Is Semi-State job the best of both worlds? (Public vs Private sectors)

P

PoundMan

Registered User
Messages
216
I have worked in ICT Technical Support roles predominantly in the Public Sector for the bulk of my career. Initially I worked for a number of years in the Education sector in an FE college and then in a HE University. I then in a Civil Service department for a short period and I'm currently working for a Local Authority in a grade 5 role. I also tend to keep my eye out regularly for jobs across the Public sector including the likes of HSE and ETB's.
From this I have observed the following:

  • The salary (for comparable roles) seems to be worst in the Civil Service, and best in the Universities with the Local Authorities falling somewhere in-between. For example, I was recently interviewed for a Tech Support role at a University which had LSI's equivalent to that of someone on a grade 7 in a Local Authority.
  • The annual leave also appears to be worse in Civil Service compared to the Universities and LA's.
  • The training and education opportunities are very good in the Civil Service, less so in Universities in LA's.
  • Promotion prospects are better in Civil Service, very few internal competitions in Universities and practically none in LA's.
I have noticed some training courses that offer grants but only for people employed by commercial semi-state employers. What is the difference between the different types of state bodies? I've read online reports about An Garda Siochana offering the best pay over all Public Sector but I would imagine that is limited to particular staff who are entitled to overtime so I wouldn't have thought their ICT staff would be paid as much.

I would like to remain in the Public Sector for the remainder of my career, but I am trying to get a consensus to figure out if there is a sweet-spot in terms of something closer to private-sector salary whilst still retaining the perks of the public sector. I am currently studying towards transitioning from a career in Tech Support into the more interesting and profitable field of Cybersecurity, so I am trying to determine if there is a particular sub-section of the Public Sector that is most rewarding and sought-after particularly for ICT staff.

I am not fully aware of all the details, for example do semi-state employees get the same DB pension benefits or are they only DC pensions?
Do semi-state come with extra employee perks like health insurance, income protection, etc. that are fairly common in private sector?
Do people generally view Semi-State as a better place to be compared to a central government department?
 
PoundMan said:
I have worked in ICT Technical Support roles predominantly in the Public Sector for the bulk of my career. Initially I worked for a number of years in the Education sector in an FE college and then in a HE University. I then in a Civil Service department for a short period and I'm currently working for a Local Authority in a grade 5 role. I also tend to keep my eye out regularly for jobs across the Public sector including the likes of HSE and ETB's.
From this I have observed the following:

  • The salary (for comparable roles) seems to be worst in the Civil Service, and best in the Universities with the Local Authorities falling somewhere in-between. For example, I was recently interviewed for a Tech Support role at a University which had LSI's equivalent to that of someone on a grade 7 in a Local Authority.
  • The annual leave also appears to be worse in Civil Service compared to the Universities and LA's.
  • The training and education opportunities are very good in the Civil Service, less so in Universities in LA's.
  • Promotion prospects are better in Civil Service, very few internal competitions in Universities and practically none in LA's.
I have noticed some training courses that offer grants but only for people employed by commercial semi-state employers. What is the difference between the different types of state bodies? I've read online reports about An Garda Siochana offering the best pay over all Public Sector but I would imagine that is limited to particular staff who are entitled to overtime so I wouldn't have thought their ICT staff would be paid as much.

I would like to remain in the Public Sector for the remainder of my career, but I am trying to get a consensus to figure out if there is a sweet-spot in terms of something closer to private-sector salary whilst still retaining the perks of the public sector. I am currently studying towards transitioning from a career in Tech Support into the more interesting and profitable field of Cybersecurity, so I am trying to determine if there is a particular sub-section of the Public Sector that is most rewarding and sought-after particularly for ICT staff.

I am not fully aware of all the details, for example do semi-state employees get the same DB pension benefits or are they only DC pensions?
Do semi-state come with extra employee perks like health insurance, income protection, etc. that are fairly common in private sector?
Do people generally view Semi-State as a better place to be compared to a central government department?
Click to expand...
I think you’re correct in your observation that the CS generally pays less but offers good education/training opportunities. I’ve known people who joined for that precise reason and then left when a better opportunity came along.

In my experience, Semi-states tend to pay more for otherwise comparable grades. I imagine the training/education opportunities would be at least as favourable as the CS but I don’t know that for a fact. Also, in my experience, semi-states are much more focused on their core function and, as a consequence, employees are much more clued in to their role and its value to the organisation.

In the CS, pensions are now career averaged, meaning that you need to get promoted fairly quickly to end up with a decent pension. While promotion competitions are quite regular, they tend to be aimed at “general” management/administrative grades which may be limiting to those seeking to concentrate on ICT roles. While opportunities in ICT arise, they may not be frequent enough to offer a speedy career progression.

There will undoubtedly be opportunities in cyber security and other specialties but, as with all specialties, you would get paid more in the private sector.

Assuming you want to stay in ICT and in the public sector, it may be that you would need to be prepared to “hop” over and back between public sector organisations of different types (as you have already done).

In doing so, you should be very mindful of how, and to what extent, your pension entitlements travel with you. While much has been done to simplify and streamline public sector pensions in the last few years, there may still be differences that you should be aware of.
 
becky said:
Are you on the new pension scheme?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I am indeed on the newer "career averaged" variant of the scheme. But I was recently told by an advisor at Standard Life that although the public sector DB scheme is no longer what it once was, it is still vastly superior to most if not all DC schemes.
 
I've seen cybersecurity jobs advertised in TULSA and HSE in the last few months. I don't know anything about TULSA but ICT on the HSE appears to have 'issues'.


TULSA usually advertise their jobs on the HSE site.
 
I know quite a number of IT contractors in Quangos and state bodies and when their position was being converted to a perm role and they were asked to apply (and would have probably got it as well), they declined as they would have been significantly worse off financially. Going rate for a top notch IT security contractor can touch €1k a day in some cases (especially if hired through a big 4 firm), even those doing the more mundane grunt work can easily charge €300-400 a day
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top