Pros
Where to start with HMPO. There are some good parts about this job so lets start with them: - For the most part the people are nice (this is sadly spoiled by a few incredibly toxic individuals.) - There is the opportunity to work from home, sadly this is also spoiled by the fact that management seem to extremely dislike people working from home and will do everything possible to minimize this. - Its a good entry into the civil service - Civil service benefits such as holiday, pension, etc - Overtime is regularly offered during busy periods
Cons
And for the negatives: - There are many people that work as passport officer, they all report to a line manager and all the line managers report to 4 higher managers. The 4 managers in question have created an incredibly toxic work environment. They show a complete lack of empathy towards all staff, have no regard for peoples personal circumstances, regularly try to create rules that have no backing of policy that seem to have no other benefit than inconveniencing staff and are rude to staff. There is an incredibly toxic work environment and the root cause of it is the management. Their behaviour goes unchecked and although the union is helpful in other ways they seem to turn a blind eye to this. - The wage is high for passport officers in terms of the fact that it is paid higher than other civil services at AO grade, however the work you complete is much closer to the work that an EO would complete at other departments and in that regard the pay should be higher. - The building is old and there are several problems that come with that. The building is either far too hot or incredibly cold, the office has a bit of a strange smell about it that is worse on certain days. - The work is monotonous