Almost a quarter of public servants work from home on Fridays

Thursday, 18 September 2025

The latest public service working from home data shows almost a quarter of public servants typically work from home on a Friday, while overall time spent at the home office has fallen.

The Public Service Commission on Thursday released survey results which showed the number of days worked at home, averaged across the public service, was 0.85 days, down from 0.89 days in November 2024.

There were 42% of public servants working from home at least one day a week, which was down from 43% in November 2024.

Only 8.5% worked three or more days at home, down from 9.9%. A third worked one or two days at home, which was up from 32.8%.

More than half never or infrequently worked from home, 41.7% worked from home one-to-five days a week and 3.6% were remote workers.

Almost half of the mega ministry Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment worked from home on Fridays, 44.6% of Inland Revenue worked from home on Fridays and 44.3% of Ministry for Ethnic Communities worked from home on Fridays.

Former Public Service Minister Nicola Willis in September last year asked the Public Service Commission to update its guidelines to reflect that working from home was not an entitlement.

Willis said the commission’s advice would be updated to make clear working from home must be agreed to and monitored, and she wanted more civil servants to come into their workplace every day.

In January, the first set of data was released showing about a third of the public service work from home at least one day a week, and that in the Ministry for Ethnic Communities almost 95% of staff did so.

In the recent data, the Ministry for Ethnic Communities reduced the average from 2.2 to 1.3 days per week.

The June 2025 Stats NZ Household Labour Force Survey across the workforce reported 34% of employed people worked some or all their time at home, relatively unchanged compared to June 2022.