Civil Service - Post Lockdown - Blended Working?

Agreed they would need to declare it. And Data Protection Officers generally seem more on top of the law than, say, their FOI equivalents. I doubt any department would want to be the first to have been found to be illegally monitoring their employees!

I heard it might not be illegal monitoring but staff are aware of the software. It would tell the manager how long you have been away from your PC.

..

We're up to 89 responses so far, but only 9 of those are from someone working where an official blended working policy has been published.

I'll leave this open until Tuesday 31st.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1KNlYHF0Z7rtCElZoQ0ex34HyKltprjzzQPxtmVKyAzs/

It's true. Nothing in the history of the world has ever been achieved by workers taking industrial action.

• Pay deaks
• the five-day working week - not to mention the imminent four-day working week
• security of employment
• annual holidays and public holidays
• health and safety legislation
• things like TUPE and the Working Time Directive?

All of those things we have now are a direct result of our employers being all-round decent skins, and nothing else.

🙄

Don’t forget the court of public opinion. It would reopen the public vs private sector debate. And those hard won better working conditions were in many cases driven by the private sector.

This!

There are plenty of government bodies using agency staff right now because they can't attract permanent staff. That's at ordinary admin grades, too, not just senior staff. I mean, just look further up the thread where someone has a HEO job offer and is hemming and hawing about taking it. When it gets to specialist and senior staff, it's a joke. Head of Cybersecurity for major agencies or, in fact, the whole country - expected to sit down with Secretaries General and Ministers to tell them their setup isn't up to the task - and we'll pay them around the same as a private sector senior dev. Just with vastly more responsibility.

We've been told that it will be at least 4 more weeks until our BW policy will be signed off. Then there will be an application process which will no doubt take several more weeks (at least) to get through.

I'm sure there's a "Masochism for people who don't actually like physical pain" thread over on After Hours?

Yeah, I would have been much better off not getting a pay rise in Benchmarking I that put me on roughly the same as a private sector employee (not really, I was working in I.T.) for those several years before austerity hit. No, wait... no, I actually wouldn't have been! I just wouldn't have got the extra pay for those couple of years and still would have gotten pay freezes, pay cuts, extra hours and the loss of some flexi benefits when FF fucked up the economy for everyone for the second time in living memory.

Yup, I'm aware of the global recession and the banking crisis - and the warning signs, the people warning it was going to happen really soon and the likes of Bertie saying the people giving the warnings should commit suicide. Then after the crash we were told "everyone partied."

What's always conveniently forgotten about is the 1.5% a year public sector pay deals in the years leading up to benchmarking, when the cost of living was racing ahead...

I have heard that the NSSO portal is a steaming pile of manure, and that our department are creating their own booking system for WFH applications and H&S checks.

Yeah its not as if another survey couldn't be run in a few weeks months..

@TaurenDruid Thanks for doing the survey - but I'm curious about the ICT part - "What is your organisation's official policy right now, on blended working for most staff (not counting public offices, facilities, ICT staff)?"

Are ICT departments/staff getting alternative WFH scenarios to the rest ? because without ICT there wouldn't be any WFH :)

I can’t understand the fuss about flexi to be honest. It’s a no brainer. Get rid of flexi to be allowed work from home.

Are people complaining? Being vocal to their Union reps? Colleagues giving out in our place, but no one actually doing anything about it.

In our place time-in-lieu was stopped when flexileave was suspended. They viewed it as circumventing the directive from DPER.