Discussion
The Government has announced some changes to the NHS pension designed to encourage retired staff to return to work.
The idea is that you can return part time and still claim your pension payments plus make contributions, so that you end up working fewer hours but for similar pay as you would get if you were full time. There would appear to be a couple of issues with this.
Some NHS staff retire early because they are so burned out that even though their pension pay will not be very high they just can't bear to carry on and accept a lower pension in order to have some quality of life. This group is very unlikely to return.
Some NHS staff (mainly medics probably) retire because they have been lucky and hard working enough to build up a big enough pension that they can retire early with a decent pension. This group is also unlikely to return especially having sampled the joys of not having the stress of frontline NHS work.
There is a third group that this affects, senior staff in their late 50's who are desperate to retire, but don't yet have sufficient funds to meet their goals. They may have dependents, children at Uni etc and so need to continue to work even though they really want to leave. This is a frequent topic of conversation amongst senior staff. This group can now retire and return part time with little or no financial penalty.
The Government has at a stroke made their retention crisis for senior staff worse! Well done Government. The phone lines to pension advisors are gong to be ringing off the hook
(What they should have done is to raise the lifetime allowance and annual limit to encourage senior staff to continue working without facing punitive taxation on their pension growth and increased general pay across the board to deal with the recruitment and retention crisis in younger staff. How could they not foresee this)
The idea is that you can return part time and still claim your pension payments plus make contributions, so that you end up working fewer hours but for similar pay as you would get if you were full time. There would appear to be a couple of issues with this.
Some NHS staff retire early because they are so burned out that even though their pension pay will not be very high they just can't bear to carry on and accept a lower pension in order to have some quality of life. This group is very unlikely to return.
Some NHS staff (mainly medics probably) retire because they have been lucky and hard working enough to build up a big enough pension that they can retire early with a decent pension. This group is also unlikely to return especially having sampled the joys of not having the stress of frontline NHS work.
There is a third group that this affects, senior staff in their late 50's who are desperate to retire, but don't yet have sufficient funds to meet their goals. They may have dependents, children at Uni etc and so need to continue to work even though they really want to leave. This is a frequent topic of conversation amongst senior staff. This group can now retire and return part time with little or no financial penalty.
The Government has at a stroke made their retention crisis for senior staff worse! Well done Government. The phone lines to pension advisors are gong to be ringing off the hook
(What they should have done is to raise the lifetime allowance and annual limit to encourage senior staff to continue working without facing punitive taxation on their pension growth and increased general pay across the board to deal with the recruitment and retention crisis in younger staff. How could they not foresee this)
Edited by anonymous-user on Monday 5th December 08:10
Or they could just train more staff. The places are there, just the government won’t pay for them.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-student...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-student...
Electro1980 said:
Or they could just train more staff. The places are there, just the government won’t pay for them.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-student...
But if you don't improve pay and conditions they will just leave the NHS at the end of their training...https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-student...
https://www.messly.com/blog/ultimate-guide-working...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/11/27/hi...
Tobermory said:
Electro1980 said:
Or they could just train more staff. The places are there, just the government won’t pay for them.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-student...
But if you don't improve pay and conditions they will just leave the NHS at the end of their training...https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-student...
https://www.messly.com/blog/ultimate-guide-working...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/11/27/hi...
Mrs Loto has just taken early retirement at 56.
She's going back as 'bank' staff via an agency at a rather better rate than she was getting paid as a salaried worker. She's very happy as she now just has to turn up do the job and then come home, without any of the politics or other nonesense she had to put up with previously. Most of that stress was caused by layers of 'management' interfering and not letting her simply get on with what she was trained to do.
There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
She's going back as 'bank' staff via an agency at a rather better rate than she was getting paid as a salaried worker. She's very happy as she now just has to turn up do the job and then come home, without any of the politics or other nonesense she had to put up with previously. Most of that stress was caused by layers of 'management' interfering and not letting her simply get on with what she was trained to do.
There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
Vanden Saab said:
At the moment if you retire before you are 60 and then go back to work for the NHS and earn more than you were earning before you retired in wages and pension the extra is taken off your pension payments. No such restriction if you work elsewhere.
Actually there is - for the rest of us not having the golden safety blanket of a Government pension if you retire & go back to work you're limited to paying £4000 into a pension each year (money purchase annual allowance).Mr Pointy said:
Vanden Saab said:
At the moment if you retire before you are 60 and then go back to work for the NHS and earn more than you were earning before you retired in wages and pension the extra is taken off your pension payments. No such restriction if you work elsewhere.
Actually there is - for the rest of us not having the golden safety blanket of a Government pension if you retire & go back to work you're limited to paying £4000 into a pension each year (money purchase annual allowance).Lotobear said:
Mrs Loto has just taken early retirement at 56.
There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
This - All I know is that the 4 or 5 peoples I know who work in it locally here (Nurses) say exactly the same thing. My daughter did 3 months work experience this year at our local hospital - after one week a 19yo had worked this out too. There are an awful lot of people getting paid and on the face of it not getting the pressure the fornt line staff have.There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
Vanden Saab said:
Mr Pointy said:
Vanden Saab said:
At the moment if you retire before you are 60 and then go back to work for the NHS and earn more than you were earning before you retired in wages and pension the extra is taken off your pension payments. No such restriction if you work elsewhere.
Actually there is - for the rest of us not having the golden safety blanket of a Government pension if you retire & go back to work you're limited to paying £4000 into a pension each year (money purchase annual allowance).The result is you work fewer hours, have little or no admin responsibility and get the same pay. The NHS ends up with even more vacancies as you are only working 3 days a week or whatever and so they have to recruit more staff to cover the gaps.
The key is not recruitment alone, it's retention. Losing experienced staff is the most expensive drag on the NHS and they just don't seem able or willing to address this. It's baffling.
