Who's benefiting?

Channel 5 has just broadcast a live debate 'The Big Benefits Row'. There seems to be no end of programs at the moment showcasing people claiming benefits in the UK and often portrayed as lazy and wanting to take advantage.

Ironically I was working through some personal budget/financial figures as I had this debate on in the background.

Unfortunately I found the show didn't really answer much or tackle all that much detail, it was more about certain figures having bitching sessions with one another.

However, as someone who works hard for their pay, I feel sick every time I see the National Insurance and tax payments that come out of my paycheque. 

Even now I always remember my Dad saying to me wait until you're earning and you see how much gets taken away from me. As a child I'd laugh and tell him not to be so miserable. Funny how once you get older you soon see their point of view! 

I also feel somewhat sick to see people who get homes for 'free', whilst I battled to get on the property ladder. And now saving up and going through the process of looking to buy a house the topic is somewhat raw with me yet again.

Don't get me wrong, I understand in some situations the benefits are needed and people are in situations where they have no choice. I'm not disputing those people who need help as they have a genuine disability for example.

Those people who claim everything under the sun, don't work and conveniently have some sort of breakdown, health issue or 'emergency' just at the right time do drive me insane though! 

As I see friends struggle with the job they're in for various reasons because they need the money or stability I get so annoyed. "They're lucky to have a job" people argue. Of course it's better to be in work than to be unemployed we're all agreed on that. 

Yet what is the difference between them and the people who argue certain jobs are beneath them? Why should they stick at their job and go to work miserable each day? Why shouldn't they say they don't like it and just go try claim benefits?

What I also find is that those people that do work hard and pay towards the system then often then find they are not eligible for help when they do find themselves in this struggle scenario.

In all things in life I feel unfortunately there will always be those who take advantage. Those who see kindness, empathy and understanding and take advantage.

Then as in many situations (not just benefits), many people get tarred with the same brush or everyone then gets hit with a harder line.

I always remember one place I worked had a ridiculously strict and unreasonable sickness policy, all because at one point they were fair and people took advantage. Therefore they felt they had to take a tough approach and as a result those people who acted reasonably also got punished. 

I've experienced both sides of the debate. One set of grandparents owned their own home and worked hard to get money to support their family. The others lived in a council property (they did also work I should add). 

When it came to later in life both my grandmothers needed to be in a home for different reasons. One grandmother had to have her house rented out and this was used to help pay for her care home. The other got a Bupa care home for free. 

Fair? Probably not. As both were relatives of mine obviously I just want what was for best for them and am glad they were both cared for regardless of how that care came about.

It does get you thinking. I often over the year have joked with my parents for example I'd have been better off 'getting up the duff' when I was very young and I'd be laughing now - receiving lots of help, having a cut price home and more.

Would I be happy? Probably not.

I don't claim to have all the answers and I don't have a strong view either side of the debate since some form of benefits system clearly is needed.

However as with most things in life, there will always be those who push too far and are selfish, and it's the people who are fair and try to do what's best who suffer. 

Marathon Man

Over the last six months Trev, my boyfriend, has had one of the worst times in his life – losing the job he adored with London Ambulance Service as a trainee paramedic and then trying to find work and being messed around left, right and centre by companies and recruitment agencies.

Rather than moping and feeling sorry for himself he decided to have a mass overhaul in his life and has instead stayed very strong and become more proactive and ambitious. As well as trying everything possible to get a new job, he’s also been on a healthy eating and exercise plan and lost over 2 stone (and is still going strong) and he’s also now working to raise money for TWO marathons (a week apart). The Brighton Marathon on Sunday 15th April and the London Marathon on Sunday 22nd April.

Not only this, he has FINALLY after six very tough months secured a new job.

One thing that has become clear after a number of job applications, interviews and research, is that my man wants to help people and do a role that matters. Don't get me wrong he was in desperate times and was applying for anything and everything, but thankfully he's worked hard to get a role where he can do what he does best - help others.

