FOI Reference: FOI-2024-1884
You asked
I would be grateful for answers to the following questions:
1. What has been the cost to your department (both RDEL and CDEL) of making the necessary changes to support the civil service wide 60% minimum office attendance expectation?
2. How many staff have cited this expectation, or office working requirements, as a reason for leaving upon their resignation?
We said
Thank you for your request.
1. ONS is unable to commit to the 60% minimum office attendance requirement as we do not have enough workspace to accommodate those numbers of colleagues without taking on additional space. We have therefore set our attendance expectation at 40%, which our estate can accommodate with some small adjustments. The current cost of preparing our estate for greater numbers of colleagues returning to the office more regularly is c.£147,000.
2. The optional exit questionnaire used to survey our leavers does not directly or explicitly ask any questions about minimum office attendance.
The questionnaire does, however, ask free text questions, and if a leaver wanted to declare minimum office attendance as a reason for the leaving, they would be able to use the free text questions to do so.
The ONS, announced its position on office attendance on 16 November 2023. Between 16 November 2023 and 21 March 2024, 162 optional exit questionnaires were submitted. Those 162 submitted questionnaires have been analysed against the following two free text questions:
Is there anything else you would like to tell us about your reason for leaving the ONS?
Do you have any additional comments you would like to share?
Of the 162 submitted questionnaires, in 25 cases, the free text response suggests minimum office attendance was one of the principle reasons for them leaving, and in a further 10 cases, it was cited as a secondary reason (where the decision to leave had already been made, but the contributor still chose to reference the position). Therefore, 35 completed questionnaires which reference required office attendance, out of 162 completed, which is 21.6% of completed questionnaires.