Civil Service - Post Lockdown - Blended Working?

caviardreams wrote: »

I am all for hybrid working but how are managers dealing with things like missed deadlines, people not turning up for teams meetings as they "lost track of time", unanswered emails for weeks at a time in some cases though?

If you want to discuss something and your email just gets radio silence, what do you do? In the F2F world you can at least pop by the desk and the person has to engage to some extent.


There is no real performance management structure for these things, and with 100% remote working it makes things even harder to support staff with the above issues.

Well if I missed a deadline I know my manager would give me a ring and say here what’s the craic are ya alright ? Very hard to legislate and mitigate to stop odd balls being odd balls. They’ll always find a way, in or out of the office.

$hifty wrote: »

The nature of the work in each place will determine who and how many staff can work from home.

I mean, almost everybody in the OGP can work from home as it is nearly all computer-based work. But how many employees in the Parks division of DCC can say the same? A dispute resolution officer in the RTB can hear cases from the comfort of their living room, but try telling someone in DSP that they now have to start paying social welfare payments out their front window, see how well that goes down.

To answer the OP, nobody knows. It will, 100%, be down to each individual HR department. There will be some sort of over-arching circular issued that covers this, but quite simply, there is no "one-size-fits-all" arrangement that can be made.

This is the real challenge for management and the unions and we are already seeing difficulties with this in my Department. A good cohort of our offices are public facing and already the wfh roles, when advertised, are gaining far more interest than the public office roles.

Senior managers who were vehemently pro wfh are now having to deal with an 'us and them' scenario where the staff having to attend work physically are seeing the rest sitting back at their zoom meetings able to run a quick errand and pick up children, and make the time up elsewhere.

This will become a bigger issue for recruitment into public facing departments. The likes of Social Welfare, OPW, Oireachtas and the wider public sector where attendance is necessary will become unpopular for recruitment leading to an even bigger 'us and them' scenario.

angel eyes 2012 wrote: »

This is the real challenge for management and the unions and we are already seeing difficulties with this in my Department. A good cohort of our offices are public facing and already the wfh roles, when advertised, are gaining far more interest than the public office roles.

Senior managers who were vehemently pro wfh are now having to deal with an 'us and them' scenario where the staff having to attend work physically are seeing the rest sitting back at their zoom meetings able to run a quick errand and pick up children, and make the time up elsewhere.

This will become a bigger issue for recruitment into public facing departments. The likes of Social Welfare, OPW, Oireachtas and the wider public sector where attendance is necessary will become unpopular for recruitment leading to an even bigger 'us and them' scenario.

If we’ve found workable work/life balance for one side, the solution is to find it for the other too, not take it back to level the scale. Forsa are running a pilot for the 4 day for this reason, to find flexible working options for public facing people, or people who can’t work remotely, we need others too. Going forward there’ll be additional perks will be found.

Post? Offices should be doing their best to move to paperless systems.
The last 18 months have proven that public offices aren’t required as much as was previously thought.
Management will have to be flexible and adapt to change. Prove they have the competencies they’re supposed to have!
Look at how quickly and effectively the PUP went online. That’s the future.

angel eyes 2012 wrote: »

I agree but the public are still entitled to submit requests in writing and we are obliged to look after vulnerable members of the public who do not access computers for various reasons.

Absolutely, I agree. And office opening hours can be set to suit.

doc22 wrote: »

You can't really compare a covid lockdown to normal demand for public service.

The automation of claims/processes such as PUP means less staff full stop rather than more staff sitting at home.

Common sense is you can't have a situation where some staff work full time from home, while others in the frontline(public-facing) have no such benefits(in already more demanding roles in many cases) in the same department

Well it’s going to be right to request soon enough by law and you need a good reason to say no, or, it’s down to the wrc to decide. Then it’ll end up case by case based on the requirements of the job.

$hifty wrote: »

Yes, I am. They're both vital cornerstones of any employee contract and posters are advising everything up to and including industrial action to get their way. This is ridiculous, childish, entitled behaviour and is exactly the sort of ammo used to slaughter civil and public servants across the mdia.



