Questions about moving private to public sector

dresden8

As a consumer I deal with the private sector all the time. Ever try to get anything done in this country? It's a 'king nightmare. Incompetence and not giving a toss seems to be ingrained in the whole country, not just the public sector.

J.S. Pill

dresden8 wrote: »

As a consumer I deal with the private sector all the time. Ever try to get anything done in this country? It's a 'king nightmare. Incompetence and not giving a toss seems to be ingrained in the whole country, not just the public sector.

I think that people sometimes forget that inefficiency often goes hand in hand with the size of the organisation regardless of whether its public or private.

Simple examples:

I tried to get broadband from BT, after 10 weeks they had made every f**k up they possibly could have on my order - reason? Large sprawling organisation staffed by demoralised workers who fobbed off problems to equally demoralised co-workers with 'oh I'll just send an e-mail on that for you now'.

I worked as a temp for microsoft a couple of years ago. It was a 6 week contract but for the first 3 weeks I did absolutely no work as somebody had forgot to organise desks and computers for the temps! If this happened in the HSE the Daily Mail would call for heads to roll but as this inefficiency occurred in the private sector it doesn't get a mention and rightly so because Microsoft isn't wasting taxpayer's money. Point is, the public sector doesn't have a monopoly on waste and inefficiency.

Tom Dunne

dresden8 wrote: »

As a consumer I deal with the private sector all the time. Ever try to get anything done in this country? It's a 'king nightmare. Incompetence and not giving a toss seems to be ingrained in the whole country, not just the public sector.

But I think the central problem here is fear, or lack of it. The fact that civil servants or public servants cannot be fired is major disincentive to work. That, coupled with the fact that they get guaranteed pay rises every year, regardless of how badly they perform, promotes inefficiencies.

During my brief tenure in the Public Sector I was genuinely appalled at the things I saw - bullying, incompetence, unprofessionalism, apathy, I could go on. As I said in my previous post, most of these workers could do with a dose of reality and be made work in the real world for a while where the fear of losing your job is part and parcel of the show. They wouldn't last two weeks.

But in a way, I don't blame them. They have no incentive to perform. My manager at the time, a sh*t-hot IT guru who really knew his stuff, noted how another manager on the same grade regularly missed work and always had some ongoing issues with attendance. What incentive had my manager to keep the IT infrastructure going? He could just sit back and let the systems go to pieces - he would still get paid at the end of the day, just like his incompetent co-worker.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Jigsaw

For some of the reasons listed above, I am doing my best to move out of the public sector. At first the hour long coffee breaks and the flexi time is great, but as stated above, the fact that you can work your ass off and get the same recognition and salary as someone who doesn't bother their arse is very demotivating. Often their is very little to do and the workload ca be very stagnant and everyone seems to complain. Because I worked in private sector previously I see people complaining about things and know that if they complained about the same thing in a private sector job, peoples' jaws would hit the floor.

Personally I would much rather be in at 8am and work my arse off until 6pm as long as the job inspired me and I felt driven and could see prospects for promotion and pay rises providing I prove myself to be an asset to the company in question. Unfortunately I cannot see this happening within my public sector job.

BostonB

These threads go nowhere. Sweeping generalizations about the public sector. Is all of the private sector like PC World for example? Do you get bad service in one restaurant or company and assume all are the same?
Theres a huge rainbow of good and bad across both the private and public sector. Consider this though. The parts of the public sector that generate revenue, tend to be the better funded and resourced parts of it. Also people aren't born into the public sector. There are people with lots of private sector experience in it. There large parts of the private sector that are abysmal, but seem to manage to survive like that for decades.

If you think somewhere else is better why not try it for a while. If you don't like it move one. If you don't like how the public sector is run. Vote someone in that will change it!

Gonzo_Fiend

BostonB wrote: »

Vote someone in that will change it!

Thats easy to say but not rooted in reality.

Tell me my 1, 2, and 3 that will make that happen...

Foj2007

BostonB- Well thought out and well said.

markpb

BostonB wrote: »

The parts of the public sector that generate revenue, tend to be the better funded and resourced parts of it.

What parts of the CS generate revenue? Genuine question. NTMS maybe, I can't think of any others.

