Civil servants told to spend more time in the office - Irish Times - Mod warning #526

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Because they thought they could push it through with no resistance on the basis of the policy reviews that were done at the end of last year.

This is purely speculative on my part, but they probably said that increasing to 2 days would bring DSP / DoF into line with the hybrid policies operating in other departments. My Dept did our review in September and it was overwhelmingly positive and no changes were made.

For the record, I've said already that I think the best the Unions will be able to accomplish is to defer the change in their policies and subsequent increase to two days WFO requirement for DSP / DoF staff for a couple of months. Maybe until Q4 2025.

Staff have to be given adequate notice to make arrangements if need be, two weeks notice was disgraceful.

By contrast to the Irish Times (which consistently publishes anti remote working articles, which has nothing to do with deriving a large part of their income from commercial property advertising!), here's a decent counterpoint article from RTÉ:

https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0209/1495440-remote-working/

Obviously such working arrangements won't be showing up in most surveys, but just goes to show, remote/blended/hybrid working is here to stay.

That is a lovely tidbit, but again you miss the point.

If your saving grace is the speed of getting your passport then the issue is even more serious than I originally thought.

How long does it take to get planning for anything in this country?
How long does it take to get hospital appointments for certain procedures?
How long does it take to build a road? (20 years actually)
How long does it take to build some Bus Lanes?

etc..

etc.

The country simply does not work as efficiently or as effectively as it should. The CS is still paper-based to a large extent. Reform and changes are met with outright hostility and skeptism.

Why?

I will absolutely concede the current performance management system is ****. Staff used to be able to agree their objectives for the year, but also list the constraints that would impact on targets (e.g. anything from "I need my **** computer replaced" to "This is dependent on not losing any more staff during the year.") and I used to be able to rate someone's performance from 1 to 5. Now there is no ability to indicate constraints, and people's performance can only be rated as "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory", so people being people, nobody gets "unsatisfactory" unless they're going out of their way to be ****.

This is why…

Performance management in the CS is a **** show, no one is accountable, even if they **** up massively. Process and procedures dictate the flow instead of meeting goals and measuring success. I know plenty of people who work for the state and some of their stories are truly jaw-dropping.

No, I think it is you who seems to have missed the fundamental point of this thread. This thread is about the civil service and hybrid working, and not just for general rants about all public services.

And by the way, you've mixed up a few things in there which do not come under the remit of the CS at all, e.g. the RTB, (which is an independant body) and hospital appointments, which come under the HSE. Civil servants work in Government Departments.

But to get back to the point of the thread, what makes you thinking forcing many people into long commutes, losing time and energy, to perform the same tasks at a hotdesk in an office building somewhere that they can perform at home, will speed up anything being delivered? Let me tell you straight - it won't.

The CS has proven over the last five years that hybrid working does work and the testimony of many CS here is that hybrid working has improved productivity / reduced sick leave on their teams.

You can choose to believe what we are telling you, or not. Nothing anything any of us here is going to say is going to convince the naysayers of anything different, so we'll just keep working, and they'll just keep complaining.

a) How long does it take to get planning for anything in this country?

b) How long does it take to get hospital appointments for certain procedures?

c) How long does it take to build a road? (20 years actually)

d) How long does it take to build some Bus Lanes?

a) Ages? That'd be down to councils' Strategic Area Development Plans and An Bórd Pleanála. Nothing to do with the Civil Service.

b) Ages? Blame the government, who still haven't implemented Sláintecare. Nothing to do with the Civil Service.

c) Ages? First the initial plan gets announced. That's immediately followed by hundreds of objections, as NIMBY takes hold, politicians try to decide where most votes lie and start making representations, eventually a route is agreed, then there's the wait for funding (can take a few years if FF have crashed the economy again), then there's the tenders (still need to go through the charade even though if it's Kerry, Healy-Rae-associated companies will win, and everyone knows this.) Nothing to do with the Civil Service.

d) Ages? Again, NIMBYism, and "we can't lose our cross-city bus service that only 10% use to the far terminus, and couldn't possibly be expected to change buses in the city centre, even though the bus frequency would be doubled!" Nothing to do with the Civil Service.

Even if technically correct, that's a lousy attitude on the part of management.

An ex colleague of mine had their team meeting earlier this week, all very negative about working form home and were basically told they had no right to it and they can be called back into the office full time at any time. Someone must have mentioned the union because they also told me that the manager also said that the union couldn't do a thing about it.

Thats either a manager who can't manage poor staff, is on a power trip or a double bluff to drive up union membership!

I worked in the public sector (not in the civil service) during the first few months of Covid and there was a lot of tension over WFH right from the start. WFH was portrayed as some sort of favour, a privilege or staff "getting one over" on management. There were not enough laptops for everyone and this was used as a stick to beat staff with. "you're not doing your job, get back to the office" As Covid numbers dropped that summer, dinosaur managers ordered everyone, including those with laptops, back to the office in contravention of public health guidelines at the time. The unions were utterly useless. This was long before any vaccines and Covid cases started to rise before the summer ended.

It was my experience that people who were good workers in the office flourished when WFH.

It was also my experience that managers bulling to get everyone back in to the office were the most ineffective ones. Bad communicators, disinterested and disengaged individuals who flipped to being micromanagers when staff started WFH. Detailed weekly reports from staff on exactly what they had been doing were demanded. I'm talking about details like "I sent an email to Mary about x at y time on z date". Demanded even if the manager had been cc'ed on the email (which they didn't want). It would take a considerable amount of time to produce these reports. Nuts.

There are plenty of dinosaurs in the public service and they're not even necessarily that old. I think these type of personalities can be drawn to the PS for various reasons. Conservative types who are obsessed with pensions, grades and years of service. Staff turnover is low, many have entered shortly after school or more commonly these days, college, planning to stay for 40 years, getting more institutionalised every year. It's no wonder they have a teacher mentality - imagine going straight from school, probably single sex and into the public service and never leaving.

The vast majority will do what management says, Management boards, POs, APs etc have the right to arrange staff as they wish. Staff who seem to think they have a right to work from home forever for all/majority of the time might be in for shock going forward.

In all, I think I have met maybe two people who thought they should be allowed to WFH all of the time after the pandemic.

I will use the same generalisation here and say that in my experience, the vast majority are quite happy to settle for hybrid working. 2 days a week being the most constant number that comes up for WFO.

Most POs / APs realise that in order to retain good staff, they have to be flexible and adapt.

Or else, the result will be a constant churn of staff applying for mobility and moving on.

When I was commuting 18km in Dublin it took me at minimum an hour each way, and more often than not even longer than that.

45 minutes would have been a miracle!

Thanks for posting. It's pretty much as I expected.

However, anyone in D/Fin currently working one day a week in the office, will most likely be looking an increase to two in the near future, which is actually in line with D/Fin's policy (point 4).

Forsa selling this as a win and it was all down to them etc.

Wish I had their PR / comms people working for me!