Public Servants Serving Our Society: Sam Faulkner

Sam Faulkner

Hi my name’s Sam Faulkner, I’m a HR projects and support manager and I work for the Welsh Government. I’ve worked for 6 years in the public sector and I’ve developed an affinity with the Civil Service. You see first-hand all of the great work that goes in to improving the outcomes of the citizens that we serve. That’s one of the major parts of the job that really makes me tick, that feeling that you are making a bit of a difference, no matter how small that is and that’s really quite rewarding.

What I do day to day

I look after a small team of three who deal with pre-employment checking and on-boarding of all the new starters coming into the organisation through our bulk external recruitment schemes. I’m also on the team rolling out our next corporate apprenticeship intake, which is an exciting outreach project. I started as an apprentice in the live events industry, so it gives me a bit of a sense of giving back. Being able to enable other people to do that is a nice feeling.

We’ve got three different pathways for the apprentice programme. We’ve got business administration, digital data/technology and finance. It’s an exciting opportunity for anyone, not only school leavers. There’s no upper age limit and that’s what we’re really trying to hammer home and it’s quite timely in terms of people who’ve either found themselves out of work because of the pandemic and or maybe have fallen out of love with the job or the profession that they were in. So it’s a really good opportunity for people from all walks of life, backgrounds and ages to retrain and join the public service in some, really exciting, roles.

Why being paid properly matters

There are good things about the public sector like flexibility and security but there is an apparent feeling of people feeling undervalued as a result of the pay freeze. Work/life balance and flexibility are currently really high on people’s agenda, which is what public sector roles do really well. But there’s definitely a way to go on the pay being reflective of the immense pressure that some people have been under, to keep delivering and just keep things ticking over so we can all live as normal a life as is possible.

You’re not expected to go above and beyond, but a lot of us want to do that, it would be good to have your pay reflect that. Feeling undervalued eats away at people’s resilience as well.

I think there’s a perception that we’re just a bunch of pen pushers who are sitting around not getting a lot done.  But I think if the civil service ceased to exist it would be noticed very quickly.

Why being in a union matters

Being in Prospect I’m able to contribute to the consultations that come round, they become things that you can affect, which is important to me, and there are the great member benefits discounts! Along with that, it’s really good and empowering to get your voice heard and to know someone’s always got your back.

Find out about our Public Services pay campaign, Serving Our Society, and see how you can support workers like Sam Faulkner today.