I’m not working any harder

I think it is hitting those in policy areas, and PM+C the worst.

I”m more interested in the job cuts that seem to be quietly happening without much fanfare. Industry dept seems to be losing quite a few.

The 24/7Kevin thing seemed to be hitting the higher-ups, rather than the indians. Kevin would start making phone calls around 4am, apparently, expecting a full news/issues brief etc, and often offices in Parly house were humming by 7am. Dunno if this is still happening, but it was. Crazy tight deadlines too, and everything having to be vetted by the PMs office at some point.

But yeah, it seems there’s jobs being cut everywhere, and no one’s saying anything. Pity we don’t have a local media any more…

If my wife worked any harder she’d have to give up sleeping.

I’m sure some public servants could manage to work a LOT harder, but many are already completely overwhelmed by the expectations of their department. The lack of suitably qualified job applicants doesn’t help – nor does the lip service paid to the ‘work/life balance’ mantra.

In recogntion of the need for a work-life balance my partners department has come and installed a PC and secure network connection in our house. Now my partner can be home to read the kids a bed time story before getting straight back to work without wasting time driving back to the office.

Good on the new government making Public Servants actually work hard. Isn’t that what we pay our taxes for?

After working in a major Public Service Department, I realise there are precious few who actually do the hard work. For all the rest, strap yourself in for the hard yards and experience real hours, real work and I’m sure you’ll still receive your FLEX time.

Yeah, but do you get paid to do the extra work from home ?

For $180K-odd you’re pretty much expected to sell your soul to the man.

Yes, I can GUARANTEE that they’ll get either paid overtime, collect FLEX or on a higher salary for the outside hours work.

If you are on $180K DON’T COMPLAIN! either take the money and don’t bitch about it, or take less money and less hours. I know I’d be taking the less hours. Bout time some learnt that you can’t have both!

Okey dokey. I’d like 180k a year

What a wanker. Does he think Public Servants are somehow Howard related and must be punished?

Lets do the math: Staff cuts = more overtime for existing staff = more flex = less staff due to flex leave. Its a vicious circle. Not only that, if people are going to be worked off their ass, they will leave to join the private sector where they get comparable, if not better pay for better conditions.

I love watching Kevin squirm at the moment. He is out of his depth.

I agree with Ant; there is a huge disparity in the work ethic of folks in different levels of the organisation and in different departments. The EL1/EL2 and SES staff in my department work like dogs; 16 hour days sometimes. But there are more junior staff who, quite literally, spend their days surfing the web, reading bulletin boards, whinging and gossiping/having morning teas etc… And frankly, I don’t think the higher-ups have any idea about the lack of work these people are doing. Who is at fault? I suspect there is no need for most of the upper echelons to work ‘harder’ or longer – maybe just a whole lot smarter and be held more accountable for the work of their staff. I also have friends who have joined the APS from industry and are astounded at how good the conditions (including work/life balance) are by comparison … although the pay is perhaps not quite as good in some fields. I personally get really annoyed by the institutionalised laziness in some areas of my own workplace; my tax dollars down the drain. Making the senior staff work ‘harder’ won’t fix this.

I’m pretty sure Flexi time doesn’t exist once you are promoted past APS6 … is this correct?

tylersmayhem said :

Yes, I can GUARANTEE that they’ll get either paid overtime, collect FLEX or on a higher salary for the outside hours work.

If you are on $180K DON’T COMPLAIN! either take the money and don’t bitch about it, or take less money and less hours. I know I’d be taking the less hours. Bout time some learnt that you can’t have both!

I don’t think ingeegoodbee was “literally” complaining or bitching, jus being a little light hearted, (I was) correct m if I’m wrong though ?

Not complaining at all. That said, you’d probably get twice that in the private sector.

deezagood,

correct. No flex, you are supposed to manage your own time and that of your staff.

I wouldn’t want to be working in PM&C these days.

Ingeegoodbee said :

Not complaining at all. That said, you’d probably get twice that in the private sector.

Too true, I know for the work I do, I would be paid a whole lot more…

(my work collegues would probably have something to say about that though…lol)

Deezagood, yes in most departments anyone at EL1 or above is not entitled to flex nor overtime.

