Guidance

Home working and the UK Civil Service

This publication sets out the key findings of a survey undertaken to assess the impact of home working on employee experience.

Documents

Home working and the UK Civil Service

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Details

In July 2020, Leesman measured the home working experience of nearly 26,000 UK Civil Service employees from the 19 Government departments and agencies. Civil Service employees were invited to reply to a standardised online home working experience survey developed at the start of the pandemic by Leesman. This approach has been adopted by numerous organisations world-wide and therefore also offers the opportunity for participating organisations to benchmark and validate their results against thousands of others.

The structure of the Home Working survey is based on a framework developed by Leesman in 2010 to measure office workers’ workplace experience. This focuses on the activities people do in their work and how well these are supported, what features are important to them and how satisfied employees are with them, and how employees generally perceive that the environment impacts critical outcomes like perceived personal productivity and sense of connection.

The focus of this analysis was to identify the key factors that significantly affect the home working experience for the Civil Service departments and agencies who participated, either positively or negatively.

The report presents the findings across five key themes, which investigate the factors that are driving the home working experience:

  1. Impact on organisation

  2. Role complexity

  3. Home work settings

  4. Demographic effects

  5. Post-pandemic preference

Published 7 May 2021