If you don't like how the public sector is run. Vote someone in that will change it!

Very flippant comment. The truth is that the CS is so entrenched in it's thinking and so militantly unionised that any attempt at real reform or even real benchmarking would result in all out strikes that could cripple the country.

I worked for a semi-state a few years ago and it was just like all the others have said. People moving office were given a day off in lieu for "stress". Days off given years ago for the death of a member of the royal family are still given now because they threatened to strike the following year when the same day off wasn't offered. Online clock-in/clock-out was rejected (under threat of strike) because people would lose 2 minutes pay a day and would have to actually be at their desk and ready to do work during the time they were being paid.

daveirl is right, it's not about inefficiency, it's about responsibility for your work. My company recently floated, it didn't go well so the CEO and CFO are gone, just days later. When was the last time that someone (top or bottom) of the civil service quit because they didn't perform?

The_Conductor

markpb wrote: »

What parts of the CS generate revenue? Genuine question. NTMS maybe, I can't think of any others.

Most of the government departments do generate income to some extent- albeit on a small scale. Think of those charges that everyone despises for advisory services, booklets, entrance fees for schemes, administrative charges, securities, licence fees etc- if you sat down and thought about it- you do actually get charged for a lot of things- motor tax/passport or licence fees/import or export certs/ OPW publications / OSI maps / FOI request charges- the list could go on and on. Obviously these are all forms of indirect taxation- but they are revenue generation nonetheless.

markpb wrote: »

Very flippant comment. The truth is that the CS is so entrenched in it's thinking and so militantly unionised that any attempt at real reform or even real benchmarking would result in all out strikes that could cripple the country.

I agree with you- it is a flippant comment. Its not even that the CS is so entrenched in its thinking- its more the case of it being a series of disfunctional little feifdoms in competition with each other- the only order being enforced by the Department of Finance with the purse strings.

markpb wrote: »

I worked for a semi-state a few years ago and it was just like all the others have said. People moving office were given a day off in lieu for "stress".

I'd like to see someone getting a day off for "stress" these days. If you were certified as unwell by a doctor- perhaps, but days off willy-nilly for "stress" or some such nonesense are a thing of the past.

markpb wrote: »

Days off given years ago for the death of a member of the royal family are still given now because they threatened to strike the following year when the same day off wasn't offered.

Really? Where was this? I'm a civil servant and where I work there is a very vocal republican tradition. No-one here would dream of asking for a day off on the death of a member of any royal family (British or otherwise). We do get 2 privilege days per year in addition to our annual leave- one each at Christmas and Easter. These are set days when the Department is physically closed- rather than floating days that can be taken at random. We don't get a bonus or a Christmas card at Christmas- as you would do in the private sector- and our annual leave is the statutory minimum (21 days) so its not exactly flaithiul.

markpb wrote: »

Online clock-in/clock-out was rejected (under threat of strike) because people would lose 2 minutes pay a day and would have to actually be at their desk and ready to do work during the time they were being paid.

Well we have online clock-in and clock-out, and have had for the last 7 or 8 years. Its simply not an issue here.

markpb wrote: »

daveirl is right, it's not about inefficiency, it's about responsibility for your work. My company recently floated, it didn't go well so the CEO and CFO are gone, just days later. When was the last time that someone (top or bottom) of the civil service quit because they didn't perform?

I was informed last night that with the advent of PMDS- that there have been a number of people demoted/refused salary increments/sent for medical evaluation on the basis of performance appraisal (note: not CPSU grades). All promotion is based on performance appraisal, with 50% of promotions being ringfenced for external candidates (where in the past seniority was in a lot of cases the deciding factor).

I agree- there is a hell of a lot wrong with the Civil Service and the Public Sector in general- but it has improved and continues to do so. There are a lot of dinosaurs still there who don't care for change and through their intranscience make life very difficult for others- but it is a very different animal than it was years ago.

GMP

Spot on Smccarrick but unfortunately alot of the perks that some staff get in the Public Service is down to their own local managment in their area.