The whole thing is bullshit. The guy has to realise that the people who work for the PS are his (well the Commonwealth’s) employee’s not his slaves. He pays them to work for 7.5 hours or so, a day not 10-12+. Many people are happy to work long hours to get something done, but when it becomes the norm then that is wrong. Sadly it seems, judging by his comments he expects it to be the norm, made worse by his job cuts.

I wonder when he worked for DFAT all those years ago what hours he kept? Bet it wasn’t the hours he expects people to work now.

$100,000 per year is not much these days. I would not sell my soul to Krudd. I am not a millionare and have nannies to screw.

I should add that I don’t get flextime…..

As a former PS all I can say to the news that the shinybums now have to work is bravo. When I was there in the 1980s and early ’90s all they did was file trivial, petty complaints about me – “he spoke to me with a derogatory tone in his voice”, “he refused to copy my documents” even though they were top secret and I only had confidential clearance. No work to do so they amused themselves by stabbing me in the back. I just hope Kevin grinds them into the ground because they deserve it.

Yeah – I can understand your point WBJ, but I also want the people in these jobs to do their jobs right, do their jobs well, make sound decisions, look after their people and I want those people (paid by my tax dollars) to be the best and the brightest. If they are flogged to death, their performance will slip, the good ones will head for the hills (well – Sydney and Melbourne), less capable peole will be promoted and the circle starts again.

AND what about the husbands, wives and children of those people working themselves to death.

deezagood said :

I’m pretty sure Flexi time doesn’t exist once you are promoted past APS6 … is this correct?

Depends on the department, here EL2s still get Flex.

By ant’s definition, I’m more Indian than Chief.

Where I used to work I normally spent roughly nine hours a days in a database admin role for Technical Payment & Contract Support, and then KRudd’s policy shift meant all the old contracts had to be recalculated anf funding re-evaluated. So I spent close to 11hrs a day putting out system spotfires in technical support.
I and my EL2 effectively had to exploit every hole in the policy aspects of the CA to manage the workload, as without us working properly nothing else did.
(Such as: lump-sum payouts of flex credit apparently come out of Departmental rather than Section budgets, so my EL2 didn’t have to run an increasing single-staffer overtime bill by our SES)

Then I left to come work for an area offering me more money to work in Customer Ops, and let someone else deal with the database.
Now, I’m being offered back my old job with a payrise because they realised how much work was actually being done, and apparently my replacement was accurately reporting their overtime.

Some public servants I have spoken too are quite happy to put in the longer hours if there is some outcome at the end or they are working on something worthwhile. All to often though they are now being asked to work till midnight or take calls at 5am because some pissy little brief about nothing (that has sat in minister’s office for 3 weeks) needs ‘urgent’ changes by some ridiculous deadline the next day, just so it can sit in the Minister’s office some more! Who would want to miss seeing their kids grow up for that sort of crap?

Wide Boy Jake said :

As a former PS all I can say to the news that the shinybums now have to work is bravo. When I was there in the 1980s and early ’90s all they did was file trivial, petty complaints about me – “he spoke to me with a derogatory tone in his voice”, “he refused to copy my documents” even though they were top secret and I only had confidential clearance. No work to do so they amused themselves by stabbing me in the back. I just hope Kevin grinds them into the ground because they deserve it.

Sounds like a bitter ex-employee to me. My missus works her ass off in the public service, and to be under threat is a slap in the face. I’m not saying that everyone works their ass off, because they don’t, but the majority do.

I work for ACT Government and there are people I work with who I have no idea what they do. They turn up to work, sit at a desk all day, then go home. Meanwhile I’m busting my ass. How can you guarantee its going to be Mr. Office guy and not me getting cut? You can’t.

Well said Aronde; I think that sums it up exactly. Late nights, long hours, no breaks can be tolerated (for short periods) if there is an urgent or important deadline. My definition of urgent and important seems quite at odds with some of the pollies, who want everything yesterday. Often the urgency at our end is because of the phenomonal, painful, lengthy bureacratic processes involved in clearing anything that goes up to the Minister (with all of the mandatory ‘value-adding’ that occurs at each level). Honestly – it is staggering the time we waste dotting Is, crossing Ts and generally achieving very little of real value.

aronde said :

Some public servants I have spoken too are quite happy to put in the longer hours if there is some outcome at the end or they are working on something worthwhile. All to often though they are now being asked to work till midnight or take calls at 5am because some pissy little brief about nothing (that has sat in minister’s office for 3 weeks) needs ‘urgent’ changes by some ridiculous deadline the next day, just so it can sit in the Minister’s office some more! Who would want to miss seeing their kids grow up for that sort of crap?

