Premier Roger Cook says public servants aren’t working from home after NSW orders workers back to the office

Premier Roger Cook says his Government has no need to follow New South Wales’ lead on directing public sector workers back to the office, saying the State’s success in controlling the pandemic meant employees had largely stayed in their workplaces. But the Public Sector Commission has admitted it does not know how many civil servants are being allowed to work from home. Mr Cook’s comments followed a direction from his NSW counterpart Chris Minns, who called for public sector workers to return to the office. “The more our experience of work is shared, the more united we become. This means being physically present in our organisations,” the memorandum from Mr Minns’ office said. NSW public sector workers needed to explain why they can’t work from the office in order to get an exemption from the memo, which was effective immediately. Asked about the current working from home arrangements in WA, Mr Cook said “everyone” was expected to “work in the workplace”. He said WA’s success in containing COVID meant there were far fewer public sector workers based at home compared to Victoria — which has tried to lure workers to its public service by advertising its more flexible arrangements — and NSW. “We haven’t had the problem that they’ve had in Victoria and New South Wales, which was associated with their response to COVID,” Mr Cook said. “(Those States had) extended periods of time when public servants, and everyone really, had to stay home. So that was never part of our experience in Western Australia.” Mr Cook said working from home guidelines that were “oversighted” by the Public Sector Commission and implemented by each Government agency. But a spokesperson for the commission said it did not collect central information on how many staff accessed working from home arrangements. Such arrangements are available through a 2023 public sector agreement that states employees can request to work from home “to support their personal circumstances” and that employers can only refuse the request “on reasonable business grounds”. These grounds include that it would be “too costly,” it would be “impractical” for colleagues, it would result in a “significant loss of efficiency or productivity or have a “significant negative impact on customer service”. Mr Cook said allowing public sector workers to be based at home was not “necessary”. “I think it’s important that we can have our public servants coming together to work as teams in the workplace to perform great service for the Western Australian people,” he said.