Sir Brian Roche: Public Service Commissioner on the new official guidelines for working from home

The Public Service Commissioner says civil servants aren't banned from working from home, but more oversight is needed. 

Sir Brian Roche has released new official guidance confirming working remotely is not an entitlement. 

That's prompted legal action from the Public Service Association. 

The Commissioner told Heather du Plessis-Allan it's important to have clear rules to stop public servants working from home by default. 

He says flexibility is still a hallmark, but it is now by the approval of the employer. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the old working from home debarkle with the Public
Servance has finally got some hard and fast rules around it.
The Public Service Commissioner, wo's the boss of the lot
of them, has now released guidance on working from home,
and this remembers a couple of days only after the
union announced they're going to sue the government over this
and with us. Now is the Public Service Commissioner, Sir
Brian Rach Brian, Hey, good, how's it going? Very good?

(00:20):
Thank you? Now have you seen a minimum here? Do
they have a minimum number of days they have to
be in the office?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
No, not at all. We've just given guidance. We've created
a framework framework which clarifies the position. So flexibility is
still a hallmark of what we're doing, but it is
only with approval from the employer.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Okay, so what is the guidance? What are the rules?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, the rules is if you want to work from home,
you have to get the agreement, not to your employer.
The employer has to understand what tasks you're going to
be doing. So it's a level of oversight because till
now it's been a week bit of whatever peel like
remembering over fifty percent of public servants can't actually work

(01:01):
from a home. So the guidance is important that we
understand what's expected of people when they are not in
the office.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
How many days and how many days a week do
you put in the office?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I put in an excess of five at the moment
that I'm a learning curve.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
But are you actually going into the office of the weekends.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Then no, but I work probably every day for part
of the day. But you know this is for rank
and file people would do that.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, So how many days are you going into the office, Brian?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I go in five days a week, okay?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
And so as a boss, do you not have an
opinion when you look around and you see young, oh
mate's been at home three days this week, don't you
sort of form a judgment on that.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I try not to because I trust people and.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
We obviously we've just some guidelines.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
The guidelines are important because without them, actually we have
no levers to actually be able to understand and defend
what is happening. And this is not the public sector.
The private sector have the same dilemma of you know,
when people are not in the office, what are they
doing and who are supervising them?

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Do you think that there is an element of taking
the mickey that's been going on. Here, are we betters
a sense of entitlement?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I don't, That's not been my experience. But you know,
these guidance for the avoidance of doubt. This is not an.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Entitlement has the PSA. My understanding is the union was
actually involved in working with you guys, with in creating
these guidelines.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Is that right, that's correct. We've got a really strong
relationship with them.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Well, so if the guidelines were basically at the finished point,
why have they jumped the gun and gone for the
legal action.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's probably a question you should put to them. I
can assure you we gave it our best shot to
understand what the nature of the issues were. They were
unable to satisfy us on that, so I thought it's
best that for the reasons of being certainty, we push on.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Listen, that's what we did. Why don't we follow the
example of the UK and Canada have a sixty percent
minimum three days a week. You've got to be in the.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Office, because we don't need that at this point. All
options still remain on the table. That's not a threat
to anyone, but you know, this was a new thing
in our work practices. We've learned from it. We've given
this framework and guidance. We will continue to monitor and
we will modify it as required.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Brilliant stuff, Brian, it's really good to talk to you.
Thank you so much. It's Brian Roche, the Public Service Commissioner.
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