The best and worst public sector workplaces have been revealed.  

They did a survey of the staff – the staff says the service has been gutted. There are claims of workplace bullying and frustration over what staff call the overcooked use of all things Māori.  

This is the 2025 Public Service Census. They talked to 44,000 government employees.  

The Education Review Office are the most unhappiest – they've got very dissatisfied staff. There's only 28.5% who like working there.  

Ministry of Defence staff were the happiest, with nearly 80% satisfied or very satisfied.  

So the staff and the grumpy public service officers called for less micromanagement. They pointed to a culture of top-down and do-as-I-said leadership, and they claim that managers rarely have the time to stop and check on the well-being of staff members.  

Others took issue with workplace culture, saying in some cases it's got so bad it's caused a continual exodus of staff.  

The Government's cost-saving initiatives, which led to layoffs right across the sector, were frequently cited as a cause of low morale.  

And one piece of feedback was that last year's restructuring gutted key areas of expertise, key positions remain vacant, and ongoing attritional vacancies are not being filled.  

One public servant wrote, the priorities have not changed, the deliverables have not changed, but the size and the aggregate capability of the workforce tasked with them has significantly reduced.  

But then again, no one's happy when staff is reduced because it means everyone has to work more. It is what it is, and it is apparently what we can afford, and it might be better if they stopped moaning about it and just cracked on to work us out of this hole.