A battle is raging over return to work policy. Who will win? Employees or employers? And at what cost?

In so many organisations, discussions over returning to the office post-pandemic, have become a battleground between employees and employers. While some are eager to get back to in-person work, others have grown accustomed to the flexibility of remote working and are pushing hard against return to office mandates and policies.

A leaked video of Bendigo Bank CEO, Marnie Baker, ordering staff back to the office two days a week for their own mental health, rather than for productivity sparked a backlash in the media. One Bendigo Bank employee was quoted as saying “I just feel that in these times, we should be well past anyone commenting or trying to comment towards what’s best for anyone else.” (source)

The 2023 State of Remote Work report revealed that while 98 percent of respondents would like to work remotely, at least some of the time for the rest of their careers, 23 percent of remote workers struggle with loneliness. The report also highlights the very real struggle around maintaining boundaries, and the challenge of personal and professional lives becoming blurred. While 71 percent of remote workers acknowledged the importance of setting work boundaries, 81 percent reported checking work emails outside of work hours, including 63 percent who reported checking emails on weekends.

To complicate the matter further, the Finance Sector Union (FSU) recently filed a dispute with the Fair Work Commission against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) in relation to CBA’s directive for over 20,000 employees to return to the office. The FSU claims that CBA has failed to consult employees on its instructions for them to spend at least 50 percent of their work time each month in the office. Former premier Jeff Kennett has recently chimed in on the issue, suggesting employees who work from home should be paid less.

In Australia, almost 90 per cent of employers have implemented mandatory in-office days, according to independent research by Robert Half. The same survey also identified that:

1. 59 percent of business leaders planned to increase the number of days staff were required in the office.
2. 87 percent of companies have implemented more mandatory in office days – 19 percent insisting on 5 days, 28 percent expecting 4 days, and 26 percent expecting 3 days in.

While the survey showed businesses are moving towards a return to office, it was tempered by the fact almost one third of respondents reported at least one employee quitting in response to these changes.

Some of the reasons cited for employees not wanting to return to the office include:

• Employees feel they are more productive at home
• Costs associated with commuting has increased and so has childcare
• If commuting adds extra hours to their day, especially in a world of rising costs of living.

On the other side of the coin, employers are sick of having to try to convince their employees to come back in the office for various reasons including:

• Leadership succession planning
• Team collaboration and culture
• Client engagement
• Innovation and creativity
• Early talent learning and development
• Culture and sense of belonging
• Occupational health, safety and wellbeing
• Risk management

One of the key questions that emerges is, what is fair and reasonable? It is clear that we need to find a middle ground; otherwise, employers risk losing good people, and employees risk losing good careers.

Bendigo Bank does appear to have a valid point in regard to returning to work being beneficial to our well-being. This is also reflected in recent Gallup data that suggests that while remote workers are the most engaged, interestingly they are also the most stressed.  

Further to this, early talent is by far the most impacted in terms of learning and find it challenging to progress at work from home without an established base of knowledge. I reflected on this and wondered who I might be at work today if I didn’t have the ability to learn from the top talent in my early years.

The learning I experienced early in my career from being physically with and around more experienced leaders did not happen in a structured manner. I learned simply by listening to them on the phone, attending a client meeting in person which includes the critical “off the record” banter you don’t see in remote meetings or connecting in the kitchen over coffee to work through a problem if you were lucky enough to get the time.

Does success lie in understanding and respecting the diverse needs and preferences of each employee? And if so, how do we find a scalable, sustainable approach to understand and harmonise all the different needs across large, complex organisations?

Methodologies like human-centred design coupled with an appetite to innovate around ways of working feel important. In addition, organisations must find new ways to create the space for both leaders and employees to feel heard and to catalyse new, fresh thinking about how to sense, learn, experiment and iterate together - to forge new pathways forwards.

NAB recently reached an agreement on Work from Home (WFH) arrangements, in consultation with the FSU, which includes a dispute resolution process for employees who have applied for, and been refused, WFH arrangements. Employees can escalate the matter to Fair Work Commission, if a WFH request is unreasonably refused.

The working from home debate feels like it’s intensifying. There are certainly many agendas forming, lines being drawn, and polarisations emerging.

So, what next? Well, it’s clear that this is a complex challenge for organisations to navigate, and so simplistic solutions and blanket mandates are likely to continue to fall short of being effective, lasting solutions.

One thing that is clear to me right now is that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. I sense that the most effective, most humane, must sustainable solutions will emerge from deep consultation, and in the organisations where leaders have the courage to walk a path of honesty, empathy and perhaps even compromise.