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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2018 17:35:12 GMT
Definitely poor management.
Not sure what the system is now but there used to be three different payrolls, one for regular staff, bank staff and overtime staff. It was not allowed that money from the agency bankroll be allowed to be transferred to bank/overtime so if there was insufficient regular staff and bank/overtime, we had to hire agency staff to cover the requirement. Moving that money into either of the other two rolls would have been cheaper but when it was suggested I was told I was not payed to think. Root and branch fit for purpose review, not fit for purpose, fired, simples.
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Post by Martin on Feb 1, 2018 17:52:17 GMT
Definitely poor management. Not sure what the system is now but there used to be three different payrolls, one for regular staff, bank staff and overtime staff. It was not allowed that money from the agency bankroll be allowed to be transferred to bank/overtime so if there was insufficient regular staff and bank/overtime, we had to hire agency staff to cover the requirement. Moving that money into either of the other two rolls would have been cheaper but when it was suggested I was told I was not payed to think. Root and branch fit for purpose review, not fit for purpose, fired, simples. That doesn’t make any sense. (The process, not your explanation). There isn’t a right answer though, as it depends on a number of factors eg the task. If you want the floor sweeping it will be cheaper to bring in Agency than use your core staff assuming they are fully utilised elsewhere, with the gap getting bigger if you have to use overtime. But if it’s a skilled task that’s only required for a short period of time, the answer is different and you have to take likely productivity into account as well rather than just look at hourly rates. I’ve got about 550 core staff and anywhere between 100-700 agency staff in the warehouse, which is a split we need to cover fluctuations in volume, but brings its own challenges. In peak, we were bringing in (inducting and training) 40-50 new agency staff a day, 5 days a week. Not ideal.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2018 19:11:37 GMT
I understand what you are saying and sadly lots of the management I came into contact with made no sense either. A new innitiative for nurse training for example, project 2000. Teach those nurses for 4 terms and not realise they need to know some anatomy and physiology. Not a joke or a tale I heard, I was there. They had to put back first exams until after they taught some a&p. There are so many examples it is unreal and I mentioned the annual budget crap but again I have seen this. An example of another kind. When a department is not safe for the patients they are supposed to report up the chain that they are no longer able to maintain patient safety. Ask them as I did and you would be told the answer from that chain boss would be to fire them so they are not going to commit career suicide.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2018 20:13:00 GMT
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Post by Tim on Feb 2, 2018 9:41:48 GMT
Isn't that just a big firm sort of mentality, nobody is really that interested as long as they get paid?
No, it’s poor management. I have 2 permanent ‘FM’ guys in my largest site, who do all the regular tasks (from changing light bulbs to unblocking toilets) plus they have a schedule of preventative maintenance to make sure we get the most from them. That’s supplemented by contractors for larger jobs, but our guys will support that work if possible and it’s all managed by our H&S / Facilities manager who know exactly how long jobs should take.
Sorry, yes it's bad management. But it appears to be the sort repeated in large organisations where the lower/middle managers don't have any particular stake in the business and as long as things get done appear to have no incentive to tighten things up.
Obviously there will be some who make the effort but plenty who don't.
I'm sure if we took a good look at Carillion and Capita (since they're in the ye at the moment) it would be easy to find the same problem.
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Post by Martin on Feb 2, 2018 9:58:19 GMT
I don’t doubt it at all. Back in September I took responsibility for a site and when I started to dig, the lack of control over labour and cost was mind boggling. It made reasonable money, but nowhere near as much as it will this year.
