Working From Home and Open All Hours in HMRC


Update: This isn't about how hard done by Civil Servants are. It's more about how we all cheat ourselves. Walking down to the train station yesterday at ten to six in the morning reminded me how many people are up early: delivery drivers dropping off bread and cakes - newsagents waiting for their own deliveries - cleaners reporting to pubs to deal with the mess from the night before. So, I'm not saying public sector employees are special. Just speaking from my own experience:

I was listening to a report on the radio about British employees working excessive hours, and how Working From Home had made it worse. It reminded me of a chat I had last week with a manager still employed in the Civil Service. It was almost like talking to myself from a year ago.

It starts with waking up at four in the morning with yesterday's problems still floating through your head. You still can't get back to sleep by five, and since you're working from home you think you may as well chip away at the problems while it's quiet. But then, once you fire up your Surface Pro, there are all those statistics from yesterday which need to be in by ten (or by nine now, because the planning people think you've got nothing better to do than get their figures ready and because of the pandemic they need extra information). So, you might as well get the stats out of the way. And then tackle the first of yesterday's problems, which turns out to be not so difficult and you can wrap it up in 30 minutes.

And after you've done that, it's time for breakfast. And then you notice some of the staff are logging on (because they're all working from home as well). And they've got some HR Queries, or some new problems they came across yesterday evening. So you might as well deal with them straight away. Because even though the rest of your own problems are still festering away, the first one only took 30 minutes, so you'll be able to polish the rest off soon.

But by now you're own manager's logged on, wanting to know if the stats are ready. And then you have to run a virtual team meeting (where the staff inevitably reveal more problems from yesterday). And after that it's time for an informal meeting with the other managers. And finally, you get a clear hour to start chipping away at the rest of those problems. Only these problems aren't so easily solved. You need to try getting hold of someone else. But you don't have time, because there's another meeting looming. And because you started so early, you're feeling like you could really knock off for the day, even though those colleagues who started at ten are just getting into their stride.

Anyway, you know that after tea, you won't be able to resist a quick peek at your email or a little bit more stats gathering (in the hope you can do less tomorrow).

It would be wrong to say that Working From Home has caused these excessive working patterns. Managers have been taking appraisal files home and working unbilled hours for years, partly because they needed to get some peace and quiet and give those appraisals their best effort. The need to put extra work into appraisals got even more demanding a few years ago when senior management invented a berserk moderating system which became like a cross between a bear pit and a roman arena.

The same applied to assurance officers. Many would spend time at home reading guidance and the law to make sure they understood all the implications, or double-checking their figures to make sure they hadn't made a blatant error. Some of it may have been inherited from the Customs and Excise tradition of flexibility but it all came down to wanting to do a good job. 

The official view is that staff should only work the hours they're paid for, that things like writing appraisals and reading guidance are factored into the time allotted for the job, and that everyone should take their statutory breaks. I'm sure the same applies in private industry too.



Popular posts from this blog

CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR

Image
 CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR by Dawn Fallon (ISBN 9 798445 671640) If the title makes you expect Liz Fraser and Robin Asquith having a clothing malfunction while arguing over tax points you’ll be disappointed. But Dawn Fallon’s CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR does give a lively account of what it was like to be a VAT Control Officer in HM Customs and Excise from 1986 to 1995.  While some of the detail of the pre-computer era may surprise a modern day HM Revenue and Customs VAT officer, they will probably feel a shock of recognition at most of Dawn’s experiences. She vividly captures the despair of sitting in a traders premises and realising that none of it matches what you were told in training. Another abiding truth is the pay. In May 2024 Jim Harra told the Public Accounts Committee that almost a third of HMRC staff had to be given a pay increase to ensure the department complied with the National Living Wage. Back in the 1980’s, Dawn is forced to take on extra work (as a ...
Read more

Best of British to the HMRC Surge Team

Image
Reading HMRC’s advert for enthusiastic team players to join its Surge and Rapid Response Team, my response is to wish them a sincere Best of British.  When I started this blog, I warned myself that my experience of HMRC was time-limited and would soon become outdated. Even so, I can only hope their enthusiasm is rewarded. When I joined HM Customs and Excise as a Band 1 (50% of an Admin Assistant) my goals and targets were easy: make it to the first week, make it to the first month, follow the rules, do what you were told and get past my probationary period.  In my first month I witnessed a retirement speech in which a bearded old exciseman told everyone that the wheels were coming off the wagon and management didn’t have a clue. I watched it with indifference because (as I said) I was focussed on following the rules and doing what I was told. I never dreamed that one day I’d be taking the same jaundiced view – or even that I’d give a damn. Looking back at the internal structur...
Read more

Confessions of a Jobsworth

Image
  In the past few weeks, as refugees are turned away and charity shipments to the Ukraine get stalled at the borders because they don’t have customs paperwork, the term “jobsworth” has been slung around at the Home Office, Border Force and HMRC (and private contractors).  Now that things have calmed down a bit, it’s made me look back at being a “jobsworth”. I’ve just done a bit of research and found that the term became popular in the 1970’s when Esther Rantzen used to present a “Jobsworth of the Week” award on her TV show, That’s Life. The idea seems to be that a “jobsworth” is not just someone who rigidly applies the rules (as their contract of employment requires) but that they gleefully take the most rigid and obstructive interpretation of those rules, just to make life difficult. A lot of the folk who shout “jobsworth” do it when they’re wound up. Give them five minutes to calm down, and they’d admit it was unreasonable. But there are others who seem to have a Donald Trum...
Read more