Public Sector Workforce Guidance for the Post-Winter COVID-19 Response

New Zealand’s Public Service has played a critical role in leading the Government’s COVID-19 response and recovery effort. The Public Service continues to deliver on that mission, while continuing to serve New Zealand and New Zealanders, providing the services and support they rely on, as the country moves away from the COVID-19 Protection Framework (CPF).

This means we need our policies and settings in all Public Service agencies to continue to meet the needs of the New Zealanders we engage with, as the course of the COVID-19 pandemic changes.

We have evolved from an elimination strategy early on in the pandemic, which utilised alert levels, to one of minimisation and protection. Following the Government’s announcement on 12 September, with widespread uptake of vaccines and antivirals, we are now able to manage the spread of the virus without imposing extraordinary restrictions on individuals.

COVID-19 will be in the community on an ongoing basis and the Post-Winter COVID-19 response will be the strategy for dealing with the virus. The waning of the Omicron wave does not signal the end of the pandemic. It is very likely there will be future waves and new variants of unknown severity and transmissibility. We need to plan for a range of scenarios and have systems ready in place to be able to be agile in response to developments.

Complying with all required public health and social measures remains the bottom line for all agencies while continuing to provide public services for all of New Zealand, including our most vulnerable. As we move back to normal working systems, we will look to embed some policies as part of business as usual. However, it is important that we retain the ability to reactivate the mitigations that supported our response, to ensure we can quickly respond to a new wave or variant. Agencies will need to keep their health and safety risk assessments and policies under regular review as the situation develops.

Agencies should continue to engage with workers and unions on how they comply with the public health and social measures of the COVID-19 response.

Overview of the guidance

This guidance is issued by the Public Service Commissioner under s95(a) of the Public Service Act 2020 and applies to Public Service agencies^[1]. It replaces our COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout Guidance and COVID-19 Public Sector Workforce Guidelines.

Agency chief executives are responsible for deciding how to apply this guidance in the particular context of their agency.

This guidance is based on the current and immediately foreseeable COVID-19 context and will be reviewed and updated as changes to circumstances require.

The guidance provides for a consistent approach to dealing with COVID-19 in the community and its impact, implementing policies, health and safety risk assessments, and processes across Public Service agencies and their workforces.

The Post-Winter COVID-19 response guidance supports the expectation that all public servants who can be vaccinated are vaccinated, and those eligible for boosters receive them in a timely manner.

This consistency and alignment will support continuity of public services for New Zealanders, including those that are public facing. It will also support us to maintain the trust and confidence New Zealanders have in government and the Public Service.

Above all else, the guidance aims to protect the communities public servants engage with, and the health and safety of public servants themselves, while ensuring New Zealanders can access the services they need.

The guidance also supports agencies to normalise the management of leave while operating under the Post-Winter COVID-19 response settings.

[1] Public Service agencies are described as: Public Service departments; departmental agencies; New Zealand Police; the New Zealand Defence Force; the Parliamentary Counsel Office; Crown agents; Autonomous and Independent Crown entities; other Crown entities; organisations listed in Schedule 4, and companies listed in Schedule 4A, of the Public Finance Act 1989; and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.