MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Hoping someone can offer some experience.
A colleague has an offer to transfer on promotion to HMRC compliance. Offer refers to a working rota of 5 days in 7, to include evenings and weekends.
He's dithering, as he has a young family and his wife works evenings, so it might make things tricky at home for childcare. Just wondering if anyone has any experience of the actual working patterns, how easy it is to swap shifts etc, as rumour has it the contracts are more about future proofing terms rather than current hours. He needs the job and the pay rise, but could be no better off in the short/medium term if they can't juggle the childcare.
Also some self interest, as I'm on a reserve list for a similar role, but frankly would relish an evening not running round after the kids!
Not HMRC, but your friend is right to query and not jump for the money. The contractural changes probably are written across wider range of roles than will end up being enforced, but most likely to impact operational roles - compliance usually sits within that remit, but not so much F2F so he might get lucky.
Regarding flexibilities, at a practical level it’s usually a mix of juggling between staff members within a forward-planned rota that everyone will know. And even if the changes haven’t been implemented yet, time flies!
Your next substantive is your substantive though, and they can’t take that away from you. But shouldn’t of course be at any price, but it’s something to weight quite heavily.
I’d suggest he has a chat with the potential LM just to sound out, and find out from HR exactly what the frameworks (amount of weekends, actual latest hours etc) are that his new team will be operating in.
One last thing to remember as well if it’s a fixed hours contract rather than flexible, you may get stuck travelling with everyone else at rush hour - might not be an issue for you two though.
Anyhow, congratulations on getting onto a waiting list - fingers crossed.
The main impact on a Compliance worker at the current time is that it will likely mean any taskforce or hidden economy type evening work, eg unannounced visits, would be done at plain time rate as part of your expected working week rather than on overtime. Not that there's ever any money in the budget for overtime working, anyway.
Most Compliance business streams do not do this kind of work and HMRC has an awful record at the moment, unable to retain staff as their training leaves new folk poorly prepared for the difficulties that the work entails. The loss of thousands of experienced staff who just happen to be in the wrong locations for the new regional centre 'strategy' leaves many new trainees with no effective mentoring.
Interesting comments on the training and mentoring. Although we're not part of HMRC we are based at one of their current sites/future regional centres, and quite a few colleagues have jumped across in the last few years, and they've all been quite happy with training and mentoring, though it might be because ours is truly shocking
So is he agency, temp contract, or FT employed by Capita (or similar?)
He's permanent civil service, but our agency is still standard office hours/flexitime basis
Then it is a conundrum. My thoughts remain the same as above (I’d assumed existing CS) but I wouldn’t turn down too quickly - especially if chap wants to progress.
Highlandman has specific job-advice, assuming the same compliance role, but just drop me a pm if you want to chat in more general terms about options.
Thanks for the comments - colleague is taking it apparently, which was always the sensible option