For most people, working overtime is an occasional thing. Perhaps giving them the chance to complete an important task or project, or maybe even earn a little extra cash.
But in probation it has now become the scaffolding propping up a service that is collapsing under a decade of neglect.
Unpaid hours are swallowing up our members’ evenings, and paid overtime is becoming the only way some can keep from going under.
The cracks are widening and it’s becoming more than apparent that this is not a stable foundation to build a service on.
In this episode of the Napo Podcast, Ian and Ben talk about why this is not sustainable, and it isn’t safe.
Masking a crisis
Ian didn’t mince his words: unpaid overtime is now disguising the true scale of the capacity crisis.
People are working far beyond their contracted hours, he said: “Allowing HMPPS and government to mask the real capacity issues we’ve been campaigning on for a long time.”
Members have told us openly that if they counted every extra hour they put in, their real hourly pay would plunge below supermarket rates.
The service runs on free labour and they know it
Ben gave a blunt assessment of the situation: “Everyone at senior levels knows the probation service only functions because staff are plugging the gaps. High vacancy rates, high sickness, relentless demand, and a culture of fear mean people keep stretching themselves to keep communities safe.”
“They’re not taking advantage,” he said. “They’re exploiting staff. It’s blatant.”
And ministers can’t claim ignorance. They know exactly how the work gets done.
Paid overtime is a lifeline that cannot be relied on
For many members, paid overtime isn’t a choice, it’s the only thing keeping the rent paid and food on the table. That reality alone exposes how far probation pay has fallen behind comparable sectors.
But what many of those members may not realise is that the current overtime pot ends in March. No guarantees. No safety net. No certainty for the households who now depend on it.
What’s hiding under the surface?
Both Ian and Ben asked members to consider what would happen to them if the overtime stopped either because budgets change or life gets in the way?
The answer is quite alarming.
Burnout. Spiralling stress. Work piling up. And the very real risk of being left professionally exposed because you simply can’t complete the work heaped onto you.
This is exactly what Ian warned: unpaid overtime is disguising operational failure. Take it away, even for a few days, and “uncomfortable truths” would erupt to the surface.
The current health of probation
As it stands probation is an “extremely ill service”.
Early release schemes, sentencing reforms, rising workloads will only worsen the symptoms of a system already declining in health.
If everyone worked only their contracted hours tomorrow, the impact would be instant. Not one corner of the service would escape the shock.
The power members hold
The key takeaway from this episode is that members have much more power than they think they do.
If members worked only their contracted hours, the crisis HMPPS and ministers refuses to fix would become glaringly obvious.
People join probation because they care deeply about their work and the people they support. But caring shouldn’t mean sacrificing your health, your family, or your livelihood so the employer can hide the truth.
It’s time the service stopped running on guilt and goodwill and started running on staffing, investment and respect.
3 responses
Bingo: the only way to bring this shocking exploitation to a head is work to rule!
The service can collapse, which is a better outcome than staff collapsing with stress , sickness and fear of punitive performance and absence management policies. With work to rule the government might finally listen and completely restructure and properly resource our service so we can realistically rehabilitate offenders and protect the public.
SPO’s are part of the problem, many if not most work late into the evening and at weekends because they know there Deps and Heads will see them as failing otherwise. This puts added pressure on PO’s and PSO’s to also do unpaid overtime. Emails after 6pm and at weekends should be banned for a start
Sadly, I know too many people who will commit to unpaid/paid overtime as a matter of course. If anything, try to challenge it and you’re met with a raft of harmful rationalisations about how they couldn’t possibly achieve their work goals without doing it. People pride themselves on not missing a deadline, and despite knowing it’s unhealthy, cannot bring themselves to do it. How do you ask someone not to do their best, when their best is not to miss a deadline, or not to leave someone in crisis?
Then add the fear culture and it becomes a dangerous mix. It is however one of the reasons I find it hard to support ‘actions short of strike’, many simply won’t do it. While I’m certain some will disagree, it is my belief that giving staff the facility to take their laptops/work phones home and log on without any checks/safeguards etc is one of the most damaging things that has been done.
Throw in chronic understaffing, the amount of time it takes to vet someone and bring them in, pay massively falling behind inflation, ECSL/SDS40/FTR48 and the upcoming sentencing reforms….things have never felt so tough.