Seven in 10 civil servants polled in a survey by YouGov have said having the ability to work from home has a positive effect on the civil service.
A new YouGov survey of 101 officials – all ranked higher executive officer grade or above – explored civil servants’ perceptions of the Whitehall machine using the same questions the pollster asked MPs in March.
The survey, published today, found 75% of the sampled officials believe working from home has had a positive impact on their own department, and 70% think it has had a positive effect on the Whitehall civil service in general.
A slightly higher proportion – 78% – said working from home has had a positive impact on employee productivity.
Civil servants were particularly enthusiastic about the difference the shift to working from home in the last few years has made in terms of attracting and keeping talent, with 86% agreeing it has had a positive impact on recruitment and retention. And some 85% said it had boosted employee satisfaction.
Meanwhile, more than half said remote working has had a positive impact on public service delivery (58%), and half said it has had a positive effect on policy development and decision-making (50%) and communication and collaboration (50%).
Survey respondents were less positive about the impact of working from home on performance monitoring, with 28% saying the impact of working from home had been positive in this regard, compared to 25% who said it had been negative, 35% who describe it as “mixed”, and 11% who thought there hadn’t been any impact.
The survey also asked civil servants to come up with "the most appropriate" work-from-home policy.
The civil service has a mandate of 60% in-office attendance, a policy introduced by Rishi Sunak's administration in late 2023 that was retained by the Labour government last year. Half of the survey respondents said mandating one or two days in the office a week made the most sense, while 20% preferred requiring three or four days a week in the office. None supported demanding everyone turn up every day.
Three in ten felt the most appropriate policy would be to allow all civil servants to work from home as much as they want.
The survey also asked about the overall performance of the civil service, and found that around six in ten (59%) of the sampled officials think it is performing well – a view only shared by two in five of MPs recently polled by YouGov.
The survey also found that just over half (53%) of officials feel that civil servants do not face appropriate repercussions for failing to perform.
Asked about specific aspects of Whitehall’s performance, 64% agreed that work is performed to a high standard, while 67% said officials “typically seek to fulfil ministerial directions and proactively seek to overcome obstacles to their fulfilment”.
However, the results also showed concern about groupthink and openness to new ideas.
Some 47% of respondents said Whitehall is too prone to groupthink and tends to hire, retain and promote civil servants with orthodox views, while 45% said the civil service is too risk averse and closed to new ideas, and 43% said “leadership within the Whitehall civil service is very poor”.
The poll also asked about attitudes towards artificial intelligence. Two-thirds (65%) of respondents said the adoption of AI “along the lines outlined by the government” will have a positive impact on the civil service over the next few years.
Officials were especially likely to say AI will have a positive on improving productivity (71%), with more than half also expecting it to help save money (57%) and improve public service delivery (52%).
They were less certain that it would improve policy development and decision-making (30%), with 38% saying it would not impact this area and 24% believing it would make things worse.