kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
That's a generalised problem tho - I've had fantastic and terrible managers in both public and private sector across a whole range of roles, from working in a dairy to international publishing.
The Public Sector
- Thread starter gabi
- Start date
That's a generalised problem tho - I've had fantastic and terrible managers in both public and private sector across a whole range of roles, from working in a dairy to international publishing.
Biddlybee
making knots with sticks
Biddlybee
making knots with sticks
Fear of change
and the people who have tried, just end up getting ground down by the barriers, and end up not giving a shit 
Good post there too Kyser. As much as I hate all the arse covering that goes on in the public sector, its symptomatic of the fact that everyone knows the media will be demanding sackings should they latch onto a story they can blow out of proportion to sell papers. Sad world innit?
e2a: the difference you point out between the public and private sector is an important one - private companies can lie about things, refuse to comment etc. because there's no equivalent to an FOI request. Public sector doesn't have that option.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
For me the main difference is the fiscal piety that the press seem to expect from the PS; if I planned an ad campaign that didn't work it would be 'Well, that didn't work, we'll take the learnings and go forward', get a bollocking off the client (maybe0 and that would be it. If you have an initiative in the PS that goes tits if you try and bury the information you're rightly pilloried, but if you're open with it, the message is 'Incompetence and Waste' or 'Policy Doesn't Work'...well, no shit sherlock, not every policy will work, and that's if you're working on something that's got easily quantifiable results!
) is going to get worse now that MPs have been shown to be such stealing fuckers
citydreams
on the road again
Meh, the UK is above avage. Table 2 says so.
http://www.ecb.int/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp242.pdf
http://www.ecb.int/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp242.pdf
Dunno, my experience with pre-privatisation utilities organisations was that there was a culture of laziness, a jobs for the boys/family situation where general operatives were paid huge amounts of overtime they didn't do and managers tended to have 'come up off the tools' with little knowledge of managing anything. The media had nothing to do with it then.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
You're comparing nationalised monopoly companies and working practices from 30 years ago with modern bureacracy.
As we've seen recently with the T5 fuck up, the private sector isn't prone to massive and very public fuck ups...
Sickening isnt it. Makes me really sad as somebody who wants to see public services deliver good services to people. But there seems to be a huge amount of lethargy in public services and in my experience the charity sector too. There are some notable exceptions but there are some truly awful managers and woeful services.
I think one problem is that really really shit staff and managers keep their jobs despite doing fuck all or worse. This has the effect of demoralising everyone around them.
Maurice Picarda
Actually, might as well flounce.
Kyser, you're bang on the money there.
rubbershoes
not the only raver in the village
It's hell but the only form of safety in my industry at the moment as the private sector in my game is currently like a bad joke. Set yourself a get out point (I had 15 months in mind - credit crunch came along and I have moved that back substantially) and make what you can out of it. I have never worked so hard due to a combination of many of the things mentioned above. Take what you can from it though, I'm getting really good experience, punching above my weight and getting to network with people I wouldn't have had access to on the private side which is opening up doors and ways out though. It is hell though and there are too many lifers.
When I worked at the Council, just a temping job in the planning section, they reorganised the section, merging two bits together. One of the team leaders became irrelevant, but they couldn't sack him as he'd been at the Council so long. He got his own room, and used to just sit there all day playing solitaire and surfing the net, and he as getting 60k! 
When I worked at the Council, just a temping job in the planning section, they reorganised the section, merging two bits together. One of the team leaders became irrelevant, but they couldn't sack him as he'd been at the Council so long. He got his own room, and used to just sit there all day playing solitaire and surfing the net, and he as getting 60k!
Especially silly that they have someone doing nothing but still need a temp.
People I know in BT are currently doing precious little - their jobs are disappearing. BT can't face the expense of making them redundant, but are offering sub-redundancy value sweeteners if they leave voluntarily.
Guineveretoo
Mostly bewildered
I think it is silly to tar the whole "public sector" with the same brush.
I know people who work in local government who work really hard, and whose initiative and ideas are supported. In fact, my daughter is one of those people.
I also know many public and civil servants who work ridiculously hard and long hours, and who are committed to the service they provide, even if their initiative and ideas are not supported.
This is becoming more widespread as the "efficiency savings" kick in. Across a lot of the public sector, the numbers have staff have reduced massively, but the workload remains. This is requiring a huge change in ways of working and in attitudes, some of which has got to be good, although I do know people who are buckling under the pressure of excessive workload.
I know people who work in local government who work really hard, and whose initiative and ideas are supported. In fact, my daughter is one of those people.
I also know many public and civil servants who work ridiculously hard and long hours, and who are committed to the service they provide, even if their initiative and ideas are not supported.
This is becoming more widespread as the "efficiency savings" kick in. Across a lot of the public sector, the numbers have staff have reduced massively, but the workload remains. This is requiring a huge change in ways of working and in attitudes, some of which has got to be good, although I do know people who are buckling under the pressure of excessive workload.
When I worked at the Council, just a temping job in the planning section, they reorganised the section, merging two bits together. One of the team leaders became irrelevant, but they couldn't sack him as he'd been at the Council so long. He got his own room, and used to just sit there all day playing solitaire and surfing the net, and he as getting 60k!
The people who end up paying for that kind of nonsense are the taxpayers and all the people who are supposed to benefit from public spending and sharing of the cake.
The public and voluntary sector needs major reform.
christ this echo's my experiences of working for the NHS - appalling management (great scientists but by god shite managers), control freakery from above, no leeway to explore anything, death by management committee meetings where NOTHING is decided, jobs for how long you have been there. No wonder I'm off, fuck the NHS, I've done my "charity" work and if I have to go into the private sector I will do. I refuse to work in what is in effect an abusive relationship.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
This is very good, I think.
