The suit will have to be retrieved from the back of the cupboard. The commuter pass will have to be renewed. And the dog will have to find someone else to take her for a walk.
Amid the blizzard of executive orders that President Trump signed on his first day back in the White House one of the most significant will be ordering federal employees to return to the office full time. But hold on. If it is that easy for America to bring the whole working from home fiasco to an end, why can’t we follow its lead – after all we need to boost the productivity of our public sector even more than the United States does.
With a stroke of his pen, Trump has ended the working from home experiment. “Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person,” stated his order bluntly.
All of the 2.3 million civilian employees of the federal government will no longer be allowed to lounge around in their PJ’s all day, logging into a Zoom meeting from time to time. Sure, there will be resistance. The unions are demanding talks, and, this being America, Trump is already facing legal action over his decision.
Even so, the order is clear enough. Staff will have to go back to the office full-time or find a different job. To the President’s team, led by no doubt by Elon Musk, it will be win-win. Either staff comply, or else the slackers quit. Either way, the state machine will become leaner and more efficient.
But if Trump can end working from home, why can’t the UK? We have an even worse problem than the US does. Despite a mandate from the last Conservative government that civil servants should spend at least three days a week in the office, very few are complying with even that minimal standard.
A report by the Centre for Cities last year found that government employees were in the office an average of 2.2 days a week. Any attempt to go beyond that is met with fierce resistance, with staff at the Land Registry and even the Office for National Statistics threatening strikes as soon as they are asked to come in more regularly.
That is not good enough. We now have plenty of evidence that staff are less productive, less motivated, and less innovative when they are working from home. We can see that in the constant delays that mean basic state services, from getting land registry documents, to probate for wills, to driving tests for learners, are barely functioning any more.
The private sector has already worked out the dire impact it has on productivity and ordered people to return to their desks. We are rapidly developing a two-tier workforce, where white-collar civil servants enjoy a privileged existence, working where and when they choose to, while everyone else has to get back to the daily grind.
Trump has just shown us that there is a very simple solution. Just tell people to go back to the office and fire them if they don’t. All it takes is a government, and a leader, with the courage and determination to make it happen.