Driving an ambulance again and going back to shift work is something we've carefully discussed. Thankfully he won't be working all through the night and the shifts are more manageable (or seem to be I'll keep you posted!)

He will be transporting patients to and from hospital and obviously dealing with sick and injured patients. I know he'll be great!

When running these two marathons (a week apart, he must be mad!) Trev is raising cash for a very worthy charity for disabled children – Whizz Kids.

I should also add when he first signed up for the marathons back when he was in work, the Brighton Marathon he had a standard place on, BUT the London Marathon is a charity place (meaning you have to raise a set amount for said charity). Unfortunately Trev did not know he was going to lose his job and had a host of fundraising plans lined up which he’s not been able to follow through on and now needs to raise a whopping £1600 after being out of work and having no cash for 6 months!! He doesn't like to make things easy for himself!

Anyway if you wanted to find out more or if you'd be willing to give some cash - no matter how big or small - we would both really really appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts.

Check out the link below

http://www.justgiving.com/trevsolympicchallenge2012

I am so so proud of Trev and he deserves every success in raising money for this charity. Let's help him succeed in another goal of his for 2012!

Christmas Crisis

So it's the day after all the Christmas celebrations and I've got the grumps.

It's so weird it happens to me every year at this time and I don't really know why. As the festivities end I always find that the whole thing has been a bit of an anti climax, all the prep, all the excitement in the lead up and then all of a sudden it's been and gone.

Rather than thinking of all the things I have achieved through the year and what the new year may bring I instead seem to focus on the bad. I know I sound a right miser but I really can't help it. I don't like this grump either!

We haven't arranged any plans either this year for New Years Eve - first time ever - maybe it'd help to have plans to look forward to. To be honest after the hectic month I am kinda swaying to a quiet night in the two of us though! Ha I feel so old putting that.

NYE is another time that annoys me though, all that pressure to have the best night of the year and see the new year in in style. Then you end up paying a fortune in cab fares, drink prices and feeling disappointed your night wasn't the extravaganza you'd imagined in your head when booking it.

Who knows perhaps this is the start of the Thirty Panic and I'm doing the whole judging my life thing early. Still a whole eight months to go yet though let's remember!

So many people have got engaged or have had/are expecting babies. I feel like I am going to be the last one left. I know, I'm 29, not an OAP but I feel by the time it comes to me everyone will have been there and done that!

I also feel like a hippo the amount of food I've consumed, so I am desperate to sort that out asap.

Apart from that I can't really complain, aside from desperately hoping my boyfriend manages to get a private ambulance job very very soon. Having no job doesn't really help with the whole moving your life on together plan... He is so desperate to get back to work though and when you see people with well paid jobs striking for what seem ridiculous reasons it makes me so mad!

So for anyone out there reading this, help me out guys! Please tell me I'm not the only one with the post-Christmas blues and I'm not just a whining whinger!

For now I guess I'll have to console myself with leftover Christmas sweets and snacks, sit in my PJs and watch some Christmas films...

Managing to manage

All of us throughout our lives will encounter a manager of some form, they come in all shapes and sizes and their capabilities in their role also vary…a lot!

Having been a manager in charge of a team myself at one point I feel I can now identify with both sides of this relationship, as both the employee and the boss. I also have experienced my fair share of managers, many of which I have to say were not a pleasure to experience.

Some of the examples of jobs I have had include:
Part time checkout girl at Sainsbury’s – in two separate locations
Part time worker at Argos
Office temp
House of Commons admin assistant
Journalist
Team leader
Head of Client Support team at an online news company
And more, but this isn’t a place to showcase my CV!!

Anyway I don’t feel it would be right to be open about what manager from what exact job was good and those from the selection who I feel were bad. People that worked with me in any of the jobs I’ve had may well know who I mean, but I’m going to keep it anonymous.

My working life started at the tender age of 14, nearly 15, I remember because I temped in an office in Holborn and my Mum came to meet me with my GCSE results one lunchtime! Throughout this time I have unfortunately recognised a key theme amongst a lot of managers is to believe if you treat your staff like rubbish it teaches them to ‘behave’ and do what you want. I strongly disagree.

