Public Sector

Nitefly

Nitefly

Nitefly

Man of Honour
Joined
24 Sep 2005
Posts
37,682
There appears to be a consensus amongst my fiends and wider grounp of friends that public sector workers (outside of teachers and medical professions) are a bunch of total dossers and wouldn't know hard work or a 'modest pension' if it came up to them and told them to leave at an outrageous 5:05pm.

I have little knowledge - is this bull?? Dispose the myth OCUK!
 
Load of bull. It's those pesky civvies that are the problem , they don't know they're born :p
 
I spent a year working in the public sector and I can confirm that the statement is representative of the majority of those who I worked with.

Very difficult place to work for those of us who actually just wanted to get on and work whilst being constantly told not to work so hard and take more tea breaks...... Eugh. Horrible experience.
 
The Public Sector has good people in it, they are just clever enough to move on before they get absored into the blob.

There's a lot of long service employees just waiting it out with their 40 days holiday and bare minimum hours, counting the days until they can cash in on their early retirement. There is zero incentive within the Public Sector to do any more than that.
 
I spent two years working at a hospital, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the NHS contains some of the slowest, laziest, unmotivated and underqualified people I have ever come across.
 
Load of Bull. I've worked in both Private and Public sectors.

Might have been true 10+ years ago but there's hardly anyone left over the age of 50 where I work. They all retired early on gold plated pensions.
 
Zefan said:
Load of bull. It's those pesky civvies that are the problem , they don't know they're born :p
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I don't think the OP is talking about the armed forces either... though regular naffi breaks, and afternoon for sports and knocking off early on a Friday can't be too bad...


methinks he means local council workers and civil servants in govt departments... not doctors, nurses, police officers, soldiers etc...
 
I'm only jesting in any case. I find there's really very little difference between the above anyway, you get your bad and your good just the same.
 
To be honest, I went into a LA with the same view as OP. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Yes, things move a bit slower in the public sector, but the people there are not too bad at all. Like any company you have people who are stupid, but you also have many who are extremely good at what they do.

One thing I did notice, is that they do a tremendous amount of work, with little or no resources; across a wide range of different business units (due to cuts). The style of life was nice, very good work/life balance, and everyone was friendly.
 
dowie said:
I don't think the OP is talking about the armed forces either... though regular naffi breaks, and afternoon for sports and knocking off early on a Friday can't be too bad...


methinks he means local council workers and civil servants in govt departments... not doctors, nurses, police officers, soldiers etc...
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What are those?! Dont get any of them!

But no I realise what the OP was on about, you get good and bad in any workplace.
 
I spent 15 years in the civil service and came across people that were clever, motivated, skilful, hard-working, etc and those that were lazy, incompetent, dangerous, morons.

I've spent 6 months working in the private sector and guess what? Exactly the same.

The problem is, when times are hard civil servants are an easy target for the media and general public.
 
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Skeeter said:
There's a lot of long service employees just waiting it out with their 40 days holiday and bare minimum hours, counting the days until they can cash in on their early retirement. There is zero incentive within the Public Sector to do any more than that.
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This. If you get a steady increase in pay no matter how good or bad you do the job, you can see why its ideal for those that want to just clock in and out.
 
NHS here. Our Trust induction held a general knowledge quiz, and when WW2 came up, 2 of the people in my group didn't know the start/finish years for WW2 :rolleyes: Firstly, how the hell did they get appointed in the Trust (or any job!), and secondly, that's showing some tad disrespect to parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who fought in WW2.

As for my own dept (admin), we're mostly hard workers except for 2 of us. One went on "long term sick" (despite frequent Facebook posts about getting drunk, fashion shoots, going to Egypt etc). HR caught up, but she obviously knows the right people and landed a job in another dept. She worked there for a month and has now gone off on long term sick again. The other one I'm not 100% sure if lazy or not, but she goes off on stress for 1-2 months GUARANTEED every year followed by a month's phased return (half-hours). So yes that could be genuine, but it's still a drain on our dept, and our budget can't afford a temp. When I was in private sector, we would have hired a temp for maternity leave and operations etc.
 
We're all ******s every single one of us, 100% guaranteed!

The Sun doesn't call us Council Jobsworths for nothing!
 
It is a huge problem. People will deny it, but speak to people who have come in to the sector from more commercial backgrounds and there is a common theme about attitudes, actions and mindsets. People who have worked within the sector all their life have nothing to compare it to so are not really able to comment comparatively, but the culture of big swathes of the public sector is different to commercial companies.

Now that of course isn't always a bad thing when pragmatism should take precedent over commercial considerations, but you do tend to find people who work in the sector stay in the sector so comment from one perspective. I spent my early life working within the PAG team from a tech company in the 80s early 90's and some of the things that went on were bordering on unlawful. I have worked with some people bought in to make changes and frankly it's an impossible job as their hands are tied by generations of legislation or red tape to get anything done.

It's very broad brush, there are some great people in the public sector no question, hard working, passionate, good people who would excel anywhere, but generally the attitude in my experience is different and would see them struggle in more challenging careers where they are asked to work outside the parameters they have become use to. i also have many friends who i grew up who took the local government approach and as we close in our 50's they are still there, doing the same thing, happy with their lives but under zero REAL pressure.

Reading that last line again, perhaps they have it right.
 
BadMojo said:
I spent 15 years in the civil service and came across people that were clever, motivated, skilful, hard-working, etc and those that were lazy, incompetent, dangerous, morons.

I've spent 6 months working in the private sector and guess what? Exactly the same.

The problem is, when times are hard civil servants are an easy target for the media and general public.
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It's OK, the hard working employees in the public sector are negated by the appalling processes, lack of customer focus and general aura of failure in the organisation around them :D
 
Housey said:
happy with their lives but under zero REAL pressure.

Reading that last line again, perhaps they have it right.
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I don't know your friends but the amount councils have been told to cut has left a lot of people under a ****load of pressure.
 
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