I too work for the Public Service in the HSE. Where I am, we work very hard, clock in and out and big issue about taking Flexi leave and annual leave. At the moment, we are down 4 admin staff, as HR moves like snails place, as it takes over a year or more to get the staff member replaced and in the meantime we cover the work, aswell as our own, as if it was the private sector, we would have a staff member replaced and on site within a month.

So the benchmarking is like an appreciation to us, as we don't get recognition or bonus for our hard work.

Also Just wondering is there any other public service workers awaiting transfers to a department near home, mine seems to be taking ages.

J.S. Pill

daveirl wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

My overall point related more to the notion that people are often too quick to blame ownership structure (i.e. whether an organisation is public or private) for inefficiencies when they can be attributed largely to dis-economies of scale. While you're very right to say that the private sector, with it's profit/shareholder satisfaction motive, will be more likely to do something about these dis-economies of scale, it would be wrong to suggest that the ownership structure is going to somehow naturally eliminate such inefficiencies. If the world functioned like it does in an economics textbook then BT wouldn't be sh*t...

To use the telecoms as an example again: if the market is composed of large sprawling organisations like BT and Eircom on the one hand who provide poor customer service because of diseconomies of scale, and smaller operators (Imagine, Perlico) who provide poor customer service because they have very stretched resources owing to tight margins, the customers are really stuck between a rock and a hard place and as a result the larger telecoms company's incentives to provide better service is going to be reduced. Here the nature of the market has not provided an incentive to reduce waste/inefficiency.

bit of a crude example but I hope it illustrates my point

nesf

smccarrick wrote: »

I agree with you- it is a flippant comment. Its not even that the CS is so entrenched in its thinking- its more the case of it being a series of disfunctional little feifdoms in competition with each other- the only order being enforced by the Department of Finance with the purse strings.

Exactly. Imagining that a simple change of the political guard will change things is naive.

ixoy

GMP wrote: »

So the benchmarking is like an appreciation to us, as we don't get recognition or bonus for our hard work.

But it's not like that though - that's the point. Bench marking is for everyone including the many people who don't put in one jot of effort. No effort should mean no pay rise and it's the incredible vagueness of many targets for bench marking that's annoyed so many people.

As to not getting recognition or bonuses - you do realise that not all private sectors reward bonuses right? It's a fallacy to think so and to think they're all praising their staff for doing the job they're paid to or even going that extra bit beyond.

BostonB

nesf wrote: »

Exactly. Imagining that a simple change of the political guard will change things is naive.

Really? How about decentralization which was pushed through with all the small minded Irish politics Ireland is typical for. Yes theres a recruitment embargo. But yet if the decentralization center is in a politicians back yard sudden people are recruited in the new location. The Govt has huge influence in the public sector, at least where I've been. If a minister wants something to happen generally it does. How about the influence politicians seem to have in getting people into certain jobs. The list goes on and on.

If you think the Govt has no impact on the Public sector other than to dictate reform from afar, then gets rebuffed by the Public sector if it doesn't like it. Then you have no experience of the public sector. In my experience theres a far far higher awareness of Politics and its influence is far greater at all levels in the Public sector.

How does the Govt generate revenue? I was thinking Tax and all those that deal with that.

Theres ways to exit people in the Public sector. They get sidetracked to unpleasant work, boring work, get no promotions, get moved office. Lots of ways. If you don't get promotions, its not worth staying. I've seen this done to a few people. They eventually realise they have to move on.

Where I've been in the Public Sector they have time clocks and flextime. In the private sector I've only seen that in one place before. I prefer clocks myself.

The reality is most place be they private or public sector are good or bad if they have good or bad management. A good director, or manager can raise or lower a place incredibly. People can avoid work or work hard in both sectors. Sweeping generalizations aren't all that useful. If you remember having to queue to do things like tax your car, check your tax etc you'll know theres been a lot of progress in some areas. Then you have the black hole that is Health. Man have they stuffed that up.

Benchmarking was a good idea in theory. But in practice its moved far too slowly. Both in raising wage parity then halting it when private sector boom stopped. Then you have some groups that are joining it too late. They've good nothing out of it.

nesf

My sentence should have read that imagining only a change in the Government will effect change is naive. The implication being that it's as much a structural problem as a "leadership" problem. The way incentives etc are structured in much of the civil service isn't conducive to change unfortunately.

