FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4414
You asked
This is an information request relating to the number of staff who are contractual home workers.
Please include the following information:
The number of staff that currently work employed by the organisation that are contractual home workers
Please also include the following information:
The number of contractual home workers employed by the organisation in each of the last three financial years: 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22
By "the department" I mean the core department
By "contractual home workers" I mean employees who have it written into their contracts that their normal working arrangements are to work from home.
We said
Thank you for your request.
To collect the data needed for our household and social surveys, we have an interviewer workforce employed on homeworking contracts to ensure the geographical spread required for quality data collection. This remote interviewer workforce comprises the clear majority of our contractual homeworkers:
- At 31 March 2020, contractual homeworkers accounted for 10% of the total workforce, and 83% of contractual homeworkers were remotely employed interviewers
- At 31 March 2021, contractual homeworkers accounted for 9% of the total workforce, and 71% of contractual homeworkers were remotely employed interviewers
- At 31 March 2022, contractual homeworkers accounted for 14% of the total workforce, and 70% of contractual homeworkers were remotely employed interviewers
Even allowing for our Interviewer workforce, where remote working is an essential requirement for their role, the majority of the ONS workforce is contractually assigned to one of our office locations.
On the 31 August 2022, 872 employees were recorded as contractual home workers.
For the financial years 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, our response provides the number of employees recorded as contractual home workers at the end of the period – 31 March 2020, 31 March 2021 and 31 March 2022 respectively.