I was really disheartened to read recent attacks on civil servants by an unnamed cabinet minister (Civil servants working from home not at risk of pay cut, says Kwarteng, theguardian.com, 9 August). These constant verbal assaults and the implication that civil servants don’t work hard enough – that if we’re not in the office we must be watching television – are not only unequivocally false, but they’re damaging what morale is left in the civil service.
I’m a mid-ranking civil servant in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Like the majority of my colleagues, I’ve spent the past 18 months trying to juggle the needs of my day job with working on Covid management. It’s not my purpose to moan about this – I’m well aware that compared to the horrific experiences of medical staff and the pressures they’ve been under, we’ve had it easier than many. Still, I’ve seen colleagues regularly working 15- or 16-hour days or even longer, particularly at the peak of the pandemic. My colleagues set up the shielding scheme from scratch and at breakneck speed to make sure the most vulnerable in society were protected. Mortgage holidays, the ban on tenant evictions, facilitating the Everyone In campaign for homeless people – we’ve done all this and so much more while carrying on with the bulk of business as usual, establishing new schemes including First Homes and progressing building safety policy to try to address the horror revealed by the Grenfell tragedy.
Yet we’re continually attacked with implications that we’re idle, overpaid and unnecessary. Ministers habitually use us as a target to deflect criticism from themselves. Rightwing newspapers, desperate to shift copies of their free commuter papers, demand we go back to offices. All this when many of us are absolutely burnt out and exhausted with keeping government running during a pandemic. And all with no one advocating on our behalf.
We don’t want special treatment, just a little respect. Please.
Name and address supplied
• Anybody reading the papers in recent days would have a pretty clear sense that government ministers are fed up with people, in particular civil servants, working from home. From warnings of pay cuts to talk about the impact on promotion, the message appears to be simple: get back to your desks.
The benefits of office life and face-to-face working are clear, and following the phenomenal success of our vaccination programme there’s an understandable eagerness in some quarters for a return to life as we knew it.
But the changes in working habits over the last 18 months are about much more than not wanting to pay to sit on an overcrowded train, or trying to avoid scrutiny, as appears to be the implication from some. Simply returning to how things were before would be to overlook that digital adoption and working practices in the UK have advanced by a decade in the past two years.
The government needs to be bold. Hybrid working benefits civil servants and helps the government deliver its wider objectives: from shaping the future of cities and towns to avoiding “brain drain” and dormant commuter towns to stimulating regional growth and creating equal opportunity. And as the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, recently highlighted, the benefits of flexible work can empower those with caring responsibilities, and have a wider positive impact on equality.
People will continue to work together to overcome any obstacles that lie ahead, and technology will continue to play a pivotal role in defining what’s next. As we look to the economic recovery, the government has the opportunity to work with employees, businesses, and city leaders to engage in a conversation that has the potential to define what our world of work looks like in 10 or 20 years’ time.
And the best place to start? Leading by example in the public sector itself.
Phil Perry
Head of UK, Zoom Video Communications
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