Govt chooses anecdotes over data to justify work from home stance

Analysis: Monday’s work from home announcement for the public sector was a chance for the “data and evidence” Government to rely on data and evidence – but it didn’t. 
Instead, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister Nicola Willis leaned on anecdotes to give their claim credence without specifying a source. 
Prior policies, such as raising speed limits, have been criticised by experts for having no basis in evidence. But this announcement marked an exception to the pattern: data exists to back up the central claims. 
The decision not to come to the table with specifics represents a missed opportunity to rebut claims the Government sees data as an “inconvenience”. 
In Monday’s announcement, Luxon and Willis called on public sector bosses to crack down on work from home agreements. Though the two made many concessions about the importance and need for these arrangements, the bottom line was clear. “If it’s possible for you to work in the office, you should,” Willis said.
Luxon reiterated that the biggest loss because of remote working was the interpersonal elements, exemplified by a junior staff member missing out on face-to-face interactions with superiors, or, said Willis, the chance to chat about the intricacies of document management systems over tea.
These points are grounded in reality, but reality was not used to justify the claims. As the Government’s track record has not been good when it comes to evidence-based decisions, this signified a missed opportunity to prove they really do care about facts and figures.
Instead of hard data, Luxon and Willis repeatedly used three nonspecific appeals to evidence to back up their claims: citing similar decisions made by overseas governments or large multinational companies; relating anecdotal evidence about a time someone has raised this subject in conversation; and citing unspecified studies or research papers that apparently back up their argument. In any case, a specific person, paper, country or company was not referenced.
Willis heavily leaned on personal anecdotes, using some variation of “many public servants will say …” or “I have been told personally by …” nine times during the conference. The only time she used a different appeal to evidence was when she cited decisions made by overseas groups, which only happened once.
Luxon favoured appeals to other governments or companies, a claim he made five times, or appeals to a scientific study that apparently proved his point, which he cited twice. 
At no point in any of these appeals – 17 in total – was a source specified or a hard number given.
But unlike previous policies such as military-style boot camps or cutting smokefree legislation, data to support the work from home initiative does exist.  
Luxon’s concern about soft skill building, the bit he said was “the real opportunity lost” with remote working, was clearly backed by solid evidence. The more people work from home, the lower overall office productivity gets, according to a 2019 study that specifically noted the loss of face-to-face interactions with superiors. A different study in the US from 2017 to 2018 noted that the more highly paid a worker was, the more likely they were to work from home, meaning Willis’ call back to the office may need to be aimed more at the higher-ups than the recent grads.
That being said, working from home has been shown to improve productivity, be it five days a week or just a few days per month. But there is not consensus among all studies, and a lack of New Zealand-specific data is apparent.
The Prime Minister does not need to be a walking fount of academic citations. There is an entire position – the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor – dedicated to supplying him with precisely these sources. But Luxon has let this position sit empty, even though a candidate was selected months ago. Meanwhile, the Government has cut 400 research-producing jobs across the public sector, resulting in a shortage of people capable of producing this advice as well as positions from which to dispense it. 
That is not to say the presentation was devoid of statistics. Willis brought hard numbers to the table at one point, though the numbers were from a study conducted three years ago, which only surveyed two-thirds of the public sector. 
Still, Willis said this data showed 58 percent of the public workforce had some sort of work from home arrangement. How this data, collected by the Public Service Commission during the Covid-19 pandemic, compares with current figures is unknown.
Willis tried to bolster these numbers by introducing recent estimates by the Treasury and the Social Investment Agency, which suggested a third and a fifth of their staff respectively worked from home in a given week. 
But that was as far as the hard numbers went.
Willis herself admitted collecting data was the key to working out a reasonable policy on working from home, “so we can see what’s really going on”. Until data was centrally collected, Willis said it was hard to say how prevalent working from home arrangements really were in the public service.
This did not stop Government from going ahead with the policy. Although the first step was to collect data to understand the scope of the problem – if there is one – Cabinet was comfortable acting first and proving impetus later. 
It’s a pattern seen elsewhere with the Government, as multiple Regulatory Impact Statements (for example, the one for the Fast-Track Approvals Bill) have stressed the inability to provide comprehensive advice has been because of tight deadlines. 
Speed and efficiency – or at least, the appearance of speed and efficiency – have repeatedly been shown to be a higher priority than ensuring the decision is actually based in reality.