I want this to be the most ambitious public sector productivity review ever undertaken by a government, with the Treasury acting as an enabler of reform. So we will spend time getting this right.

If we get the ONS to impute enough GDP from public sector acitvities we can make our economy grow to any size we want!

This sort of thing is worthy of Gordon Brown.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Will!
date

[Gbob]

If the 4 day week thing takes off, how will it affect industries where employees are needed to be there to serve customers or provide a service, so can't compress their work into 4 days?

If I ran a fish and chip shop I can't tell the staff to serve more customers Monday to Thursday so they can have Friday off. If comparative roles in other industries are paying their staff the same money as before to work 4 days then would this lead to all the 5 day staff demanding more money for what has become an extra day they are working?

[Lagarde's Drift]

2 minutes ago, Gbob said:

If the 4 day week thing takes off, how will it affect industries where employees are needed to be there to serve customers or provide a service, so can't compress their work into 4 days?

If I ran a fish and chip shop I can't tell the staff to serve more customers Monday to Thursday so they can have Friday off. If comparative roles in other industries are paying their staff the same money as before to work 4 days then would this lead to all the 5 day staff demanding more money for what has become an extra day they are working?

Lol I think pretty clear areas with 24/7 front line such as hospitality and public services need not apply. 

[Pmax2020]

1 hour ago, winkie said:

When they know they can't do it they pay outsiders to do it for them.....that is not cost effective..consultants are not cheap at the best of times...good for consultants, not good for tax payers.

Whenever I cross paths with councils in a professional capacity I do everything in my power to show them for what they are - organisations full of incompetent, lazy jobsworths.

I’ve been on conference calls that’ve lasted longer than the very task they’ve said they don’t have the resources to complete. I regularly get second-hand embarrassment as 3 council officials squabble to commit to a small 30 minute piece of work that I did for my company the evening before. 

You can tell I can’t stand them, right?

A couple of years ago the wheel of our toddlers buggy jammed in a pot hole and almost tipped over while I was crossing at a controlled crossing. Reported it. Nothing. Reported it again. Nothing. Reported it a year later. Nothing. They literally don’t care. 
 

I run a lot so I’ll report stuff year after year, ‘missing drain cover in the path’… ‘just a heads up you’ll see on street view it’s now been missing for 4 years’..

Nothing. 

Most councils are staggeringly inept and unfit for purpose. 

[Lagarde's Drift]

2 minutes ago, Pmax2020 said:

Whenever I cross paths with councils in a professional capacity I do everything in my power to show them for what they are - organisations full of incompetent, lazy jobsworths.

I’ve been on conference calls that’ve lasted longer than the very task they’ve said they don’t have the resources to complete. I regularly get second-hand embarrassment as 3 council officials squabble to commit to a small 30 minute piece of work that I did for my company the evening before. 

You can tell I can’t stand them, right?

A couple of years ago the wheel of our toddlers buggy jammed in a pot hole and almost tipped over while I was crossing at a controlled crossing. Reported it. Nothing. Reported it again. Nothing. Reported it a year later. Nothing. They literally don’t care. 
 

I run a lot so I’ll report stuff year after year, ‘missing drain cover in the path’… ‘just a heads up you’ll see on street view it’s now been missing for 4 years’..

Nothing. 

Most councils are staggeringly inept and unfit for purpose. 

Unfortunately this matches my personal and extended friends' experience of council (office) workers. Councils clearly do get stuff done otherwise things would go sour quickly, but the inefficiency and lackadaisical attitude is stunning.

[nothernsoul]

This 4 day week idea started during lockdown when the population got used to free time and started liking it. Also for the first time in decades, a tight labour market gave workers a bit of bargaining power. Nothing new about some people choosing to work less, the novel bit is wanting the same money, which I guess is driven by the necessity to service mortgage debt. 

Unfortunately, in a years time, when there is a recession, unemployment and people will be just glad to have a job, this four day week will become a forgotten fad.