If I were to describe my management approach I would say I am firm but fair. I like to treat those in my team with respect – be there to manage them when needed and give support, but let them work in a way that suits them. However, because I let people manage themselves I expect them to perform well and match my fair approach with a hardworking attitude. If somebody thinks they can take advantage of my way of managing, just wait and see just how hard I can come down when needed.

I discovered this was the best way to manage – in my opinion anyway – after a number of years experiencing others ways and deciding what I liked and didn’t like from their example. From managing a team myself I have also seen what worked and also again what doesn’t.

Some examples of the managers I have had include:
The boss who treated you all as individuals who mattered, who valued your hard work, but when they were stressed you all were, the environment in the whole office would change.
The manager who couldn’t decide if they were your friend or the person in charge, who taught me it was okay to be a bit more laid back at work, but who also was prone to ever-changing moods.
The one in charge who thought everyone was a number on a sheet, was extremely inappropriate in the way they gossiped about other staff members and came out with the most awful jokes and lewd comments.
A lovely lady who wanted you to do well and was full of praise, always trying to please everyone.
Another who was always miserable, didn’t want to do anything themselves and in fact liked to bully her staff.
One who you respect as your manager but who you can have banter with and share similar interests, knowing they are there to support you and that you need to do your job properly, but they will always have their friendly face there when needed too.
Or that boss who liked to belittle their team whenever possible and instead of helping them learn from any mistakes would rather show them up instead.

Quite a mixture as you can see. One thing I feel is key is support for the manager – it is important to let staff know what is expected of them to allow them to perform well and the same needs to be done with managers themselves. I will openly admit when I was a manager in previous roles I never had any management training and was left to teach myself and just try things out and see if they worked. This is not something I think is a great idea and feel this is often why we end up with such bad managers, because they’ve never been guided on how they should be.

I don’t really want to start blogging about my current boss, as everyone knows I am still in my probation period at a new job and anything positive I say is going to look like I’m trying to win favour in said role. However, if anyone reading this does work in the same team as me, or works in my new company, they will know for themselves what sort of manager my boss fits into. That is all I need to say, and that I hope you are all lucky enough to have a manager who knows how to manage.

What's in a job title?

In line with developments in our industry, my role at work is going to change somewhat and in turn so is my job title. Unlike previous experiences, the company I now work for does give us input and has asked our opinions on what we think we should be called. And now the time has come to vote and decide which of the three shortlisted options we should move forward with.

For some reason I am finding this quite a difficult task – there are only three choices, but it got me thinking what sort of judgements do people make, just how important are job titles?

To me the work you do, the skills you have and how you prove yourself is more important than the title assigned to your job. However, we all know in reality that when scanning a CV employers will consider the job titles listed and when you’ve had a naff sounding name for your role you won’t be so quick to tell your friends and family about it.

We all know people do deem job titles important and do judge, hence modern day updates to more traditional roles and the importance of ensuring said titles are politically correct.

I can remember friends teasing me for one previous role I had, entitled Desk Head – not the most glamorous sounding of names. If people asked me what I did I tended to revert to describing my responsibilities and tried to avoid mentioning my actual job title. In reality it involved being in charge of a team of journalists and managing them, ensuring all online content and articles were delivered to brief and on time, and much more. Not exactly positively reflected in the label assigned to it.

On the flip side are people who have glamorous sounding job titles, which suggest a higher level of expertise than is the case. Throughout my working life I have on more than one occasion been amazed at the lack of knowledge so-called industry ‘experts’ have had. This elaborate naming can be seen on the likes of sites such as LinkedIn, I know in my previous role some people listed their titles in a fancier way to improve their profiles. However, this was picked up on by other departments who advised them if they were going to claim to be something then they better ensure their skills matched up to it.

