Ben Hamer – Sydney Morning Herald
Futurist | Author
Getting back to the office comes at a cost, but who will pay?
Just when we thought the days of talking about where we work – whether it be the home or the office – were behind us, it’s been thrown back into the spotlight.
A recent study by KPMG Australia found that two-thirds of Australian chief executives expect people to be back in the office five days a week within the next three years. While almost 90 per cent plan to reward people who come into the office with pay raises and promotions. Eek.
Soon after, an Australian man lost an appeal at the Fair Work Commission to work full-time from home, which was the first ruling under Labor’s Secure Jobs Better Pay Act.
The conversation about where we work is an important one. It influences the housing market, transport services and our carbon footprint. It even plays a role in social policy – in the US, the Biden administration is looking to convert vacant offices into affordable housing. Could this happen in Australia?
But the way the conversation is playing out is misleading, sensationalist and just blatantly unhelpful. The work-from-home debate is being framed as exactly that – a debate. It’s an adversarial stand-off between the home and the office, one or the other, as if it’s binary. But it isn’t.
The research overwhelmingly shows that some work is better done at home and some from the office. The sweet spot is a combination of both. And when we get it right, it drives up employee performance, job satisfaction and productivity.
Sure, some roles can be done entirely remotely and others from the office full-time, but a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cut it.
Chief executives saying they’ll give promotions and pay rises to people who head into the office or headlines that suggest WFH makes you more susceptible to redundancy are also dangerous. More women than men work from home. Additional cohorts, including LGBTIQ+ and introverts, also report that they perform better remotely. And so we’re at risk of undoing all the progress we’ve made around diversity and inclusion.
Many executives, who tend to drive to work, have a dedicated car space. They are on salaries that mean the cost of transport is easier to bear – if it’s even noticed. At the same time as everyday Australians are feeling the pinch of the cost of living, there’s been a decline in real wage growth. Inflation is outstripping pay rises, which means that the average employee’s take-home pay is worth less and less.
Now, consider that Australians work on average 6.1 hours of unpaid overtime every week, which is about $585 of lost income every fortnight. What’s happening is that some organisations have been relying on “time theft” to drive productivity for far too long, which has come back to bite them. Many companies are still expecting their workers to go above and beyond, putting in all those extra hours, without paying them for it. And they’re going to expect even more from their people if, over the next 12–24 months, mass redundancies occur as they try to hit ambitious budget targets with fewer people.
So, employees are pulling back on their discretionary efforts. They’re still doing the core requirements of their job description but they’re not as willing to burn the midnight oil. Instead, they’re setting up work-life boundaries and, in doing so, highlighting how Australian organisations have relied on the goodwill of workers for far too long to help prop up productivity.
I, for one, don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Dr Ben Hamer is an accredited futurist who talks and writes about the cultural and technological trends shaping the way we will live, work and play in the future.