Moving around

Not one job but many...

Last year we wrote a post giving advice to new local government workers. We provided ten tips and our wonderful readers chimed in with another 16. Together this provided a pretty awesome collection of tips for new local government workers.

Perhaps the one that interested us the most was the final one; from a blogger going by the name of Haypsych who advised:

26. Move around and try to get experience in a few different parts of the council you work for (or councils). If you start out as a graduate accountant, planner, social worker, HR bod etc. then by all means hone those skills but then be prepared to move. Local gov is a rich tapestry of roles and systems, you’ll ensure your longevity in the sector if you broaden your skill set.

I was reminded of this comment again this week as I reviewed some data about staff retention in my Local Authority. Unsurprisingly, if you exclude redundancies there is relatively little turnover, either within or outside the council. Our HR team still present this figure as a sign of success and I wondered whether that was really the case. Indeed, I strongly felt it wasn’t.

I think there are two real challenges in the above comment which my HR colleagues, and indeed all of Local Government, will need to think about.

Breaking up is hard to do

Dear job,

I wanted to put a few things down in words because I’m finding it too difficult to admit them.  Before you read any further, I want you to know that you’ll always have a special place in my heart and have helped me grow so much as a person; for that I will always be grateful.

But we can’t live in the past.  things have moved on, we’ve both changed so much, so it’s with a heavy heart that I have to say that I’m leaving you.

I’ve not found someone else, but I know in my heart that there is the right place for me out there, somewhere which will value me for who and what I am and cherish our time and efforts together.  It might take me a week, it might take me a year, but I’m going to keep looking, trusting in my belief that our paths will cross.

Guilty feelings

Feeling guilty about guilty feelings

Today I properly start my new job.  Actually, that’s not entirely true, as I started it yesterday, but this is the first day when I’ll actually be sitting at my new desk.  Effectively I’ll be doing the same thing as I was before, but in a different service and inexplicably at a higher grade.

And do you know what emotion is coursing through my veins?  Surely I should be happy to be employed when so many others aren’t; relieved that I can continue to support my family; excited about the new challenges ahead perhaps, or even chuffed that I’m valued by others.

Nope.  I feel guilt.

The Architect builds my anger up

Et tu, Architect?!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog piece which introduced you all to a semi-colleague who took credit for an excellent piece of work under false pretences.  Well, I am now able to bring you round two of the saga.

Before I go any further I want to say that this is not meant to be a blog about venting personal grievances.  I will not name them, no matter what the bribe is, and will try not to get too worked up about the whole thing.  I’ve chosen to write about it and share because I get the ever growing impression that this is becoming less and less an isolated incident in the public sector, which worries me.

As regular readers will know, there are many restructures happening in local government at the moment due to the Comprehensive Spending Review, one of which I am now part of.  The work I am responsible for and have been delivering with the help of an excellent team is moving over to another service area entirely, and I am the only one of my team who has been given the chance to follow it.

So, to keep it simple I am eligible to apply to do my job, as are six others from other parts of the council (it’s a big restructure).  All of these have rightful claims to the job and have dealt with the issue in an amicable (if slightly strained) way.

The last person up for it is our friend, The Architect (whose moniker I shall henceforth jargonise to TA).  As you may recall, TA has been on secondment to central government for some time, and wanted to stay there permanently.  We  were all recently sent the proposals for our restructure, and have been invited to make our comments.

The most money ever paid for a cow in an auction was $1.3 million

Will we all be over educated yet unemployed?

In a previous life I was a yoot worker (we all talked like that in order to be down ‘wiv da kidz, innit’).  In between dealing with some kids stabbing each other and others crying in a corner because nobody understood them (both true, not stereotypes – I promise!), I developed and delivered training courses.  These were great fun, really well received by participants and schools and youth clubs couldn’t get enough of them.

That is, until I had enough of delivering them.  You see, whilst the courses were very good (even if I do say so myself), taught a range of valuable and useful skills and were accredited, all too often I would find that I had trained groups of young people up only to see them have nowhere to go and no way of using these new skills.  The youth clubs and services weren’t ready to do anything with them, which created a lot of frustration within those groups and undid a lot of the work I’d gone through.

Fast forward this ten or fifteen years and I’m drawing a lot of parallels in my colleagues.  Okay, maybe not the crying and stabbing (although there is always a little of both going on somewhere in the building), but I’m definitely seeing people getting ready to dive back into training and education with no thought about what after that.

Many of my colleagues are taking the cuts as an opportunity to go off for a while and do something they’ve wanted to do but had no reason to.  The always excellent Redundant Public Sector Worker was musing setting up their own business, Citizenr also took a look at a few options from the X-Factor to being the next Charlie Dimmock.  Both of these are thinking of some (more or less) practical solutions that will support them in the longer as well as medium term should they come off (good luck both by the way!).

A little reason I feel lucky

Ism’s are horrible thing.  Racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia (not grammatically an ism, but which is at least in the spirit of things) and geekism are all things which should be removed from society and consigned to the cached web pages of history.

Recently a colleague and I heard of an incident where a local councillor had the fact that he was both of Jewish decent and gay were used against him in an election.  This is of course despicable; regardless of which parties were involved these things should never be used in a derogatory fashion or be used to attack someone.

However, it also got us chatting about the Council we work for and homophobia and other ism’s in the workplace.  This is an area which is often discussed and frowned upon, but nevertheless is seen by many to be difficult to eradicate.