How do you know the best way to label a job, how do you ensure it encompasses most, if not all, of the tasks you carry out on a daily basis. How will your clients view them? Will the name reassure them they are dealing with experts and an experienced, professional company? Or instead could it make them concerned you’re trying to blag about knowing more than you actually do?

I’ve found I prefer two of the three options so I managed to get the list down to two. To aid my decision making I also decided to enlist the help of some of my Facebook friends and see what title seemed best to them. I’ve got friends across various industries and contacts working in the same sort of area as me so I thought this could help me get some balanced opinions. I obviously kept it a rather general status update though as I didn’t want to start revealing things about the company, so perhaps it wasn’t ideal as people didn’t quite have the context in which to judge them by. Hence, I have so far ended up with near enough a 50/50 quota, with people split pretty much equally for each title.

Interestingly, people who I feel have closer ties to my industry have tended to opt for references to communication. Whilst those who are more creative, or are not really linked to what I do have preferred a media reference. I can see good points for both job titles and so it seems so too can my Facebook friends.

Oh well, I am going to just make myself decide one way or another tomorrow and one good thing that has come out of this debate so far is the fact that voting has given me something to blog about. After all I have been rather quite of late. Not to worry though, after getting a bit wound up by a so-called ‘friend’ recently and just witnessing some extremely irritating young layabouts on one of my typical trashy TV delights I am feeling quite inspired for ideas.

New job nerves

We're about to head off from our mini break - it's been a nice mix of sightseeing, laughs, relaxing and good food, with great friends. However, this morning I woke up not smiling and happy, but a bag of nerves. Tomorrow I start my new job and the nerves have well and truly kicked in.

I've been at the same company for seven and a half years and had built up my knowledge so that I always knew what was going on and how things work. I really can't imagine not knowing anything. But as of tomorrow I will be that new person, the one who has to ask questions and doesn't know what's going on. When I started my last job I was a fresh-faced graduate, are more allowances made if you're young? Or are things different if you are a graduate? You're not expected to be as confident or knowledgeable? Yet now, when going to a job where you've got years of work experience behind you are you allowed to be nervous? Should you know loads when you get there?

What if the people don't like me? What if I don't like the office or the role? There are ten million questions and worries flooding through my head!

For now I'm going to continue in my mini break mist of make believe and forget about work and the real world until I get home. I've got much more pressing matters - what country pub are we going to go to for lunch??

I’ve got a job!!!

Okay this is probably going to be the most boring (and slightly cheesey) blog ever, but I just had to shout it from the rooftops – I’VE GOT A NEW JOB!

Yes after umming and aahing for the last 6 months wherever to leave somewhere where I really wasn’t happy, I can’t believe how quickly I’ve found employment! And thank goodness before I was due to leave work.

I really couldn’t tell you how many jobs I’ve applied for through the various job alerts and employment site opportunities I’ve replied to. All I know is since mid May I’ve had a casual chat which resulted in a near job offer, an interview which fell through as they reduced their budget and weren’t pursuing the role anymore and then another interview – whereby I was successful, was called back for a second one and then got offered a job the next day. Pretty speedy work if I do say so myself (I’d only resigned 15 days before). Just seems utter madness I held off resigning for so long now.

Anyway I’m not going to go on too much about this, but I really do feel I need to put down in words how supportive, committed and caring some people have been to me throughout this whole process. You really do learn who your true friends are and I was blown away at how much people cared and were there for me.

I can’t even say thank you enough to my boyfriend and parents to how far they’ve gone and how much comfort they’ve brought me from their amazing ways, but on top of that a few close friends and work colleagues have really made me close to tears with their help and support. So, just really wanted to say a humongous thank you to them all, from the bottom of my heart.

The next step now then is that I begin my new role at the start of August and I’m lucky to have a break of 18 days from when I leave work to when I then start my role, a-mazing!

Of course I’m nervous and scared about the responsibility involved in this new position and it will be so strange not being the one who knows it all, but I know it’s also a fantastic new chapter in my life.

Now I’m just filled with dread for the leaving do – my poor liver is already shaking with fright!