I'e worked far more in the public sector (especially if you include the university sector, which I think is public sector although Vice Principals often don't) than the private. I've seen some shocking things, especially in the university sector - the library service I last worked for was, despite (or perhaps because) it being one of the most prestigious universities in the UK, essentially nothing more than an exercise in managers assisting one another to evade responsibility. It was an absolute disgrace. I think there's far more of this in the public sector than the private.
However, I think that if you want services provided that do not in themselves make money, then you have little chance of this being done effectively or efficiently by the private sector and simply the best way forward is to try, as best you can, to have it done by people who care about that particular aspect of work and allowing them to do it well. Genuinely valuable things are not often done by the private sector and the reason that they are not - after thirty years of privatisation - is that frankly, it does not want to.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
Also see "Wembley Stadium".
It's worth asking yourself, next time you see the newspapers banging on about public sector this and public sector that, whether the newspapers themselves are a good example of how things should be done and whether the product that they produce is so obviously great. (I had a similar thought when watching the news recently and seeing a Sun journalist talk about corruption in Parliament. Fair enough, but do we want a lecture in ethics from the Sun? And how much is lost from the public purse by Rupert Murdoch's tax-avoidance schemes?
Incidentally, re: sinecures in the public sector, that's actually one area where there's more dead wood in the private sector. How many people are on boards because they're the chairman's son, or nephew, or were in the same regiment as somebody on the board, or are considered to add prestige to the company's name, or are there to side with one side or another in a faction fight? Too many, I think.
denniseagle
ding dong the witch is dead
My first contact with the public sector and its working practicses occured BEFORE I started working in the 'public sector'
I had applied for a driving job, attended the interview, did the driving assesment and was offered the job HURRAH!! only problem was the amount of notice I needed to give to my employer.
When I queried the start date of my public sector (love that term) employment, I was told I could start any time I wanted!!!!!
Then, during the telephone conversation with the HR manager, she ( not in anyway being derogitory towards women here) stated that it was an 'early start' to the working day.
I asked what time was 'early' and she said 'I had to attend the depot at .......... wait for it 07.00 hrs'
I laughed and said that wasn't early I was at present leaving my depot at 05.30 hrs and that I lived 20 minutes driving time from where I was currently employed.
I swear I heard her fall off her chair.
I had applied for a driving job, attended the interview, did the driving assesment and was offered the job HURRAH!! only problem was the amount of notice I needed to give to my employer.
When I queried the start date of my public sector (love that term) employment, I was told I could start any time I wanted!!!!!
Then, during the telephone conversation with the HR manager, she ( not in anyway being derogitory towards women here) stated that it was an 'early start' to the working day.
I asked what time was 'early' and she said 'I had to attend the depot at .......... wait for it 07.00 hrs'
I laughed and said that wasn't early I was at present leaving my depot at 05.30 hrs and that I lived 20 minutes driving time from where I was currently employed.
I swear I heard her fall off her chair.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Having worked for several private companies which deal with public sector ones, my abiding memory is the sheer sense of outrage that arose when a public sector employee was able to bring about a case of sexual harassment, had it supported by the union and had her superiors actually pay attention and bring in people above her in the management hierarchy.
Welcome to my world (without the change in attitudes bit - which doesn't help at all - as a temp you just can't force things though). Amusingly though, I know the budgets for next year are being cut thanks to BoJo and it's likely that this will either force me to move on (even though I am propping a lot of things up) or alternatively it will be like watching a car accident given how badly the budgets are being cut and possibly cleaning up afterwards. Not pleasant.
In my first month working in the public sector, I was told off for working too hard.
In fairness I have also had this in a FTSE 250 company...... it happens.
Sadly a lot of people get really dragged and demoralised by just how badly run public and voluntary services are in this country.
Some people treat it as tho its other peoples money so it doesnt matter what they do. But its OUR money and it does. Charities are often appalling wasters of money.
Idaho
continuity character
It seems from my experience that the public sector is more heirarchical than the private. And that new ideas are positively feared.
I remember temping in the Audit Commission - the person I was working for wanted to make a note of some data plotted against date and location. She made me get an A3 piece of paper and a ruler and draw a grid - A, B, C, D, etc across the top, and Date down the side. Ten points if you guess what my suggestion was
Another time at the same place working for someone else we needed to get a copy of a brochure from another government department. The process for doing this was to book a courier, and go through an official courier request process, countersigned by a manager, and costing £30. The office we wanted to get is from was two blocks away. Another ten points for guessing my suggestion...
After two weeks of temping I was told my services were no longer needed. They told the agency that "I kept coming up with ideas".
I remember temping in the Audit Commission - the person I was working for wanted to make a note of some data plotted against date and location. She made me get an A3 piece of paper and a ruler and draw a grid - A, B, C, D, etc across the top, and Date down the side. Ten points if you guess what my suggestion was
Another time at the same place working for someone else we needed to get a copy of a brochure from another government department. The process for doing this was to book a courier, and go through an official courier request process, countersigned by a manager, and costing £30. The office we wanted to get is from was two blocks away. Another ten points for guessing my suggestion...
After two weeks of temping I was told my services were no longer needed. They told the agency that "I kept coming up with ideas".
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
This is true, but it's also true that a lot of things are positively feared in the private sector, including joining trades unions and standing up to bullying. I also think the private sector as a whole is a lot less innovative and flexible than it reckons it is: there's an awful lot of quasi-mythology about.
The problems with the public sector are massive. Public ownership should be loads better than private companies.
But the public sector seems to largely ignore the idea that consumers/customers (call them what you want) should have really decent services. Instead it seems to be about helping the staff to help themselves all neatly framed by hierarchical nonsense and apathy.
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