Payroll: The art of keeping disgruntled employees at work

We, as adults, love to complain about how complicated things are, and why something just can’t be done. We even love to point out how unsatisfied we are with our current situation. The crazy thing is, we come back and do this unsatisfying thing called work over and over again. Why? Payroll. For his wages, a man (or woman) would be willing to tolerate much more rubbish in their lives than they would otherwise.

Now, payroll is not a complicated matter is it? We figure the number of hours worked, less breaks, multiply that by your hourly wage, remove appropriate taxes and allotments. What you are left with is that wonderful thing called a paycheck. Except when it goes wrong.

Occaissionaly, mistakes happen. Fair enough, we’re only human. What if the same mistake is repeated…well, I’m a bit bothered, but still, it’s only twice. How about, it is now April and the same mistakes have been repeated since November for some employees? This is incredibly inadequate and unacceptable at any level. What kind of indifference or incompetence must be involved that would allow the same mistakes to occurr for 5 months?

I asked the very same questions. What I got in return was some strange answers.

At first, we expected errors. They moved our pay accounts to a new pay office which had never dealt with us before. So we waited for these to be fixed…they weren’t. Then, while all of this madness was going on, The NHS introduced new pay and accounting software that would be mandatory to use at all NHS facilities. Wonderfull! New Software for payroll, surely this will fix it!

No. Instead payroll trust-wide has gone all dodgey. Nurses waited almost a month extra to recieve pay due to them, weekly paid employees found their hours to be miscalculated, hourly rates wrong, shifts left off, overtime or bank not getting payed at all, and the worse bit was some were recieving an entitlement for months they were not actually supposed to recieve. Instead of coordinating with the employees to recompensate this money, the Trust garnished their wages all in one go. Some were hit for well over £300. Many weekly employees do not make £300 per paycheck. Leaving them abandoned and alone to face the bill collectors who were curious why they hadn’t been payed by these employees.

Apparently the NHS uses a banding system for pay entitlement to be able to promote and award employees who have higher work standards. It works something like this. There are several bands1-XX. Each band has increments in it. every 3 increments there is what’s called a gateway. Once you achieve targets in your employment you move up an increment, for a minor pay raise. Achieveing gateways (3 of them per band) incurrs a much larger pay raise. This is supposed to carry on until you reach the top of your band. From that point on, you would only recieve the annual cost of lving increment. Each band has a minor wages overlap with then next higher band. All bands have a starter rate, which is about 10-20 pence lower than the base rate. After 12 months, you come off of starter rate and begin earning your actual band wage.

Now that you understand that, I can move on to why it’s relevant. An employee who is band 1 started here a few weeks ago and is making 3 pence less than people who have been here for 10 years and are on band 2. What? Yes it’s true. How motivated would you be to do your job properly if this was your current situation? I might also add that this employee who has worked here for 10 years is still on the 1st increment of pay, as is all of his coworkers, who range from here for a week or 2 to 8 years. All on the same wage.

Work in progress. More later.

Where do you get these stories Spyhopper?

I realize many who may read this may wonder how I collect the information I post here. It’s a valid question and deserves a good answer. The methods I use to collect information are quite simple. I have a job here which allows me to move around the site with relative impunity. While I do so, I enjoy little notice due to my status and position. As such, I try to capitalize on this by watching, listening and conversing. This is why I refer to these stories as observations.

There are as a result, many bases of origin for each story, or parts of each story. One such basis is factual. These are my own personal observations. I was on hand or was a first hand witness/participant in the event. I will try to indicate these with a “+” sign.

Another method is the rumor mill. Although, if this is the case I will attempt to verify the rumor’s validity before I post it. Parts of the stories identified as such should not be taken as fact, and could very possibly just be the flavour of the week. I will identify these with a “-”. Usually, these types of stories will be collected at the smoking shelters, canteen or general staff conversations.

