The future of office work in the civil service report launch

Report author Sufyan Ahmed, CIPD CEO Peter Cheese, AHCPS Deputy General Secretary Paul Malone, and FDA General Secretary Dave Penman discussed the FDA’s findings that 78% of civil servants believe office attendance mandate has failed.

On Tuesday 25 February, the FDA published a new report, The Future of office work in the civil service. Based on a survey of over 7,000 members, the report found that the UK government’s 60% office attendance mandate has failed to deliver on any of its own objectives to boost productivity, improve collaboration, and help younger workers. It also called for an evidence-based approach to office working.

To launch the report, the union hosted a panel discussion, attended by members, both online and in person at the FDA’s Centenary House head office in London. The event was chaired by FDA President Margaret Haig and featured panellists: report author Sufyan Ahmed, Charted Institute of Personnel Development CEO Peter Cheese, AHCPS Deputy General Secretary Paul Malone, and FDA General Secretary Dave Penman.

Ahmed, who wrote the report while working as an FDA Research Intern, introduced the report, his research, and the findings to attendees. When beginning the report, Ahmed said he “set out to understand firstly, what are the arrangements that people are working under, what is working, and what is not working?”, and how members across all four nations felt about their arrangements. The report aims to move the discussion forward, focussing on how staff can be supported to boost productivity and collaboration – as well as how purposeful office work can be promoted.

After Ahmed’s initial research could find no evidence to support the Cabinet Office’s 60% office mandate as the ideal number of days to spend in the office, he designed and conducted a survey of FDA members to share their experiences and their insights. Ahmed recalled how after just 24 hours the survey had over 2,000 responses – showing the strength of feeling on the subject.

The survey concluded with over 7,000 responses from members, which formed the basis of the evidence for the report. Ahmed shared a number of the reports key findings, including:

Cheese, who holds a special interest in flexible working, shared insights into the practices from across the private sector, gained from his work with the CIPD – the professional body for human resources, learning and development, and organisational development with 160,000 members globally.

Cheese discussed how the economy was already moving towards remote working before COVID – the pandemic just accelerated and normalised it. He highlighted that he was co-chairing a flexible working task force with the former Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (now Department for Business and Trade), which was established about four years before the COVID crisis with the intent to encourage more businesses to support flexible work.

According to Cheese, “the real question” is this: “Has [hybrid working] affected your output or your productivity?”

He added: “I think a lot of this comes from some very entrenched thinking… it has been politicised as well… I think [what] we’ve all learned from this is we’ve got to do a better job of training managers… they’ve got to understand, ‘how do I measure the output that somebody’s creating and not just judge them by how many hours they’re sat in front of it on a screen?’” Malone began by telling attendees that “the responses that you’ve received from your FDA members very much resonate with our experience in Ireland. But I think there are some differences in the way hybrid working is structured.” Like in the UK, hybrid working is used by media and certain politicians as “a stick to beat” Irish civil servants with.

In March 2022, a framework for hybrid working in the Irish Civil Service was produced. Malone said that “one of the key points of agreement in that particular framework is that it wasn’t a one size fits all approach”.

“The framework set out parameters and principles and then it was up to each civil service organization to develop its own policy,” he explained.

Malone said that AHCPS also “made sure to stitch in that local consultation with staff representatives was a requirement in the development of the policy”, which “made sense for their own business situation.” He explained how this impacts current office attendance in the Irish civil service, ranging from 5 days a week in office to 1 depending on the role’s needs.

When seeking a change to a policy, employers must root any decisions in evidence and data, using 30 or 40 metrics including “performance data, absence data, probation data, induction data, exit interview data, customer stakeholder satisfaction surveys, employee engagement metrics, [and] governance and employee metrics”.

Addressing attendees, Penman set out the strategic thinking hybrid working requires for the union and the civil service : “We became very defensive about civil service being attacked for hybrid working, rather than actually being able to engage in a meaningful discussion of what is the right solution and what are the big HR challenges that come from hybrid working approach”. Penman argued there is a huge prize for getting hybrid working right, including higher productivity and delivering for the public. This report looks at “how do organisations work and how can hybrid working be fruitful for them in terms of efficiencies or civil service reducing costs”, and he hopes it can start an evidence-led conversation on office working.