TRANSCRIPT
Lord Mayor of Perth Basil Zempilas is drawing a line in the sand.
At least, that's what he's told Channel Seven.
"I've long maintained that the best place for workers is at work. The odd day for a bit of work-life balance, fine. But not every day and not two days a week. Come to work."
The Lord Mayor's comments are the latest contribution to a debate that keeps coming up now that the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is behind us: the tension between the COVID-driven shift to working from home - and a growing push to come back to the office.
Law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has just released a report called the Future of Work that's found a number of employers are ambivalent about continuing to allow widespread remote work.
Some have been using hard tactics to recall employees, like law firm Maddocks.
Chief Executive David Newman told SBS News in April they were requiring their staff to come in three days a week - though he said that's what the employees themselves wanted.
"This calendar year, we've seen people wanting to come back in and re-engaging with their peers."
Others are considering an idea floated earlier this year by former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, who argued some home-based workers should be paid less than office-based ones.
"Social patterns have changed. Do we pay those who are going to work a travelling allowance? Medical staff, first responders have to go to work. They have no alternative - and it costs them."
Still, more companies are eschewing the stick, and offering carrots instead.
Organisations are offering in-house events like team lunches and drinks in the hope that will encourage people to be physically present in the workplace on a more regular basis.
Dr Ruchi Sinha is an associate professor of organisational behaviour at the University of South Australia's business school.
She says people are not ready to give up working from home so easily.
"It was a very big shift, essentially the blurring of the boundaries of work and home, and work and office. People realised how much time they saved by not engaging in the commute every day. They realised they were less distracted."
The report has found organisations themselves see the benefits of working from home.
Only a handful of organisations are mandating a full return to the workplace, with almost half saying hybrid arrangements have improved access to far-flung talent, while just under 70 percent believe it's boosted applicant diversity.
Just over half of employers are also concerned that forcing more in-office working could result in higher staff turnover.
But the Future of Work survey has also found expectations for bringing workers back to the office within the next two years are higher in Australia than anywhere else in the world.
The Bendigo Bank's Marnie Baker is among those bosses who believe it's better.
She's told employees in a video leaked to News Limited that Bendigo is based on relationships - that you cannot properly build remotely.
"I see it playing out when people are together in the office. The energy levels, the interaction, the innovation. That's something that you will not get when you're sitting at home by yourself, that innovative thinking. We've just got to get back together more often."
Dr Sinha says that's not necessarily the case.
"Individual contributors will always do fine with hybrid work because they get their work done on their own, less coordination needed. And you've seen the most productivity gain there. Even the research shows that individual performance has gone up - but there's mixed results on team performance. And given that most of work is designed within teams, organisations would be struggling. They might actually be struggling to see the productivity gains from teamwork."
Dr Sinha says it's still possible to maintain a great workplace culture and improve teamwork and productivity remotely - but companies have to be willing to move in that direction.
She says middle managers are key to this - because it's through them that companies measure productivity.
"The middle managers throughout COVID had the highest level of exhaustion and emotional burnout at work... They too were working remotely, they too were flexible. But they were not given the training or the aid or the technology to manage things. And that model of managing people has not changed since COVID."
Some experts, like Stanford University Department of Economics scholar Nicholas Bloom, say this is a train that can't be stopped.
He believes that technology could play a big role in maintaining - and even increasing - a work from home culture.
"From talking to lots of tech companies - you know, Google, Microsoft, Apple, tons of start-ups - they're all saying this is a massive market. We're going to now improve the technology to service this market because there's much more money... This is going to mean in the long run numbers who work from home are going to increase."