As I am a very opinionated person, I have to allow for personal conjecture. These will be indicated with a “*”. When you see this symbol, you will know for sure you are about to get a whole earful of Spyhopper’s own personal opinions, whether you want it or not.

Occasionally, I may post a story whose credibility is unknown. Additionally, I may have no feasible means to make its credibility known. At some point within the story, I will identify these with “[?]“.

This by no means indicates these stories are fabrications or works of fiction. They are true, based on truth, or based on the truth as perceived by a person. If any particular part or parts of a story are found to be false, I will remove them and indicate why.

Some may be thinking about other issues, such as doctor-patient privilege communication, confidentiality or even criminality. You can rest assured I will not allow myself to ever identify a person by their name, or in such a manner as to be descriptive enough for the person to be identified through theses stories. Additionally, treatment and medical conditions will not be revealed unless they are the actual act of ineptness I may be speaking of. Personally, I believe you will find the medical and clinical stories a bit scary. You may even favour those. However, I am almost sure as this site develops, most stories will focus on management practices. We’ll see.

As always, click, scroll and enjoy!

~Spyhopper

Where to start?

Welcome one and all! This blog is dedicated to the fine example of extortion, mismanagement and genuine incompetence displayed at Good Hope Hospital, NHS. It is not intended to soil a good name or exemplify fault. I have noticed in the time I have worked here that many of the “mishaps” are not released publicly. While an institution does certainly have the right to protect its reputation, I don’t believe it should do so at the cost of keeping its customers ignorant of common practice. So, if you’ve come to this site looking for another blog solely dedicated to the defaming of a national health services hospital, you’ve come to the wrong place. I believe this information should be as readily available to the public as the success stories and good practice are.

Where do I start? Do I tell the story of a patient who awoke in the night with anaesthetic dementia, confused and believing he had been kidnapped and held hostage? This person then panicked seeing all of the tubes sticking out of him and cut them with a pair of large paper scissors (which he shouldn’t have had access to), thus causing his own death. The absence of security staff and properly trained nurses, not to mention the fact someone had left those scissors nearby, is the real reason this patient died. This however is not what was released to the family from the hospital, nor did it ever appear in local media. Well, that’s not exactly true. His obituary did appear, but it did not list those actions and the fact that lack of adequate response or adequate staffing is what killed him.

Maybe, I should begin with stories of patients who are not sectioned under the mental health act (declared unable to make decisions for themselves) - being forcibly held against their will while actively protesting - to receive sedatives which would make them sleep so they could be held in the hospital.

I could even talk about management who is indifferent to the daily operations of their own sections. People whose preoccupation seems to be more dedicated to finding office space as far away from their areas of responsibility as possible. Perhaps I should discuss management being critical of each other in front of subordinates, even to the point of juvenile name calling and declarations of incompetence? Or maybe I should discuss the inability to properly cover shifts and schedule appropriately?

Maybe, the point of discussion should focus on many of the prima donna attitudes displayed? Observations such as the accident and emergency department staff sitting at their desks, talking about a boozer of a week-end, then suddenly realizing the patient in cubicle 14 has not been seen in 3 and a half hours. The staff immediately scramble to just do something, then blame either the X-Ray department or the Portering Department for the patient breaching over 4 hours, costing the trust roughly £2,500.00 per breach?

Have I painted too bleak a picture? That certainly is not my intention. While it does appear to highlight inadequacies, there are many members of staff at this hospital who are quality. Many who genuinely care and want to do their best by the patient. Unfortunately for this rather large group of staff, there is an “elite” few who would ruin it for everyone. Even with this information, I maintain this is a good hospital, with generally good staff. I would not mind being treated here or having to stay long term.

I intend to make periodic entries to this blog, so stay tuned. I also hope you can appreciate my necessity for anonymity in this process. While I do believe the public has the right to know, I am not willing to sacrifice my job for it. So, sit back, click, scroll and enjoy!

~Spyhopper