Christopher Luxon orders public servants back to office, working from home ‘not an entitlement’

Public Service Minister Nicola Willis has asked government departments to call their staff back to the office and to enforce stricter rules around working from home. She has issued new guidance to the Public Service Commissioner setting an expectation that “working from home arrangements are not an entitlement and should be by agreement between the employee and the employer”.

The commissioner will then send that guidance to public service chief executives. The ruling does not apply to Crown Entities so the likes of ACC, Pharmac, and NZTA can take heed of the guidance but will not be bound by it.

While departments will still be required to comply with legal employment law to negotiate flexible working conditions where there is a need, Wills said she was “reluctant” to set a number of days people would be allowed to work from home.

“Our starting position is that actually your working-from-home agreement needs to be consistent with your ability to perform your role, your team’s ability to perform, and your agency’s ability to perform. The simple fact is in some circumstances, you won’t be able to work from home at all,” she said.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he wanted a “highly productive and collaborative” public service.

“I do not want to see working from home, undermining that ambition that we have,” he said, adding he was worried young graduates did not have the opportunity to learn from senior public servants because they were working from home.

Alongside the guidance, Willis has asked the commission to collect data on working-from-home arrangements. She said this data would be published “early next year”.

Willis expressed frustration there was no comparable data on workplace attendance kept by departments, leaving ministers with standalone surveys of departments. She said at the Public Service Commission, 66% of staff had working-from-home arrangements, with a third working from home one day a week and another third working from home two days a week, for example.

The move was welcomed by some Wellington businesses, who have complained that work-from-home culture had been difficult for businesses in the city.

Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive Simon Arcus said, “the public service makes up a huge proportion of Wellington’s workforce, and their absence has been notable in recent years”.

“Footfall is critical for a number of industries, especially retail and hospitality. These sectors have been struggling with a lack of customers with more Wellingtonians working from home. Many businesses have gone from expecting several days of profitable trading to turning a profit only one day a week,” Arcus said.

The Public Service Association criticised the move, saying it was public sector job cuts that were to blame for the struggles of Wellington businesses, rather than work-from-home culture.

National Secretary for the Public Service Association, Duane Leo said, “if the Government really cared about the Wellington economy, then it shouldn’t have cut thousands of hardworking, dedicated public service workers from its payroll”.

“Simply telling workers to come back to the city a few more days a week won’t revive the Wellington economy. In a cost-of-living crisis, people are already saving money by making their own lunches and cutting down on coffees and after-work drinks,” Leo said.

Employees have a right to negotiated flexible employment conditions with their employer under certain conditions. Willis said this guidance did not undermine that and that flexible working arrangements for the likes of parents would continue to exist.

“Those arrangements will still be able to be struck and I think it is appropriate those arrangements are supported and monitored as is our legal requirement,” Willis said.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Deputy leader of the Labour Party Carmel Sepuloni said there was “no hard evidence” a problem existed and that when she was a minister, she did not notice any change of productivity in people working from home.

“I do agree in terms of team-building and what not, [working in the office] was really helpful, but the Government’s stance on this, and the fact that they have prioritised it, is quite frankly bizarre.

“I think that they have had a theme right from the start of demonising public servants and this certainly fits with that.

“I’m not sure when this became the big issue of the day. I’m very surprised to see so much time spent on this given there is no evidence base to show that actually public servants have in fact been less productive working from home or in any way skiving off which seems to be the inference here.

“We haven’t seen any evidence to show performance was affected,” she said.

Green Party Public Service spokesman Francisco Hernandez described the move as “shallow soundbite policy” and “a cheap shot to a public service that is being gutted by the Government”.

“It is laughable for the Prime Minister to claim that this will be good for the Wellington CBD when his Government has cut almost 7000 public service jobs, which has had devastating downstream effects to the local economy,” Hernandez said.