Civil servants are claiming up to 50 days holiday a year by abusing a half-baked “flexitime” policy, whistleblowers told The Telegraph this week.   It has been exposed that staffers are able to game the system by declaring overtime and are racking up extra annual leave through a setup that lets them choose their start and finish times. Civil servants are also supposedly abusing the system by leaving their laptops open at the end of working from home to rack up extra hours, as well as counting commuting time as part of their workday.   A former member of staff at The Pensions Regulator, a public body sponsored by the Department for Workand Pensions, said: “A common practice was for staff to leave their laptops idle from around 4pm, only returning at 5:30pm to shut them down so they could log another 90 minutes into their flexi balance.”  Staffers must work 37.5 hours a week but are able to claim a maximum of two days off a month from logging overtime. The result is that on top of their 25 days of annual leave, civil servants can take almost 50 days off in a single year.   The Pensions Regulator source added: “Almost every member of staff below senior management level is entitled to two flexi days per month, and virtually everyone takes them. The justification, of course, is that these flexi days are supposedly earned, but the reality often looks very different.”  The source said: “People routinely claimed travel time between home and the office as working time - others counted time spent dropping off or collecting children from school, or even breaks taken for activities such as cycling, framed as part of mental wellbeing.”  Now, of course, the issue of working-from-home culture and flexiwork getting exploited is not unique to the Civil Service. Human beings are inherently lazy animals and jump at the opportunity to take shortcuts and make life easier.  Therefore, many workers from across the private sector are also guilty of similar behaviour – as when one is at home no one is checking if you are scrolling on your phone or taking a slightly longer lunch.   This is an open secret, so when the private sector chooses to let their workers operate from home, they do so at their own peril. And presumably there are systems in place to ensure it remains economically viable. For the Civil Service, however, it is an entirely different matter, as the dodgy overtime claims are directly billed to the taxpayer.   COVID-19 changed the world of work forever, and I am sure in many respects we are better off for it. For instance, it is much easier now to manage working and childcare. However, there is of course a limit to this – especially in the public sector, which have a responsibility of service. It's understandable that there was going to be a teething period while organisations learned the right balance of hybrid working. But is has been six years now since COVID first took hold and working-from-home became commonplace, and these recent discoveries are simply are disappointing, to say the least, and make the case for reform of Civil Service working practises.  

"The efficiency of the Civil Service has been under scrutiny for a long time now."

This news has arrived at a rather unfortunate time for the Civil Service who have been riding on a sympathy high from the Olly Robbins scandal. It’s true, that in that case the Civil Service got unfairly punished for the mistakes of the government. And as a result, in came a flurry of compassionate articles, tweets and op-eds praising the Civil Service as the unsung and downtrodden heroes of the nation. I know this because I wrote one too.  

"It is a shame that these work perks have been so abused. In principle, a generous employer and happy and healthy workforce is the most productive and ethical system we, as a society, can hope for."

However, no one should be surprised if the sympathy tide now turns in the other direction. The efficiency of the Civil Service has been under scrutiny for a long time now. In fact, the overtime perk was due to be reviewed by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2022 when he was business secretary, but was unable to do much before Liz Truss’s resignation.   It is a shame that these work perks have been so abused. In principle, a generous employer and happy and healthy workforce is the most productive and ethical system we, as a society, can hope for. Unfortunately, these recent findings uncover that this idea is perhaps too optimistic. There must be a compromise somewhere in betwee...