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Post by Alex on Feb 2, 2018 22:18:36 GMT
I don't get involved in political debate on facebook - too messy. But I think I might have to make an exception for this post I saw this morning. It is this sort of utter misunderstanding / pig headed ignorance that is why we can't have a proper debate. Firstly, if a maintenance man (well two as we can't have one bloke up a ladder due to H&S can we?) can get from his base, to the stores, pick up said light bulb, ladder (or scaffold if working at height), get them to light bulb position, erect, change, take down and get back to his base in 5 minutes, then he ought to be at the Olympics beating Usain Bolt and not working in an NHS hospital. Then there is the fact that to the hourly rate of pay you have to add employers NI, pension, health, cover for sick and holidays, and of course nobody works 24/7 so you need probably three teams of people to cover the required hours. Then they'll need the tools, a base, stores building, some admin, management and HR time (like being paid for example, or tracking their sick, holiday etc). Based on all that, £70 for the light bulb is probably quite good value. The hand dispensers argument has all the above elements and their maths assumes that all of them have to be changed at the same time. Hardly likely? And if you use the argument that people could change their own light bulbs or hand dispensers, my life experience tells me that is a shit argument. Running offices as part of my remit for most of my career, in companies employing quite clever people, if I counted and got paid per time based on the the number of times I had to change the hand towel in the kitchen, or fill up the water dispenser in the coffee machine or even change a fuse in a desk power socket as nobody else could be bothered, I'd have retired years ago. And finally if a hospital manager really made that argument, then that tells me all I need to know about how shit most NHS management clearly is. img photos
I don't think £70 is good value for money. You're right about having 3 teams, etc but they won't be there just to change bulbs, it'll be part of their ongoing maintenance so the cost of changing the bulb should be, say, £20-30 based on them knowing that they have to change a bulb and turning up ready to do the work (by turning up I mean going to the place in the building they need to be, they'll already be on site) and perhaps allowing 15-20 minutes to do it including 'travel' time.
If you think about it they should only be charging a %age of an hour's time, possibly for 2 people, one of whom should be a trainee/apprentice.
If it's still £70 then the NHS are being charged Mercedes levels of hourly rate for the work!!
I think the trouble is that it’s not as simple as just assuming that outsourcing is bad because a light bulb costs just a few pounds and the engineer the contractor sends is only getting a tenner an hour so surely £70 means someone is being ripped off. But if the hospital wants to bring it in house, they won’t have just the cost of the bulb or the hourly wage to bear, there’s the other employment costs (NI, pension and associated benefits, costs of recruiting engineers in the first place etc). That’s before the hospital has to find room to base a facilities department including storing all the spare bulbs. Assuming all the above, the contractors don’t get as much of that £70 fee as it seems from the headline figures. They will make some profit, but they are a business with shareholders who rely on their dividends. And as profitable businesses are supposed to be the engine room of our economy, why are we moaning?
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Post by grampa on Feb 5, 2018 10:43:13 GMT
To anyone working in a small business, it would seem to make perfect sense for the person working in their area to be responsible for changing their own light bulbs.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 5, 2018 11:51:09 GMT
To anyone working in a small business, it would seem to make perfect sense for the person working in their area to be responsible for changing their own light bulbs. Indeed but to anyone in a huge organisation it would seem utter folly to train 100,000 members of staff, provide adequate safety equipment to cover adjacent areas, cease the output of an individual for a period of time (if that light bulb was in a consultant's office the consultant changing it suddenly takes the cost-value equation to a new arena) and inform your insurer that any number of staff are now working at height at any time in order to change lightbulbs.
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Post by grampa on Feb 5, 2018 12:28:51 GMT
Would it not make sense for porters to be 'trained' to change light bulbs where there are height access problems? In a consultant's office, where presumably height is no more of an issue than at at his home (where he/she presumably changes their own bulbs) would it not be quicker to change it yourself than to call someone and tell them it needs changing?
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 5, 2018 13:11:22 GMT
Would it not make sense for porters to be 'trained' to change light bulbs where there are height access problems? In a consultant's office, where presumably height is no more of an issue than at at his home (where he/she presumably changes their own bulbs) would it not be quicker to change it yourself than to call someone and tell them it needs changing? No. Changing a lightbulb at home where you or a family member are most likely responsible for being able to do so safely or take risks you or that family member finds acceptable is so far removed from doing so in the workplace that I don't know where to start. I agree on the surface of things these issues look ridiculous but when you start to delve into insurance policies, H&S policies that the insurance policy insists on being in place, the cost of claims for avoidable injuries, the cost of avoidable absenteeism then changing a lightbulb in the workplace starts to look like swapping your mains supply incoming cable on the live grid as a weekend DIY job.
