It seems ministers are “quietly ignoring” the Conservatives’ rule that civil servants should be in the office three days a week. It’s not much to ask for a nice, safe job and pension provision that the rest of us can only hanker after. But nope. Labour, once the party of the workers, is now the party of the workers from home. Ministers are taking a “less dogmatic” attitude to asking civil servants to turn up at all.
And chief of the ministers who are terrifically chilled about it all is Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary, who yesterday attacked the culture of “presenteeism”. Look, it’s called turning up for work. But then Mr Reynolds hasn’t really operated in an environment where it matters all that much if he turns up at all. After graduating in 2001, he worked for Stockport council as an assistant to Labour councillors, then as parliamentary assistant to an MP before finally making it to Labour’s national executive committee. What’s in that glittering CV, do you think, that make the PM think that this is just the man to feel the pulse of the business community?
Mr Reynolds hasn’t really operated in an environment where it matters all that much if he turns up at all
My own guess is that if the binmen of Stockport had downed tools — no working from home for them — the voters would have had words to say about it. But if the assistant to the Labour caucus on the council hadn’t turned up that day or any day it’s unlikely to have brought the work of the council to a standstill. And this is the man who’s complaining about presenteeism?
He might like to have a browse through a report in The Economist in June which went through all the international WFH studies and found that the productivity benefits evaporated on close viewing; people work less well because they’re not interacting with colleagues and don’t have scrutiny.
That’s why Apple, a company with an interest in productivity, has decided to call time on duvet working and haul people back five days a week. He might also like to consider the actual performance of the Civil Service since turning up became optional. There was a leaked email from the Immigration Enforcement unit of the Home Office complaining that officials weren’t around to deal with the crisis in illegal migration; that somehow rings true. And then there was the debacle of the British withdrawal from Kabul when the matter was left in the hands of a non-WFH junior official.
Actually, I’d like a bit more presenteeism from Reynolds, the minister in charge of the postal service. The price of a stamp is going up to £1.65. Might he be bothered to deal with that?
