FOI reference: FOI-2024-1931
You asked
What exactly do ONS staff Contracts of Employment state re. working from home?
Do such contracts even provide for working from home?
We said
Thank you for your request.
We have had a hybrid working model for some years now, in line with the wider Civil Service. Face-to-face interaction supports personal collaboration, learning and innovation, while some tasks can be done as effectively or even more effectively at home. We are applying this flexibly to help balance business and personal needs, and have offered all colleagues extensive support.
UKSA has four contract types:
Homeworking contracts that state ‘A condition of your home working appointment is that your work is carried out at your home address, which is: [home address]. You will not be required to work at another location except with your agreement’.
Field-based contracts state that ‘A condition of your employment is that you work from [home address], but you will be expected and are required to travel to any place of work within daily travelling distance of your home address’.
International Passenger Survey contracts that state ‘A condition of your employment is that you work at [IPS_Site] or an associated base. From time-to-time you may also be required to attend one of the main ONS sites or other venue in connection with the business of ONS’.
Standard contracts that state ‘For the present you will be based at XXXXX but you can be required to transfer to any Civil Service post in the UK at the discretion of ONS. This requirement is known as the mobility obligation and is a condition of most Civil Service appointments. All staff employed by ONS on or after 1 May 2013 are subject to the mobility obligation. You will not at present be required to work outside the UK for more than one month on any one occasion’. Guidance published on the intranet site includes our ‘Flexible Working Framework’ which provides for hybrid working as an informal arrangement to enable greater flexibility in terms of where employees work taking into account overall business need, office capacity and space utilisation as well as individual preferences’.