Haha, that sounds like some nice revenge for the times, as sub contractors, our work has had to deal with similar crap.

I see EL2s (and above) working hard at the department I work in – but I think the main reason they’re busy is because they’re either:

a) disorganized / out of their depth or
b) attend 6 hour (!) meetings where all the managers sit around and give a status report one by one.

Effectively, 3/4 of all attendees’ day is wasted listening to the other status reports. Why not have a 1:1 meeting with senior management / executive group and save the time of the others? Time management really needs to be reviewed – more “walking” less “talking”.

I find a lot of managers will not delegate because they’re afraid to lose their power base or their self importance is too high (or both). You’ve either got to learn how to effectively package up work for others to do and report back on or be very busy. It’s your choice.

The reports of people being called at 5am for “urgent” tasks that end up sitting on desks for hours/weeks later sound a chord with me – I’ve had it happen on multiple occasions. Fact is, if you keep pandering to their BS, it’ll keep happening. You need to push back and ask them to justify the urgency of the task – usually they can’t. Tell them you’ll make it a priority *in business hours* when you can think straight (it’s amazing how urgent things are when they’re affecting ministers / execs). I agree with busting a gut when it is a genuine emergency but when emergencies become weekly / daily events then it’s really just poor planning.

i’d like to see this 180k. the work our section is doing requires 12 hour days, lunch eaten over the computer, and although the flex hours theoretically build up, if i took them to have a day off, i’d just have to make up the work the next day by working even longer than 12 hours. It entirely because as people have retired or moved on we are not allowed to replace them due to “efficiency dividends” so the workload stays the same while the number of people working drops. We have the budget for staff but we’re banned from recruiting. it’s a nonsense. My partner works just as many, if not more hours, although with better pay (up in the ELs) so i can’t imagine what it would be like for couples with kids. we barely even see our pet.

My dept has the endless planning meetings for the future, and reporting meetings and documents about the past too. Not enough time spent on actually achieving stuff right now. They are so over cautious they get nothing done. I’ve worked in many smaller depts where this was not hte case though.

My theory is that Kevin is remembering the public service of old, when he was in DFAT and staffing was plentiful. Those days are long gone, and much of the fat has gone from most departments – especially the smaller ones. If he cuts much more places will be dysfunctional.

He is missing an opportunity too = when he got in huge numbers of the PS were really excited and on-side. But if he treats us with contempt, he is not going to get the best work out of people.

“I work for ACT Government and there are people I work with who I have no idea what they do”

Same here, but in my case it’s the Manager who has no idea of what they are supposed to do. Or even who they are supposed to manage!

“I find a lot of managers will not delegate because they’re afraid to lose their power base or their self importance is too high (or both). You’ve either got to learn how to effectively package up work for others to do and report back on or be very busy. It’s your choice.”

My manager chooses to do everything their own way, which is the hard way and NOT the smart way. At the start of the year I advised my manager to start a database to track new clients that the manager was now resonsible for. Manager smiled at me very sweetly and nodded. Then came the recent SUPER URGENT HELP!!! email where the manager was desperate to TRACK all the new clients and needed URGENT staff assistance to track the new clients. I smiled sweetly and nodded at the email and then deleted it.

Lack of planning or keeping proper files on the manager’s part does not make an emergency on part. EVER. Sick and tired of some of the luddites I have to answer to and no, I DO NOT want their jobs, ever. I would just like them to do their jobs properly so their slackness doesn’t end up as my EMERGENCY.

