There have been monumental shifts in work from home options in recent months, as some of Australia’s biggest employers have issued mandates requiring team members to get back to the office..
So is this the end of working from home as we know it?
It’s possible when even Zoom – the company providing the tools that have become synonymous with remote work – announces it’ll now require employees to work from home at least two days a week. The San Francisco-based company made the announcement earlier this week.
And tech companies that suggested employees could work from home “forever” just a couple of years ago have also seen a fast turnaround in their willingness to provide such options.
But we could more likely see a growing divide between employers that control how and where employees work – and employers that don’t attempt such control. Ultimately then, we’ll also see a divide in the overall diversity such employers attract.
Companies like Twitter, Amazon, Google and Apple have issued new return-to-office mandates in recent months. At one extreme, Twitter owner Elon Musk has described working from home as “morally wrong”, having removed work-from-home options within weeks of taking over the platform in late 2022. Google announced that employees will need to spend at least three days in the office, unless they have received approval to work from home, and is even linking in-person attendance to performance reviews.
Some of Australia’s biggest employers are also rethinking remote work. Commonwealth Bank issued a return-to-work policy for its workforce to be in the office at least half of their working time per month by July 17, while NAB initially ordered 500 senior managers to return to the office full time, but later agreed to give all employees the right to request work from home, following a union deal.
A massive 87 per cent of Australian employers have now implemented mandatory office days, with one in five (19 per cent) requiring staff to be in the office five days a week, according to new research out today by Robert Half.
Such return-to-the-office rules see employers losing team members. Robert Half finds that almost one in three (31 per cent) of employers have lost at least one employee due to office mandates, with 40 per cent anticipating resignations.
Meanwhile, with unions successfully negotiating limitations on refusing remote work options, such as the recent win for Australia’s 120,000 federal employees – employers that do mandate office days will increasingly find themselves competing for talent against employers that don’t.
As Nicole Gorton, Director at Robert Half said on the results. “Australian employer sentiments relating to working from home has shifted in the last six months. Businesses have put their foot down and allocated in-office days for their staff.”
Gorton also addresses the cost to employers on attaining and retaining the best talent, with many professionals now seeing “flexibility and choice” as non-negotiables, with arrangements in place developed over the past three years that they won’t relinquish. She says that workplaces shouldn’t pull back on remote work policies altogether – but rather work on getting the hybrid mix right.
So why issue return to work mandates at all? The Robert Half survey says that 40 per cent of business leaders say it’s “better to have important meetings face to face,” and 37 per cent say “productivity is improved when employees are working in the office.
Interestingly, 31 per cent say “they need to make use of office space.” – Given the housing crisis, you’d think more imaginative ideas are possible here.
The fast turnaround in requirements to return to the office – even when it’s only two or even one day a week, will likely have huge consequences on employees, especially for women.
While working five days in an office was very much the norm for many workplaces before the pandemic, people have shifted their lives – often in dramatic ways by moving out of major city locations – to make their work lives better suit the realities of their out-of-work lives.
There are certainly positives to being in an office, especially for the social interactions that come up and the opportunity to learn and bounce ideas off each other organically. But some of these benefits can also be gained through other ideas – such as giving employees access to co working spaces that are closer to their homes, or by creating longer, quarterly catchups and direct strategy and learning sessions.
Mandates restrict flexibility and choice and, ultimately, autonomy and well-being. Mandates also limit diversity, given the ability to get to an office so often depends on factors largely beyond control: like physical ability, geographical location and care responsibilities.