The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed it will introduce a minimum expectation of 60% office attendance for all staff who are eligible for hybrid working.
DWP permanent secretary Sir Peter Schofield told staff on Thursday that the department would put the new in-office instruction in place from 1 September.
The 60% rule has applied for the department’s senior civil servants since early 2024, with officials below the senior civil service, from grades AA to Grade 6, being asked to work in the office for 40% of their week.
From the beginning of September, this will now also apply to staff from grades AA to Grade 6 who are eligible for hybrid working. Around 35% of colleagues in DWP do not work in a hybrid way and are in their office for all their contracted hours.
The change will put the department's hybrid working policies in line with most departments which are already applying the 60% rule across their grades.
Confirming the rule-change, a DWP spokesperson said: “It is important that DWP continues to maintain a physical office presence that supports not only our face-to-face interactions with customers, but the benefits that come from in-person working.
“That's why we are working to implement 60 percent in-office attendance for hybrid working colleagues, which is in line with the majority of the civil service.”
Responding to the decision,PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “Reducing the flexibility to work from home is a backward step, and one that we oppose. Trusting staff to work from home has been shown to improve productivity, reduce working days lost to sickness, and cuts down work-related stress conditions.
“The current flexible working regime works perfectly well and has had absolutely no detrimental impact on the productivity of staff. If it isn’t broken, why are managers trying to fix it?"
She added that thousands of civil servants "can ill-afford the additional cost that extra travel to work would incur".
Heathcote said she believes the decision to impose 60% attendance is "political rather than rational so we shall continue to fight for the abolition of all office attendance quotas for hybrid working".
Heathcote also said the union will continue to push for further hybrid working flexibilities for its job centre staff "because it was clearly proven during the pandemic that many job centre services can be carried out from home".
Back in January 2024, DWP perm sec Schofield told CSW that it was his “aspiration” for his staff to reach the 60% target and that senior civil servants would be asked to lead the way towards reaching the central mandate, which was set by ministers in November 2023.
Schofield said then that DWP is a “big and complex” organisation, and that working out how to achieve the target would require lots of planning given space constraints and the variety of roles among its employees.
At that time, Schofield said the department had many officials, such as some job centre staff, who work solely from the office, while those in hybrid roles have been working a “variety of patterns” with a 40% in-office minimum.