BBC mini-survey: IT professionals in public sector "motivated by public service ethos"

The piece only looked at the contrasting experiences of precisely two such IT professionals, each representing the two sectors. But it does raise some interesting issues about the usual assumptions that prevail about each set of average terms of conditions, i.e. differences in money, hours, benefits and social impact. 

 

“Public sector workers - like council workers, NHS staff, nurses, police officers and teachers - are generally assumed to have traded lower wages for job security, more holiday and generous pensions,” for example, while “those in the private sector are perceived to work longer hours and be at the mercy of market forces - but get fatter pay cheques and bonuses.” 

 

In a comparison between one 39 year old male working as a senior analyst programmer working for a private company (a retailer) in Milton Keynes and a 40 year old senior analyst programmer support officer for a London council, which the BBC says are very similar roles with equivalent length in post, some differences were trivial: the council worker works one hour more a week (36 instead of 35) and the pay as could be expected was better in the private role (£35,000 plus overtime versus “£30,000 to £35,000”), other differences were more striking. 

 

In terms of holiday the public sector worker is clearly better off – 31 versus 27 paid days – he is expected to do unofficial and unpaid overtime regularly while his private sector equivalent has to do a 24 hour shift every week in four, though if he does get called out he gets more pay (even more on a Sunday). 

 

But differences are much more marked when it comes to big picture financial benefits. The public sector IT worker has no annual bonus while the private sector guy can look forward to at least 4% of salary and possibly up to 6, and he also has no extra benefits like paid-for healthcare or discounts through work. He may not be doing all that dramatically better when it comes to the pension either: he is not eligible, unlike his colleague, for final salary status, though he does get a bigger employer contribution (19.5% of salary equivalent) possibly, as the latter gets double what he puts in off his boss. 

 

What then is their motivation? The private sector IT worker told the BBC it's the pay and he can't see where else he'd get better, but does say he thinks his work is boring and the public see his profession as made up of “geeks”. In contrast, there does seem to be some genuine public service ethos motivating the council IT man: when asked what he got out of the job he says, “Giving back to the community in some way” and that he believes “the work I do has a positive impact on the public, however indirectly”.