Fatboy said:
Anecdotal evidence, but in the part of the NHS my wife works in (and other parts I've been a supplier in to) a lot of the issues with working conditions are caused by not having enough staff, so training a lot more staff would go a long way to mitigating the retention issues for several areas...
Lack of staff is a huge problem and it's a vicious circle (staff shortage causes more people to quit, making the situation even worse, causing even more people to quit.)But you cannot address the problem quickly enough by training more people. Yes, you need to increase the number of people going into training as a key part of the long term solution, but you can't wait for that to address the current problem. You have to alleviate the pressure on staff in the short-term or the system will have collapsed by the time the boosted number of newly qualified staff eventually arrive.
For example, if we start trying to encourage current A-level students to become GPs it will take 11 or 12 YEARS for them to be fully qualified, and even then you've only produced a relatively inexperienced doctor.
Ziplobb said:
Lotobear said:
Mrs Loto has just taken early retirement at 56.
There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
This - All I know is that the 4 or 5 peoples I know who work in it locally here (Nurses) say exactly the same thing. My daughter did 3 months work experience this year at our local hospital - after one week a 19yo had worked this out too. There are an awful lot of people getting paid and on the face of it not getting the pressure the fornt line staff have.There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
It's no surprise that nurses who are stretched super-thin look at other bits of the organisation where recruitment isn't such a problem and get pissed off. But it would be daft to make everyone in the organisation face the pressure of the most stretched frontline staff just because. What would that achieve?
If you wind the clock back to the time when senior doctors ran hospitals and matrons ran wards, you don't find some utopia. You find colossal inefficiency and zero accountability which people accepted when society was much more deferential to middle class professionals than it is now. Nowadays no one would stand for it.
Government just want to be seen as doing something to help the NHS a service, how many people will read the headline and say Government to the rescue, lots is the answer. This gives an impression that Government do care but in reality it is part of a managed decline in service levels.
Ziplobb said:
Lotobear said:
Mrs Loto has just taken early retirement at 56.
There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
This - All I know is that the 4 or 5 peoples I know who work in it locally here (Nurses) say exactly the same thing. My daughter did 3 months work experience this year at our local hospital - after one week a 19yo had worked this out too. There are an awful lot of people getting paid and on the face of it not getting the pressure the fornt line staff have.There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
Most unpleasant. And it rather stuck in my mind. How many middle managers like her are out there...?
dxg said:
I once had the unfortunate experience of spending some time with a "procurement manager" for the NHS. She was all about how great the job was for her - the pension, flexitime, discounts on home purchases left right and centre, cheap new cars, and so on. She never mentioned health once.
Most unpleasant. And it rather stuck in my mind. How many middle managers like her are out there...?
Loads in loads of different organisations. If she'd been working for a car manufacturer and had given you the same answers, would you have found her answers equally unpleasant, and if not, why not? The idea that everyone has to be passionate about their role is bunk. I don't expect someone in HR of a company that makes hydraulic oil to be passionate about hydraulics. They don't need to be passionate about it to be competent at their job. Same goes for people working in the NHS. The NHS employs 1.2M people from a total working population of about 33M people. The law of large numbers is utterly inescapable. Your average NHS employee is an average UK worker. If you structure your organisation on the assumption that you're going to be able to stack it with super-motivated, "passionate", vocationally-inspired staff, you're setting yourself up to fail spectacularly. You have to structure your organisation to be successful while being staffed by average people, because on average that's who you're going to be able to hire. You then set out to motivate them by making them feel valued and rewarded ... and it sounds like that procurement manager has swallowed that kool aid, listing stuff that is largely a way of motivating people who are being paid less than they could demand elsewhere.Most unpleasant. And it rather stuck in my mind. How many middle managers like her are out there...?
Edited by ATG on Monday 5th December 11:31
Vanden Saab said:
You are missing the point. If you are a nurse earning £30,000 a year and retire if you go back to work for the NHS and your new combined wage + pension is £32,000 they take the extra £2,000 off your pension.
This isnt the case in everyone - isnt it just those retiring sick?Ziplobb said:
Lotobear said:
Mrs Loto has just taken early retirement at 56.
There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
This - All I know is that the 4 or 5 peoples I know who work in it locally here (Nurses) say exactly the same thing. My daughter did 3 months work experience this year at our local hospital - after one week a 19yo had worked this out too. There are an awful lot of people getting paid and on the face of it not getting the pressure the fornt line staff have.There are layers upon layers of management and non jobs in the NHS, mostly promoted on ridicluous salaries way above their ability that are sucking the life out of the institution - I used to get it straight from the horses mouth from Mrs Loto over dinner. Many of them spend most of the time going on 'courses' rather than doing any real work.
dxg said:
I once had the unfortunate experience of spending some time with a "procurement manager" for the NHS. She was all about how great the job was for her - the pension, flexitime, discounts on home purchases left right and centre, cheap new cars, and so on. She never mentioned health once.
Most unpleasant. And it rather stuck in my mind. How many middle managers like her are out there...?
As somebody who spent 15 years in the Public Sector i can honestly say that the pay and the benefits are far, far better in the private sector. Most unpleasant. And it rather stuck in my mind. How many middle managers like her are out there...?
Actually, from the list you mention, the only one that is better in the Public Sector is pensions (but that's offset by poor salaries).
Countdown said:
As somebody who spent 15 years in the Public Sector i can honestly say that the pay and the benefits are far, far better in the private sector.
Actually, from the list you mention, the only one that is better in the Public Sector is pensions (but that's offset by poor salaries).
Agreed. 20 years public sector and now private. The pay is far better. Actually, from the list you mention, the only one that is better in the Public Sector is pensions (but that's offset by poor salaries).
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