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Post by Martin on Feb 5, 2018 13:19:21 GMT
That’s true.
We’re going through the process of replacing all the office / canteen / toilet / locker room lighting with LED panels. It wasn’t much more than the cost of fixing the broken units and replacing all the duff tubes and it will save a fair bit in the longer term. It’s a brighter, nicer light as well, plus they look better and won’t be a dust trap as they are flush with the ceiling tiles.
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Post by PetrolEd on Feb 5, 2018 15:17:31 GMT
Don't fancy financing it do you Martin? Could do with funding some more LED lighting as I've committed to doing a load this year and I have yet to work out how to get there.
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Post by Martin on Feb 5, 2018 15:40:58 GMT
I’m ‘cash rich’ at the moment Ed thanks to a great couple of months and a finance manager who is in cold sweats about accruals, but thanks for the offer.
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Post by grampa on Feb 5, 2018 16:39:37 GMT
Would it not make sense for porters to be 'trained' to change light bulbs where there are height access problems? In a consultant's office, where presumably height is no more of an issue than at at his home (where he/she presumably changes their own bulbs) would it not be quicker to change it yourself than to call someone and tell them it needs changing? No. Changing a lightbulb at home where you or a family member are most likely responsible for being able to do so safely or take risks you or that family member finds acceptable is so far removed from doing so in the workplace that I don't know where to start. I agree on the surface of things these issues look ridiculous but when you start to delve into insurance policies, H&S policies that the insurance policy insists on being in place, the cost of claims for avoidable injuries, the cost of avoidable absenteeism then changing a lightbulb in the workplace starts to look like swapping your mains supply incoming cable on the live grid as a weekend DIY job. Before health and safety people started looking for more and more rules to ensure they would always be needed, I wonder how many people actually fell off a small step ladder changing a bulb - I know it never became remotely close to happening at the place where I worked (I shudder to think how many more regs have been implemented in the 16 years since I was last in a work place), nor has it ever come close to happening at the holiday homes myself and my siblings own (I can understand the need for proper access equipment in a high ceiling, but rather than paying rates that would make Mercedes wince, there must be a better alternative) - the specifics are getting away from the point though which is really that large organisations are allowing themselves to get mired in costs that a small business would never dream of, let alone be able to afford. I've also witnessed many a time where businesses supplying large organisations see a cash cow - the most extreme example where a regular supplier was asked for a information display solution and they came up with a proposal of around £30,000. Fortunately someone within the organisation, who happened to know me, decided they might be extracting some urine and asked me if there was a way of doing it a bit more cheaply - I came up with a proposal that came to around £1800 for perhaps 90% of the proposal (without knowing the alternative was £30,000 at the time) and likely no difference for anyone who was viewing the information. Even at the most extreme I found it impossible to conceive how any more than £10,000 could be spent on the same project. It does make you wonder how often this kind of thing is happening.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2018 17:24:18 GMT
I once worked at a place where we weren't allowed to fix lights off a step ladder because the H&S berk said we had to maintain 3 points of contact with the ladder at all times. Because you can't remove a diffuser (or a 6ft fluorescent tube) with one hand he said we needed to build a scaffold platform under every light we mended. Consequently, we just did all the lighting on night shifts when he wasn't about to bollock us. And when it was dark! Not once did he ever ask how we could relamp a production area with 60-80 tubes in it over a couple of night shifts. Best bit was whenever one of the idiots in the office had a flickering tube above their desk they had to put up with all day because we were always far too busy to drop everything and go and fix it there and then.
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Post by Alex on Feb 5, 2018 20:29:42 GMT
First my car, now you lot are slating my job. Perhaps I should start taking it personally!
Not all us health and safety consultants are trying to justify their existence. There’s an element of truth that some health and safety practitioners have made a bad name for themselves and I’ve known of some who’ve gone into a new job and pissed everyone off within 5 minutes. But there is also a lot of myths that go round about ‘elf n safety stopping us doing anything remotely risky.
