This article is written by Patrick Lindsay, Senior Policy Advisor, Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment

Around a year ago, I was asked to take part in an experiment.

My unit at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment had just decided to recruit policy staff in locations across the country, broadening its scope from the capital city where the vast majority of government’s policy workforce is housed.

I’m now working from Christchurch, a provincial city 400 kilometres and a good splash of ocean away from New Zealand’s Parliament. There, I advise ministers, write briefings, facilitate stakeholder workshops – the whole package – as part of a nationally-distributed policy team spanning 4 cities across the country.

This arrangement challenges conventional public service wisdom, which says that for policy folk to work effectively, we need to be crammed together in a couple of buildings downtown, a block or less from Parliament. This thinking assumes that seeing each other face-to-face and being available to advise ministers at short notice creates a high-performing public service culture.

Like many such assumptions that have been hanging around in the public service for generations (I’m looking at you, ties), this is being reassessed. The UK Minister for Cabinet Office has directed the UK public service to consider decentralisation, while many of us recently sampled remote working under Covid-19.

Given this, I want to share some benefits and challenges my nationally-distributed policy shop has already had to address. Hopefully, this can help you approach inevitable conversations about decentralisation with curiosity rather than scepticism or reluctance.

The Benefits

Resilience

Think of the number of times an accidental fire alarm or single public transport incident has meant your team’s productivity has ground to a standstill. Or the risk of a natural disaster shutting down an entire city – this one is always at the forefront of our minds in New Zealand, a country boldly located on some major seismic fault lines.

Enabling staff to work from other cities stops forcing people to choose between their policy careers and their families or lifestyles

Decentralised teams are more resilient to all these things. It pays not to have all your eggheads in one basket. When the city of Auckland briefly re-entered Covid-19 lockdown, our non-Auckland policy staff, still able to work from the office, were well-placed to support our Auckland colleagues. Some of us picked up extra work while those stuck at home attended to more important things – their families, their mental health, their sourdough starters. Having this support meant our team suffered virtually no drop in productivity during this lockdown.

Flexibility

Recruiting in the regions has enabled us to retain policy staff who are great at their jobs and have deep central government experience, but who simply don’t want to live in the capital any more. Wellington is an increasingly unaffordable city that requires you to suffer hour-long public transport commutes and some of the worst weather in the country, all for the privilege of living there. A lot of people – myself included, for several years – live there because there’s not much choice if you want to work in central government policy.

Enabling staff to work from other cities stops forcing people to choose between their policy careers and their families or lifestyles. This flexibility helps to get us the best people working on the best policy solutions – regardless of where in the country those people might choose to live.

Culture

For many teams, working in close quarters produces distractions, gossip, interpersonal conflict and lingering coffee catch ups away from the desk. Being decentralised has largely enabled my team to avoid these pitfalls, as we significantly cut down on transactional, ‘day-to-day’ interactions. We unlock more space to focus on strategic work together using email, phone and video conference. In busy policy shops that demand productivity and performance – i.e. all policy shops – this can be incredibly valuable.

Securing these benefits for your own team requires taking a few things into account first:

  • **  Invest in technology.** When I started working remotely, we didn’t yet have peer-to-peer video conferencing tools set up. I had to attend meetings via a cellphone on speaker phone sitting in the middle of a conference room table – something that simply wasn’t sustainable. Having access to and actively using technology like MS Teams and Zoom is vital for decentralised working to succeed.
  • The whole team needs to reassess how they work. Workplace culture assumes everyone is in one location, so we’ve had to check a lot of these assumptions to ensure our team is cohesive and engaged. The team previously had daily 9am stand-up meetings, which must now be digital. A team leader might bring cake to recognise success, and would now arrange something so regional staff are included in the celebration, too. Shifting how everyone works, not just the regional staff, is key to engaging the whole team.
  • It might not work for everyone. The people on my team who’ve found working remotely easier are those who already have a foundation in central government. They know the art and science of policy and government, and can work autonomously without much coaching or training. While it’s possible for graduates and more junior staff to work remotely, there’s the risk that this could limit their access to the learning opportunities and support they need to develop and succeed.

I know it might be alien to think that your closest teammates might be in a city hundreds of kilometres away, and that you might see them face-to-face once a year. But the benefits are clear. The sooner more ministries start experimenting with this approach, the sooner we can begin drawing on the talent that already exists in cities outside the capital – Patrick Lindsay

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