ABC News tonight quoted “80 hour weeks”. That’s sheer nonsense in my portfolio. Here’s the rundown on the working hours of some nearby colleagues in a large high-profile department:
SES officer: in at 9.30, long lunches three days a week, leaves 5 pm every day. Unless drinking in the office, in which case lingers over wine in other SES offices. Was instructed to come in early when the Rudd Government asked managers to be available from 8 am, and may be available on a Blackberry, but certainly shows no signs of working harder than a year ago.
EL2s: one (ambitious) works dedicated long hours but still short of private enterprise hours – that means solid 8 hour days, possibly 8 and a half. In 8 am, leaves by 5. Does some work from home but not much. Frequent long ‘business’ lunches. Other EL2 works hard, but just consistent 8 and a half hour days, and is regarded as an absolute Trojan by colleagues.
EL1s: generally solid standard 8 hour days. ONe EL1, though, works 9.30 to 5.00 and claims EVERY SINGLE HOUR over 7.5 hours a day as time in lieu – calculated to the half hour – with the permission of their EL2.
For the ASO6 and below here has been NO change to heading off for take-away coffee for 20 minutes to half an hour daily, absolute licence to go off to appointments at any time of the day (not counted as time off). Drinking time at the office appears to be counted as work time between 4.00 and 6.00 pm. At least an hour a day work time is ‘allowed’ for socialising, chatting and informal activities. That’s a positive in my view – but it certainly isn’t symptomatic of an overworked workforce.
Of the 180-odd colleagues in my area, I would describe perhaps 10 of them as overworked, and they are all fairly junior staff basically taking up the slack of their seniors. A handful of contractors are of course being overworked, but they’re paid by the hour.
Public servants have AMAZINGLY accommodating working conditions and they are very very foolish in exposing them to scrutiny. They’re on a very, very, very good wicket.

Hellenic Club Fridays 12.00pm, don’t say it isn’t a flexible workplace…..

Here’s my theory. The first months of the Rudd Government – the honeymoon period – saw a lot of ministerial offices staffed by public servants out of various departments, from chief of staff through to media adviser and the receptionist at the front desk. People who knew how government worked, the policy areas, and were able to help settle in the new ministers and get their offices up and running. After three or four months, many of these people returned to their departments and were replaced by the political appointees. The rest is history. From my experience, most of the stuff-ups — big and small — can be sheeted back to the political hacks. Most of the heavy lifting up until the time of the 2020 Summit was done by the public service – Kyoto, the apology, the changes to workplace relations laws. Rudd’s comments this week revealed his glass jaw and the fact that his government is built on spin and not much else.

christ…

harden up is all I say

From my experience, many public servants (professional & non-professional) love nothing more than to compare stories with colleagues about how many hours they’ve put in that week; they gloat about it at Friday arvo “drinkies”, especially in the top three – PM&C, T and AG’s.

There’s a real art to it though, I mean you don’t just come out with “I worked 82 hours with week”.

It’s more like “Those 13 Cabinet Submissions were rather time consuming. The Chief of Staff questioned paragraph 4. It was a real blow because my team worked extra hard on that ONE sentence, but ultimately it was me who was recognised for what I achieved. Eleven o’clock finishes every night, but hey, what the Minister wants the Minister gets, right?”.

Your choice people. Stop whinging.

We are all getting older and long hours will take there toll. Went down South last week and the council town planning department was closed for the day for a colleagues funeral.
A couple of days later it was announced the state government was taking control of planning functions. This may or may not be related. I do not know.
An increase in work pressure may be responsible for in an increase in funerals hopefully we will get the time off.

Where I work a couple of EL2s have picked up the pace, and our AS looks more harried than usual, although I’m not sure if he’s working extra hours. There’s actually a lot for us to do, but much of it seems to be waiting on deals being worked out further up the foodchain

Intersting article in the SMH today.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/memo-kevin-247-slow-down/2008/05/31/1211654370878.html

None of the new priorities affect my dept directly, so we are not affected – but then, we worked hard anyway (even the Div Head said she was not affected at all by the ‘midnight oil’ thing).

That said though, there seems to be a marked difference between departments. My dept is quite efficient and does not seem to have any areas where people slack off – we were regularly complimented by the previous govt for the amazing number of achievements considering the staffing numbers . . . UNlike parts of the former DCITA. A family member worked there (in HR), after working in my dept. The contrast was stark – she reckoned there were major ‘departmental culture’ problems at DCITA, with some sections unbelievably flat-chat while others next to them twiddled their thumbs. But would they share staff? Of course not . . . . they jealously guarded their staff and would not relinquish them. My point is that staffing allocations could possibly be re-thought to alleviate the pressure in some areas.

Our Minister (Debus) has also expressly told his staffers to NEVER be rude to the members of the APS. This is admirable. [Perhaps Mr Rudd could get some 'how not to cut off the hand that feeds you and get the most out of your staff' advice from our Minister?]