BostonB

Does the public sector not implement Govt policy?

nesf

BostonB wrote: »

Does the public sector not implement Govt policy?

It also shapes it to a degree which complicates things. The short answer is that implementing change in the public sector is stupidly complicated because you have to use the public sector to implement change on itself. This is fine if it's an "injection of much needed funds" etc.

the_syco

Tom Dunne wrote: »

During my brief tenure in the Public Sector I was genuinely appalled at the things I saw - bullying, incompetence, unprofessionalism, apathy, I could go on.

What section? Looking to get into the IT side if I can. I'll be coming from Clientlogic/Sitel (and soon to be) HP, so would it be a step up or down?

daveirl wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

In certain parts of the public sector, they seem to threaten strikes if "job losses/cutbacks" are mentioned. In the private sector, said people start looking for a new job.

smccarrick wrote: »

We don't get a bonus or a Christmas card at Christmas- as you would do in the private sector- and our annual leave is the statutory minimum (21 days) so its not exactly flaithiul.

Never got a christmas bonus, let alone a card: the sectors I worked in (cinema/pub/retail/tech support) doesn't seem to do them.

=-=

On a side note, I've worked with people in the IT section of the HSE, who worked their asses off. One of the "senior" people worked 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday, was damn good at what he did, and built up enough flexitime to get a few days extra off each month. He'd then go skiing. Mad bas*ard, but well sound, and was one of the best IT guru's there.

I've also worked with people in the homeless department in Dublin City Council. Hopefully one of them was forced to take holidays. The man was truely awesome, worked his ass off for the homeless, not for promotion, but simple because that's the way he was. I say hopefully, as everyone was afraid he'd burn out if he kept working the way he did. Example: 3 homeless people were out of a home, due to a fire, at 4am, Sunday morning. He'd get a ring (never seemed to turn his mobile off), and be down there in less than an hour. Again, I doubt him, or the rest of the people there, got much money, but they loved their work.

And then there was a lazy smelly f**k (lets say, Mr A) also working there. One of the people (lets sat, Mrs , in a "quite friendly chat", asked him to clean up. A day later, Mrs B was called into DCC headquarters, and told that if the topic was ever mentioned to Mr A again, Mrs B, or whomever mentioned it, would get the sack. Mr A would be sacked due to his appalling hygiene if it was the private sector, but in the public sector, he can continue on unchecked.

And for the record, the homeless people, living on the street, not showering for weeks, have said that Mr A was smelly, and unhygienic. And that says it all. Some people are unsackable in the public sector, wouldn't last a week in the private sector.

BostonB

the_syco wrote: »

...
In certain parts of the public sector, they seem to threaten strikes if "job losses/cutbacks" are mentioned. In the private sector, said people start looking for a new job....

You mean like Argos staff did before Xmas? Actually they did strike. What about the taxi men? The Writers in the US etc.

ParkRunner

(Im in the civil service)..While I didnt get any Xmas bonus either I did get to go to several Xmas parties and get the privilege day and 2 sign in days which wasnt bad overall..But still i am sending my cv out to private firms for a new job because I could sit here all day and do nothing or I could work very hard all day and it wouldnt make a blind bit of difference

markpb

the_syco wrote: »

Never got a christmas bonus, let alone a card: the sectors I worked in (cinema/pub/retail/tech support) doesn't seem to do them.

This is less common that people think, it varies from company to company. Just like there is a myth that all civil servants are lazy, there is a myth that all private sector workers get a card and bonus.

On a side note, I've worked with people in the IT section of the HSE, who worked their asses off. One of the "senior" people worked 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday, was damn good at what he did, and built up enough flexitime to get a few days extra off each month. He'd then go skiing. Mad bas*ard, but well sound, and was one of the best IT guru's there.