Working at height is not something that companies must not let their employees embark upon but the task needs to be risk assessed and adequate training given, even if it’s just a ladder poster put up in the stationery cupboard. It may seem stupid to train people to use step ladders that they’re perfectly capable of using at home but if someone falls off a lack of training and inadequate risk assessments will leave their employer wide open to claims and subsequently increased insurance premiums. If a company wants to avoid this they’ll take the sensible approach of stopping staff using ladders and having an M&E company take on the risk. Maintaining three points of contact is the official advice as stated in INDG455 and not the words of some H&S Berk. Just because you didn’t fall off doesn’t mean you were working safely.
Latest figures from the HSE show 28% of RIDDOR reportable injuries being falls from height. Of all these, 40 involved fatal injuries. Not all were from stepladders but I can very well imagine a lot were.
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Post by ChrisM on Feb 6, 2018 8:21:05 GMT
Where I work now... when I started my job in our old rundown premises there were 3 of us working in one room (it was an old converted place and we were in what used to be a bedroom with the 3 desks in the centre, pushed together.... there were 2 fluorescent fitting each with 2 tubes in them. After a couple of months one of the tubes started flickering so much (and the other in its fitting was already out....) we had a box of spare tubes and starters so I took the diffusers off both fittings and changed all the tubes and starters, cleaned and replaced the diffusers. The difference was amazing, we could now actually see what we were doing. No H&S person in sight (there were only about 20 employees in total at that time), safety of working assured by standing on the 3 desktops.
Job done. Why get a maintenance person when you can do it yourself in safety?
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Post by grampa on Feb 6, 2018 9:27:01 GMT
First my car, now you lot are slating my job. Perhaps I should start taking it personally! /quote] Opps! many apoolgies! - you're clearly someone who takes a sensible approach though - plus I was really referring to the rule makers not the people tasked with making them happen, but you obviously witness those who take a heavy handed approach to the job. I wasn't really trying to have a dig at health and safety in particular though, just using it as an example of how large organisations get mired in huge costs from other large organisations that the average small business manages to completely avoid. To get back to the example being used - if a light bulb goes down in a small cafe with say three or four employees, they're simply not going to get an M&E company in and lose half a day to a day's profits when someone can stand on a table and have the job done in less than two minutes.
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Post by Alex on Feb 6, 2018 9:48:53 GMT
First my car, now you lot are slating my job. Perhaps I should start taking it personally! /quote] Opps! many apoolgies! - you're clearly someone who takes a sensible approach though - plus I was really referring to the rule makers not the people tasked with making them happen, but you obviously witness those who take a heavy handed approach to the job. I wasn't really trying to have a dig at health and safety in particular though, just using it as an example of how large organisations get mired in huge costs from other large organisations that the average small business manages to completely avoid. To get back to the example being used - if a light bulb goes down in a small cafe with say three or four employees, they're simply not going to get an M&E company in and lose half a day to a day's profits when someone can stand on a table and have the job done in less than two minutes. They might well not, but they’re also the sort of company who can’t afford the costs that come with an employee suing them because they fell off the table changing a lightbulb. I’m not suggesting they must get and M&E contractor in because that is far too much for the business to bear. But a stepladder is not expensive and the HSE provide plenty of free information for them to ensure their staff are competent and not putting themselves or anyone else at risk by doing it standing on a chair and without turning the light unit off first (don’t assume this is just common sense). As I said, there is no law banning staff from changing their own lightbulbs but there are regulations requiring them to do it safely and it’s that I advocate. That’s why I can understand why a business might outsource the risk and why you can’t just take the retail price of a lightbulb as the basis for what changing one should cost. Hospitals being charged £60 for a lightbulb to be changed makes for a great headline but it’s far from the whole story.