First off, I never got into the merits of WFH, clearly it has benefits to everybody if implemented properly. You are taking my post on its own, without considering the posters to whom I replied. They were calling for a 'one-size-fits-all' policy to be implemented across the entirety of the civil service and said we had a duty to start lobbying the unions and TDs to get what 'we' want (meaning what that poster wants). We have no such duty or responsibility. We do have a responsibility to do the job we signed up to do, in the manner our employer deems appropriate and in the LOCATION our employer deems appropriate.



Pure conjecture, without foundation. You're getting worked up about something that may never come to pass. Chillax the cacks.



I've no idea what point you're trying to make here.

Do you believe in global warming? Have you noticed the weather in Canada recently? If the answer to both of those questions are yes, then, you should understand why we all have a responsibility to lobby for positive change regarding lowering unnecessary carbon emissions in our society.

Also, there is a housing crisis in this country because for years we centred everything around Dublin and now people can’t afford to buy or rent houses there. So remote working offers a once in a life time quick displacement of jobs that could continue to level the housing market nationwide as seen in the most recent daft analysis. People will no longer be forced by necessity to move from the likes of Clare to live on the commuter belt to work in town, where all the jobs are for some reason. The secondary effect will be people who want to live in Dublin will actually be able to get bang for their buck and won’t be paying crazy money to live in a half bedroom separated by a piece of wood.

Lastly, most employees want this, according to multiple surveys, now the problem is that the government will be lobbied by vested interest groups who want Dublin City footfall to return to pre coronavirus levels. This is unique and unlike other employer and employee relationships, so because of that people, if they want the kind of change I outlined above have a responsibility to make it happen themselves! If they don’t want it that’s grand, do nothing.

Surely it will depend on the area of the PS, with some areas being suitable for remote working and others not. The property registration authority had 345 employees working part time during restrictions in December. This is 8 months into the pandemic, so they had plenty of time to make whatever changes were required. Of course, we only know about this because of a TD asking a question in the Dail, we have no idea what the situation was in other areas.

What Department?

They'll be war if people in the same department get it and others don't, like SWY refusals the unions will be busy

It also said that those who are allowed opt for blended working, will have to attend office at regular intervals. So it looks like full WFH is off the cards, with maybe defined days for attendance, which is a pity.

Where do you get this from the doc?

Disappointing to see no explicit right to NOT work for home for those who can't or won't WFH. The reference to making savings on office space in the future seems to suggest that the days of having a dedicated office or desk are gone, except at very senior level.

Something that I could see playing out in the PS/CS is an offer of token WFH, in effect throwing out a few sweeties to keep the children happy. E.g. you have someone who could objectively and based on their agreed duties, WFH 4 days a week. They request this and the PS employer grudgingly allows them half a day a week. This is no more acceptable than not allowing WFH at all, IIRC this was covered in the public consultation on the right to request remote work so I hope everyone got their submissions in.

WFH would make such a difference to many people's lives that the upside may well negate any feelings of intimidation, in the PS at least where dirty tactics like managing out and smearing a person's "reputation in the industry" for taking a case to the WRC don't work. Add to that the chronic understaffing and poor morale in many areas of the PS and I could see employees taking the view that they have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by being "awkward". The WRC could end up swamped, as far as I'm aware, like many public bodies it is already chronically understaffed.

The attitude to WFH and the ignoring of public health guidelines has shone a spotlight on poor management in parts of the PS - bizarre, childish, neurotic management practices with managers terrified of change and alternating between disengagement and micromanagement when it suits. It will have become clear in some cases that managers who were previously thought of as being mediocre are actually a lot worse than that.

The right to request remote working could mean a day a week at home or at a hub too not full time at home, so if they give you a day they satisfied the request. But who's is going to pay for the use of hubs either.

With regards to not having your own desk I can't see that happening at a large scale.