I fail to see how that says anything about the worker. He worked silly hours because the system allowed him to count those towards flexi-time. It's hardly a shining example of a civil servant dedicated to his job

kmick

I worked for two years in a very large Revenue generating part of the civil service and what I saw there astounded and and amused me. Here were my observations.
*Staff were treated very badly in most cases. Poor conditions -no air-con, PC's were outdated, place was dirty, toilets were dangerously dirty, bad seats and desks, cold in Winter, sweltering in summer.
*There were great people and there were poor people but morale was very low. For example they would love to see me coming because I would help them out with problems with their PC's. One girl was trying unsuccessfully to plug her network cable into the wall for 2 days (i.e. no PC for two days). Problem was she was trying to plug it in to phone point. Now you may laugh but no-one either knew or wanted to help her and there were no formal IT services to help her out.
*One guy called in sick 2 days a week. Turned out he was working another job in a retail shop those two days. Everyone knew but no action taken.
*There were a lot of middle aged and elderly women working in IT that barely knew how to turn on the computer. Because they were so useless and there was no impetus to train them people stopped asking them things. Because people stopped asking them things they had no work to do. Because they had no work to do they just faded away. Most of them were eager to do something/anything and when I tried to train them up on something small they always did their best. I admired and pitied them equally but did not have the time in the day to address their 20 years of undertraining.
*Most of the people with families fecked off for two months in the summer on parental leave. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see how this will effect a public facing service. I have no more comment to make on this because if I was them I would take it too.
*The people there were great and most had a good attitude and were nice people.
*There was an impetus to change - no more promotion for seniority. It is going to take 15 years for all the dross to retire though.

So in essence a very mixed experience. A lot of people earnestly trying to work hard and make change and a lot of people clogging up the system who cant get fired. It is very like the private sector - it really is impossible to get fired from there as well - unless you are really bad.

seamus

markpb wrote: »

This is less common that people think, it varies from company to company. Just like there is a myth that all civil servants are lazy, there is a myth that all private sector workers get a card and bonus.

Indeed. In fact I would say that most private sectors workers don't get christmas gifts lavished upon them. I never have anyway. I think it's about the scale. A tiny company with one or two workers may not make enough money to add €2k into the workers' paypackets at Xmas. Whereas a company with ten workers may easily be able to budget €20k extra into their payroll for the year. Go to the next extreme with 2,000 workers and the same deal would cost the company €4m, so they don't do it.

Chinafoot

kmick wrote: »

*Most of the people with families fecked off for two months in the summer on parental leave. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see how this will effect a public facing service. I have no more comment to make on this because if I was them I would take it too.

This isn't parental leave, it's actually called "Term Time" and permament members of the public sector can apply for this up until their children are 18. However, it should most definitely be pointed out that they don't get paid for this. Those taking it have the option to simply get no pay for those 8 weeks or they can get 44 weeks pay spread across the 52 weeks.

nesf

Chinafoot wrote: »

This isn't parental leave, it's actually called "Term Time" and permament members of the public sector can apply for this up until their children are 18. However, it should most definitely be pointed out that they don't get paid for this. Those taking it have the option to simply get no pay for those 8 weeks or they can get 44 weeks pay spread across the 52 weeks.

It does bring a lot of pressure on some offices though and where it's granted before annual leave, it can screw over people who like to take their holidays in the summer.

BostonB

nesf wrote: »

It does bring a lot of pressure on some offices though and where it's granted before annual leave, it can screw over people who like to take their holidays in the summer.

It also leaves offices short handed, and staffed with temps with no training which causes its own problems, consuming resources already stretched.

Chinafoot

nesf wrote: »

It does bring a lot of pressure on some offices though and where it's granted before annual leave, it can screw over people who like to take their holidays in the summer.

BostonB wrote: »

It also leaves offices short handed, and staffed with temps with no training which causes its own problems, consuming resources already stretched.

I'm not disputing that. I'm merely clarifying that it's not in fact "parental leave" and it's something for which people take a pay cut. kmick's post seemed to imply that those taking this time still got paid.

Believe me I've seen first hand how people taking term time can leave resources stretched and in my opinion that's a management issue. The option is there for people to take it. If it's not feasible on a staffing level then numbers should be limited and relief staff should be made available. I work with two women who pretty much have no other option but to take term time as they have fairly young children and no other care options for when the kids are out of school. I just think it would be unfair to make out that these people are the bad guys for taking it.

BostonB

Its a local management issue true

ParkRunner

A good few in my building were refused term time because so many applied for it this year. Theyre not one bit happy about being refused but it's only fair.