Public Service Commission to stop tracking if public servants working from home

The Public Service Commission will stop collecting data on public servants working from home.

It comes as the commission releases data showing the number of work from home days were down slightly from the last time they were measured.

The government announced last year it would direct agencies to tighten up on working from home arrangements and require them to report to the Public Service Commission about the number of agreements in place.

The previous Public Service Minister Nicola Willis said at the time working from home arrangements could not benefit and hinder workers and employers, and have an effect on CBD retailers, restaurants and cafes.

The latest data, collected from government agencies in July, shows public servants, on average, work from home 0.85 days per week, down slightly from a previous survey.

More than half of all public servants - 55 percent - do not typically work from home, or do so infrequently, about 42 percent work one day a week from home, and only 22 percent work from home two days a week.

It also shows 65 percent of public servants use some form of flexible working arrangement and 49 percent of managers saying staff working from home either increased productivity or had no impact.

Most public servants - 65 percent - use some kind of flexible working arrangement like compressed hours, flexible start and finish times or work from home.

Data collected in the 2025 Public Service Census showed 49 percent of managers said staff working from home either increased productivity or had no impact.

Three of the five agencies with higher levels of remote work have significantly reduced their averages, with the The Ministry for Ethnic Communities cutting its average by 2.2 to 1.3 days per week.

Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche said all working from home arrangements were now agreements between staff and their managers.

"This reflects the government's expectation that working from home is not an entitlement." he said.

Now that oversight was embedded across the public service, collecting the data was no longer necessary.

"But agencies and managers will continue to monitor working from home arrangements against the guidance," said Sir Brian.

Speaking to media, Public Service Minister Judith Collins dismissed questions about the data collection ending.

"We're all over that, aren't we?" she said.

"I'm very clear that working from home is not an entitlement. What it is, though, is something [that can] be arranged between an individual employee and their employer. That is all I'm interested in."

Asked why the commission was no longer gathering the data, Collins said they were "really busy on other stuff".

In a statement, Public Service Association National Secretary Fleur Fitzsimons the data shows flexible work arrangements were never really a problem.

"The figures show the Government's headline grabbing crackdown on flexible work was just a stunt to appeal to Wellington businesses - working from home was never the crisis the Government claimed it was. The majority of public servants don't even work from home regularly."

"Rather than acknowledge that sacking thousands of public servants would hurt the capital's economy, they chose to blame workers for an imaginary problem."

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