Thumper said :

Intersting article in the SMH today.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/memo-kevin-247-slow-down/2008/05/31/1211654370878.html

That was interesting – especially the bit about the high turnover of staff. That may explain why many things are ’sitting around’ the PM’s office. If staff keep leaving then new ones keep having to be bought up to speed causing even more delays and problems for staff in the other offices waiting for things to get done! A rather vicious circle.

Insiders also had some good comments this morning along the lines of the long hours are more to do with the ‘24 hour political cycle’ ie short term media issues rather then ‘long term planning for the good of the nation’ type of stuff. And an interesting aside made about the heads of the Defence force being called up for a meeting with the PM at 10am and still sitting outside his office at 1pm waiting to be granted their audience!

So long as I don’t have to wake up when I fall asleep at my desk, I don’t mind.

@ I-filed. agree with you totally, my brother, an EL1, hasn’t worked past 5pm in the last 3 years and has more than enough time to find me cheap golf equipment on the net all day.

Myself, high up in the business I work for in private sector, works twice as hard and gets about 10 grand less a year. Welcome to the real world pubes!! Most of you could do with getting much better work ethics.

Myself, high up in the business I work for in private sector, works twice as hard and gets about 10 grand less a year. Welcome to the real world pubes!! Most of you could do with getting much better work ethics.

Without wanting to take a swipe at The Jas (which I’m definitely not trying to do), this comment I think captures to a great extent the degree of self importance those of us who work in the private sector have acquired, and try to laud over our counterparts in the civil service. The hard reality is that in today’s public service EL1 and EL2 level staff are by no means the senior bureaucrats we make them out to be – they’re simply drones from sector 13 (and hate to break it to all you sunshine’s but if you’re working below that level you probably don’t actually qualify for the esteemed rank of “drone”). They probably get more pay than the equivalent level drone in the private sector, but that’s simply because they have to be smarter and possess better judgement than their private sector colleagues (because you cant simply call security and have them escorted from the building when they fcuk up).

So to long hours or other wise. There’s either too much to be done or their wasting too much time getting what needs to be done sorted. In the private sector environment I work in, if you’re doing 12-14 hour days on a regular basis then the natural assumption is that you cant cope with a reasonable workload.

I doubt that there’s too much serious angst amongst our pubic colleagues, but the Government needs this distraction to draw attention away from the policy black hole at the core of their political platform. Civil servants are simply an easy target.

Most of you could do with getting much better work ethics.

I was going to make some sweeping and hasty generalisations about the private sector, but we’re expected to have evidence to back up our claims in the public sector.

I would have posted earlier but my weekend was squished helping an international conglomerate deploy their customised application to machines leased by the Commonwealth, so they could qualify for a milestone payment.

Lindsay Tanner made a few comments on ‘Insiders’ this morning while we made cheese toasties. It’s funny how every minister defends their own department, but reinforces the general smear made by the PM. And I suddenly thought I hadn’t heard my minister leap to my defence.

I work in IT. I’m guaranteed a 300 hour month 3 or 4 times a year. In my last 3 project teams I have been the ONLY permanent APS member. There’s nothing like doing the same hours as the rest of the team for 60% of the pay and none of the perks. So I’m jumping to ‘overpaid contractor’ at the end of this one.

So to the PM: Government IT is outsourced, and your APS needs people to manage contracts and the quality of their deliverables. I won’t be doing that for APS rates next month.

And to account managers: next time you’re spending thousands on SOPs at the demand of a drastically underqualified ‘handover recipient’, or explaining for the seventh time a configuration issue that is not your responsibility but preventing your milestone payment… remember you benefit directly by having expertise in the public sector.

I-field – I want to work in your department – which one is it (any clues??). It sounds like the APS of old – over a decade ago things were more like that, but I haven’t seen it since.

In my dept there are some slackers, but it is not the norm. And in my last (much smaller) dept, everyone worked so hard that organising farewell drinks had to start at 6.30 on a Friday, cos noone could stop work by 6.00.

And Jas – why not join the APS if conditions and pay are so much better than where you are – why do you stay there??

Interesting debate about this on the insiders program ABC TV yesterday. Apparently Kevin asks his top PS mandarins to meetings and will leave them waiting for for up to 2 hours. One of the journos said when he COS (?) for the Qld Premier he would call in the top bureaucrats on a Sunday and too leave them waiting. Later he would appear and say that they were no longer required. Bad manners? Childish? Churlish? Who knows.