2024 might be the year your boss forces you back into the office.(ABC News: Mark Leonardi)
Would you quit your job if your boss told you that you must go back into the office?
Or would you adhere to the new rule, especially if it meant a potential pay rise?
More workers may be asked that in the coming months, as some of the country's biggest employers are urging staff to return to the office at least partially.
And a new report from online job ads site Seek says the balance of power may be tipping back in the employer's favour as the labour market cools.
Companies including big four bank ANZ, insurer Suncorp, and electricity retailer Origin Energy are using performance bonuses to lure staff back to the office.
And some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Google, Meta and Amazon, have told employees to be in the office at least three days a week, and warned them adherence to that directive will be a factor considered in performance reviews.
As jobs become harder to find, employers will have greater ability to dictate the terms of employment, according to Seek senior economist Matt Cowgill.
Matt Cowgill says it could get harder to work-from-home in the coming year. (ABC News: Scott Jewell)
We saw the proportion of job ads on Seek that indicate they can be done from home reach an all-time high of 11 per cent in April of 2023, he told ABC News.
But it has come down a little. It remains …now at 9.4 per cent in December of 2023.
Many job ads still suggest people can work from home but that may soon change. (Supplied)
'Shake-up coming up'
Mr Cowgill points to a shake-up coming in the market.
He notes that during COVID lockdowns, employees had to work from home.
People got used to doing that, he says, and adds the balance of power on whether to return to work or not was in the worker's favour in a strong employment market.
But as it becomes harder to find a job — ABS data released on Thursday showed the number of Australians in employment fell by 65,100 in December – that may start to change.
The cooling labour market likely does mean that employers have a bit more ability to try and bring people back to the office where they can, Mr Cowgill said.
Now that unemployment has started to rise, we have seen some job losses in December. And at Seek we've seen the number of job ads on offer fall as well.
So that does tilt the balance a little bit back towards employers in that work-from-home equation.
He notes a range of surveys of employers indicate that many of them are keen to get people back in the office a little bit more.
That might mean hybrid workers coming in an extra day, he said.
For some people, it might even mean coming in full-time.
But Seek's research also found that the ability to work from home is still valued by employees.
Matt Cowgill says the types of jobs people do may also influence the employer's decision about whether they have to head back into the office. (ABC News: Pat Rocca)
Mr Cowgill says employers that want people to come in more often than those employees are comfortable with might find it harder to attract and retain staff.
It continues to be something that dominates the search trends on Seek — people are out there looking for remote or hybrid jobs.
Seek's data suggests that a reason there's been a fall in jobs advertised as enabling people to work from home, is that there's also been a change in the types of jobs that are being advertised.
There's a little bit of a softer market for your white-collar professional jobs … and that's driving a large part of that fall in the work-from-home rate, he noted.
Does it matter where you work?
But not all companies are forcing their staff to go back into the office.
Software company Atlassian lets its staff live and work from any of the 13 countries in which it has a legal entity.
Its staff can also work outside their designated home base for short periods each year.
This is a policy that its co-founders have long held informally. And relatively early in the pandemic, in August 2020, Atlassian announced its Team Anywhere policy, allowing its employees to effectively work from wherever they want.
While work on Atlassian's new 39-storey Sydney headquarters is progressing, the company's Team Anywhere policy means about 40 per cent of its workers are located two hours or more from an Atlassian office and work remotely.
In a report on 1,000 days of letting its staff work from anywhere, Atlassian argues its candidates per role has more than doubled since Team Anywhere, without any dips in productivity.
The conversation on remote work is too caught up in where work happens, and not enough in how it happens, says Atlassian co-founder and Co-CEO Scott Farquhar.
Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar have always been fans of working from home. (Supplied: Atlassian)
The reality is, most businesses already work in some form of a distributed way — whether that's customers and clients in different offices, or colleagues across time zones.
In today's global world, in-office mandates don't bring entire teams together or solve challenges rooted in archaic ways of working. Work is a vocation, not a location, and it's about time we recognise that. This resistance to change is based on fear, not fact.
Annie Dean, head of Atlassian's Team Anywhere, says almost all work gets done today using the internet, which she calls distributed work.
Leaders who can't acknowledge this reality will have a much harder time developing high-performing teams, Ms Dean suggests.
Distributed work isn't a sacrifice – it's a huge opportunity for businesses and for people — especially under-represented groups.
We're finding that teams designed to be distributed are actually figuring out better ways of working. Atlassian is living proof that location flexibility, vibrant offices, and employee engagement can co-exist, even at scale.
Annie Dean, head of Atlassian's Team Anywhere, says almost all work gets done today using the internet.(Supplied)
Will wage rises be even harder to get?
If the jobs market softens, it may also be harder to get a pay rise.
For now, companies are still expecting it will be hard to find the workers they need.
An Ai Group CEO Survey Investment Priorities for 2024, conducted in October and November 2023 based on responses from leaders of 320 private-sector businesses across Australia, suggests that 87 per cent of industry leaders expect their business will be impacted by staff shortages in 2024.
This is only marginally lower than the 90 per cent who reported this expectation for 2023.
With expectations that staff shortages will continue for the medium term, businesses are focusing on three major strategies to manage this chronic problem: skills, wages, and efficiency.
The Ai Group survey suggests one-third (32 per cent) intend to increase wages and benefits.
But due to growing uncertainty and lower expectations for growth in the year ahead, about one-in-four businesses (23 per cent) intend to increase staff numbers in 2024, a decline from 38 per cent in 2023.
While Australia's industry leaders are optimistic about their ability to navigate the challenges of the year ahead, most are concerned about the impacts of inflation, slowing demand and geopolitical uncertainty, Ai Group Chief Executive Innes Willox said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-22/full-time-return-to-office-for-workers-as-emlopyers-gain-power/103369368
