I now know two senior NHS employees who have supposedly been made redundant, they both instantly got virtually the same jobs in the adjacent PCT a few miles down the road.
How does this work, they should have been offered a transfer, it's still the same tax money?
More than a little miffed
Miffed that the unemployment total hasn't gone up by two? Why would that be?
You can't be transferred from an NHS Trust to a PCT, and as functions move from one arm of the NHS to another, so do people. Job security in PCTs is pretty low, as it happens, so they might be scuffling for another job before long.
No! Miffed that they got a significant amount of tax payers money for effectively moving offices, both in exces of 50kOriginally Posted by tribe125
Welcome to the nhs 'old boys club' funny handshake department.
Funny how it doesnt work if your clinical. Blue collar lowlife, wrong tie....
The rules for being made redundant are that you cannot be employed by te same organisation for a year, another NHS organisation for a month. The payoff is dictated by the length of service. The maximum if you have over 25 years service is 12 months salary.
When I made some people redundant my lawyers told me that the TUPE rules stated three months, and for both of the people I was talking about 50k was less than six months salary
It's just getting a bit silly now, we're having redundancies in the MoD just now, seeing folk leave on the Friday, then turning up on Monday as a consultant, doing the same job for twice the pay (and their company contract is even more!).
I've had a couple of offers recently, pays more and redundancy would be around 18 months pay, i just see it as a bit of a joke, yes it saves money out of the budget due to less staff, but it's just putting the costs off book at twice the price.
This seems to be the classic problem with government-mandated cuts to civil service department: The civils servants who are tasked with actually implementing the cuts do it in ways that inevitably cost more money. This appears to be because these individuals are culturally and mentally incapable of imagining certain functions simply not being done -- they cannot comprehend the status quo genuinely changing to match the new governmental strategy and intent. It is, of course, these very people who should be made redundant first. ;-)
No, the poor taxpayer. Both the civil servants in this context (who either incompetently or intentionally mis-implement strategy) and the politicans (who set strategy but permit it to be mis-implemented by those whose job it is to implement it correctly) share the blame for the continued waste, ineffeciency and over-expenditure of money taken from taxpayers.
Cuts in most areas of the state sector are to my mind needed desperately but one thing (amongst others I am sure) that limits their effectiveness in reducing expenditure is the type of poor business decision making (i.e. mis-implementation, whether due to incompetence or malice one cannot tell) that Argee1977 referred to in viewtopic.php?f=2&t=201357#p2061007.
Sadly, if I remember correctly, Argee1977 works in one of the very few areas of the state sector that I think could actually do with more funding, not less!
You sure? I'm pretty certain it's 24 months.The maximum if you have over 25 years service is 12 months salary.
Foggy
Why do you asume this is a state-sector problem?No, the poor taxpayer. Both the civil servants in this context (who either incompetently or intentionally mis-implement strategy) and the politicans (who set strategy but permit it to be mis-implemented by those whose job it is to implement it correctly) share the blame for the continued waste, ineffeciency and over-expenditure of money taken from taxpayers.
I used to work for a very well known private sector company with about 3000 people in head-office roles. Every two years we had a major headcount cull- 20% usually. Half of these would then be hired back as consultants on massive day-rates. Then after 6 months we would have to hit a target and get rid of the consultants and open up recruitment again. Two year cycle, like clockwork, usually coinciding with McKinsey or Accenture arriving on the top floor.
All thats happened to the NHS is the adoption of the same private sector big-cap illogic.
Additional irony: the company didnt pay a penny of UK tax in over 15 years.
^^^
Good post. My experience is similar. This sort of behaviour is absolutely nothing to do with sector - it's mainly just big organisation syndrome*
Anyone here think Microsoft or Siemens or <insert anything with more than c. 3,000 employees> has brilliantly efficient procurement, HR or Finance Departments? They are often as wasteful as Local Authorities or anything based in Whitehall. The public sector doesn't have a monopoly on unsuitable beauracracy.
In fact the Public Sector is mainly guilty of being told it needs to learn from the Private Sector. I've lost count of the number of times that KPMG has been in to my Local Authority over the last 10 years to tell them the bleedin' obvious for a £2m bill. Every time the advice apes whatever the current trend in the private sector is...
* A piece of crap I just made up
Actually we are both right since schemes are agreed locally so exact terms do vary.
The NHS cuts are not specifically redundancies but what they call mutually agreed resignation schemes.
I just asked the question and you are correct, even though she was made redundant this is what it ended up being called, even after the scoring proccess, the consultation period and the notice period, as someone said earlier on here "it's a club" but it's our bloody money they are getting.
That's the NHS for you, being on the inside of it myself. I took redundancy, mainly because I HATED working in such an awful place, with bad management, and 'friends' giving 'friends' jobs/upgrades at will... I worked for 12 years being constantly fobbed off etc.
So glad I'm out of it, managed to grasp onto some remaining sanity and self worth. It's full of overpaid idiots who know who/what arse to kiss. It's doomed, it's in a bad state, because the people who are staying are the problem, the deadwood that needs to be culled.
I heard of a manager in the communications dept of an NHS trust receiving
A 200k severance package and then resuming pretty much similar duties as a consultant
A week or two later
The 'twice the money for working as a consultant' bit never really stacks up, for a bunch of reasons:
The 'consultant' cannot work as such if there is only one employer - that counts as employed by HMRC, so that won't work ( although I gather that the trusts, as well as the consultants are largely unaware of the issues).
Also, the costs of employing an employee are far higher than just the salary; Tax and NI don't apply to the fee paid to a consultant, nor are there holiday costs, pension costs, car costs, equipment costs, monies put aside for the redundancy fee. If those are being paid, see HMRC for a slap on the wrists. Total is about 50-60% of the obvious salary package
The bit that hurts for me is the size of the redundancy package - it is so far above the statutory minimum it is laughable, but it is paid for from the public purse.
All this means that there is a cost of change to maintain a particular skill set in the organisation, but there is more flexibility for the organisation as the headcount is external.
To qualify my views, I run a consultancy business, employ a bunch of people and am regularly troubled by employment and tax legislation so complex that we have to employ a bunch of advisors to keep us legal.
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