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Post by Alex on Feb 6, 2018 9:49:55 GMT
They might well not, but they’re also the sort of company who can’t afford the costs that come with an employee suing them because they fell off the table changing a lightbulb. I’m not suggesting they must get and M&E contractor in because that is far too much for the business to bear. But a stepladder is not expensive and the HSE provide plenty of free information for them to ensure their staff are competent and not putting themselves or anyone else at risk by doing it standing on a chair and without turning the light unit off first (don’t assume this is just common sense). As I said, there is no law banning staff from changing their own lightbulbs but there are regulations requiring them to do it safely and it’s that I advocate. That’s why I can understand why a business might outsource the risk and why you can’t just take the retail price of a lightbulb as the basis for what changing one should cost. Hospitals being charged £60 for a lightbulb to be changed makes for a great headline but it’s far from the whole story.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 6, 2018 10:32:31 GMT
As I pointed out: whilst it seems sensible to allow NHS staff (this is where we started remember) to change lightbulbs the cost and time taken to train them all (there are a lot of staff in the NHS) and maintain that training (training shouldn't happen just once) and the risk of an incident makes it far more sensible to pay an M&E contractor to come and change them bearing in mind that there will be planned electrical fitting changes covering large areas and any routine re-fits or decorations will also allow for new fittings or bulb changes.
Basically you can't expect to apply the rules that you apply at home or in a small operation (which, as Alex says, should still ensure staff are adequately trained and equipped to change light bulbs) to vast organisations no matter how stupid it seems to pay £100 to change some light bulbs. If everyone mucked in to help out in the NHS you're perilously close to the guy that keeps the toilet rolls filled in the cubicles helping out with minor operations under local anaesthetic: I'm sure we all have a view on the prospect of that.
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Post by grampa on Feb 6, 2018 10:35:05 GMT
The lightbulb thing has turned out to be a bad example although no doubt a local contractor could no doubt be engaged at a fraction of the cost but wouldn't want to go through the off-putting tender process to be an approved contractor (we did have a proper step ladder in the place I worked BTW) - perhaps the £1,800 v £30,000 exhibition thing I mentioned above is a better example of 'large organisationitis'
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 6, 2018 12:01:35 GMT
The lightbulb thing has turned out to be a bad example although no doubt a local contractor could no doubt be engaged at a fraction of the cost but wouldn't want to go through the off-putting tender process to be an approved contractor (we did have a proper step ladder in the place I worked BTW) - perhaps the £1,800 v £30,000 exhibition thing I mentioned above is a better example of 'large organisationitis' Cash-cowing in supplying that kind of service is a different matter altogether and I agree that there are elements of inflated pricing to take account of the relativity of cost to the client organisation: £30k to an organisation that keeps a well stocked cellar for client and board meetings probably sits in the spending power of a junior manager and the steps they need to take to say they are happy with the factors leading to the price are simple enough to make it easier to accept the cost from an incumbent than spend time and effort looking for alternatives (supposing that they don't have a friend that can offer the services), adding the alternative to supply chain (lots of organisations have banned or severely restricted P-Cards) and then putting up with calls from the new small supplier for 12 weeks when Finance haven't passed their invoice through SAP or Oracle for approval or not added it to a BACS run. Big organisations really are not designed to have light touch project activity and often have to set up special vehicles (small Ltd companies etc.) to do fast moving R&D, or indeed fast moving anything. A friend of mine is working with the Chinese on a huge engineering programme they're leading on - every penny has to be signed off by some head honcho Chinaman with no delegation after a committee has signed off the expenditure as having followed due process. I had a similar experience trying to add very small but very effective Media and research organisations for local work around a big civil job - nightmare to add them to supply chain; near death trying to pay them in good time.
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Post by grampa on Feb 6, 2018 13:33:57 GMT
If an organisation has their own money generated entirely from the private sector*, then entirely up to them what they do of course, but the case in point was using public money (not a pubic sector organization though) - it does make you wonder (when you sit on the outside) how much money could be saved if there was just a bit more of a 'for fuck's sake, why are we spending this?' attitude - I know a few people who have moved from being in a small business environment to a large organisation who have been quite surprised at how slowly and how expensively things are done - why for instance was your small and effective organisation a nightmare to add to your supply chain and difficult to pay on time? (which I assume is rather off putting to people in a similar position to you, who maybe less determined to make such a sensible choice, making such use of a cost effective supplier)
*Of course nobody does!
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