Civil Service - Post Lockdown - Blended Working?

We still have flexible working hours, in the sense that we can choose our start / lunch \ leaving times, in fact we're being encouraged to stagger these times as much as possible so there are less people in the office earlier / later in the day. We're just not allowed to work up extra hours towards flexi leave. Any extra time we put in, we simply lose it.

Are you being asked to adhere to a 9:15am start with 5:45pm close and 1:15hr for lunch? 😲

Not a member of the civil service, but my wife is a public servant and I have friends working in the civil service.

I hope they won't but I believe that they will ignore it and your union will fold on the matter.

Among other things like certain politicians saying that you don't do any work when at home, they will be getting complaints from pub, deli and cafe owners near your offices that their trade and takings will be down because ye aren't there. A fact that some politicians also have financial stakes in some of these types of businesses will also be another factor.

My wife has been working in their office through out covid as what they do cannot be done from home and that will always be the case so any changes won't affect her team in the day to day other than loss of overtime so they simply won't do any if that is the case. Everyone will now be back in the office come October 22nd with no working from home option as management have said that they don't have guidance from government on such arrangements. Given that a couple of people in the main office buildings who contracted covid in early 2020 were told by their manager not to inform their colleagues with who they shared offices with in order to avoid panic and have people present for work, I expect it to be a sh1t show on the 22nd.

In relation to the lack of flexi time and not being paid overtime, so much for the power of your union that is often talked about specifically FORSA, (my wife and her team are represented by a different union) in allowing it to continue. A friend who is an AO has been working on average seventy hours a week with no lunch most days including weekends for the last four months due to several technical issues and projects coming due and has been told no overtime or time in lieu will be given, while the external contractors on his team who are on double his salary get one or the other as any overtime they do has to be signed off on before hand.

His average weekly hours since he joined the civil service are in the fifties as his department don't have the required number of staff for the workload and the contractors won't do overtime unless it is signed off on first so they are out the door at the end of their shift.

In contrast the company I work for has said that we will not be back in the office until March 2022 at the earliest and all staff will only have to do two days in the office on alternative weeks. It won't apply to me as I've always worked from home unless I felt like going into the office, and the only thing will be that after March if I want to go in I have to book a desk in advance.

I don't work a minutes overtime unless I have written confirmation from my manager before hand that I will either be paid for it or given time in lieu.

The simple fact is that despite what ever work ye do in the civil and public service and I believe it is important and vital work in the main, you are not appreciated by either the politicians and a lot of the public that you serve. Even if most of the public did appreciate ye, attention is given to those like ISME who have some members in trouble with Revenue over tax and covid payment fraud, that don't as they are the ones complaining the loudest.

So what ye want in terms of working conditions such as working from home and better pay will be ignored for votes and other factors, as anything given to ye will be used as a reference by any other unions who happen to represent workers (often low paid) in consultations with private sector employers who won't let their staff work from home.

What has your union representative said in relation to this and the results of the survey?

If their members don't push them on stuff like this and make it a regular talking point they may well still fold but can't claim that no one really seemed to want it because no one brought in up with them.

I can understand that some people want to be back in the office for various reasons such as those who are renting and may not have an adequate set up, like the social interaction and being in town so they can head to the pub after work etc. The few times that I used to go in were just to have a long lunch with some of the team, but given 3/4 of my team work in other European countries and the states, it's not like I can physically interact with them in an office anyway.

It also means that local businesses receive the money that I would otherwise spend in Dublin. When I used to have to go to the office daily, I did my shopping including food in the nearest places to the office and only used the local shops for items that might have been forgotten or need at the last minute for a meal. Same as eating out in restaurants, going to the cinema etc all done in Dublin on a Friday night, because I was already there and the missus could drive up and drive us home afterwards. Since I've been working from home over the last five years or more, we now do all these activities in the closest local towns to us.

There are other long term benefits to blended working for those that can do it, for both the employees and the employer. These include increased staff morale and improved productivity, better physical and mental health, reduced expenses and environmental benefits amongst others shown in multiple studies around blended working for those that want to cite them to their union representatives and push them on blended working become the norm.

It won't be popular with some people in the general public, but given some people just have a bee in their bonnet because they either failed to get a job with ye or just swallowed the whole U.S. based libertarian economics bs, and will complain about ye even having jobs in the first place, so ye might as well fight for something that has benefits both for you, your families and your local communities among others.

Blended working isn't going to be possible for people like my wife who due to the very nature of their work simply cannot do it from home. She does however see the benefit of it being in place for others and wouldn't begrudge them it, as she does the job she does because she loves it. I would however like to see additional benefits either financial or additional statutory leave given to those in both the private and public sector who simply cannot do their job from home.

Such a practice is in place where a friend of mine works. Their field service engineers have to travel to customer sites and cannot work from an office never mind from home. So they get an additional five days annual leave compared to the office based staff, and given that they have at times to do twelve hour plus days due to travel time to and from customer sites, can head home but be on call until four o'clock on days they manage to get their calls finished early.

I believe most departments have staff back in the office at least one day a week (mandatory), including Health. My dept were planning to increase the number of days in November, but due to increasing case numbers it was decided to continue the "cautious" approach for now.

However, the decision taken by Department of Health to tell its staff to return to working from home full time indefinitely in response to rising case numbers, may change this.

Department of Health staff told to work from home indefinitely (irishexaminer.com)

It will be interesting to see if anything changes now, that Health have pulled back.

DPER and the Unions are currently in negotiation on the framework that all Departments must work within. That framework is due to be delivered this month, and Departments have been instructed to have their blended working policy in place by Q2, 2022.

Bit of a sweeping statement that last year people hated working from home

The widest survey i saw across CS had "some form of mixed" by far the most popular preference and that was in the first few months of the arrangement

All pointers since say that this has only firmed up and if a similar survey went out again id expect that 1 day a week or wfh unless necessary to attend periodically for a specific purpose would garner the vast majority of picks

Not that I've heard.

Yes, that is what we've been told as well.

And from what I can gather, there will not be any hard and fast rule that everyone must do "X" set amount of days in the office, each and every week.

The organisation is too vast for there to be a rigid "one size fits all" policy on WFH as what may work for staff in D/Health, for example, may not work for staff working in D/SP.

There will be guidelines and recommendations - a Framework - which will eventually come down to local senior management to implement across their own department as best they see it fitting their Department's business needs.