Public Services minister Nicola Willis has told Government department bosses to bring more of their employees back into the office five days a week, and cut back on flexible hours.
The minister announced on Monday that she had issued new guidance, via the Public Service Commissioner, which says flexible work should not be the default option for public servants.
While thoughtful work-from-home policies could be beneficial for workers and employers, there were also downsides if the pendulum swung too far in one direction, she said.
“There are good reasons why employees have traditionally been physically brought together for work. It allows for face-to-face conversation, the sharing of skills and experience and relationship building. It supports younger and newer employees to observe, learn from and form connections with their more experienced colleagues,” she said in a press release.
New guidelines will instruct public sector chief executives that working from home should only be allowed on a case-by-case basis, where it did not affect productivity and other objectives, and must be monitored and publically reported.
Flexible working arrangements became increasingly popular during the pandemic and have been highly valued by employees. Stats NZ has reported that four out of five businesses across New Zealand offer flexible work to employees.
Willis’ announcement comes after a pair of columns complained that work-from-home culture was making life more difficult for Wellington’s hospitality businesses.
This included one written by Heather du Plessis-Allan which accused public servants, who earned a median salary of $84,800 in 2023, of spending Monday and Friday at their “beach house”.
A recent report by Stuff interviewed Wellington hospitality business owners, many of whom said less workers had returned to the city centre after the pandemic and after-work drinks on Fridays have become less common.
However, high interest rates have been deliberately supressing this kind of spending and may be more to blame than flexible working.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the policy was not about saving Wellington cafes or bars, rather it was about boosting public sector performance.
“The primary reason for doing it is to make sure we have a really high functioning ambitious public service that’s actually building a cadre of talent. We think that is better achieved with people being in the office environment.”
Some studies have shown that individual employees can initially be more productive when working from home, due to less interruptions, but tend to stagnate without team feedback.
Carmel Sepuloni, deputy leader of the Labour Party, said there was no evidence that public servants who worked flexibly had been less productive.
“I’m concerned there seems to be a little bit of demonisation of our public servants going on, but it’s certainly not the first time.”
She said if Nicola Willis was worried about poor sales at Wellington cafes, that was more likely to be related to the thousands of jobs which she had cut from the public sector.
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