Dark work-from-home omen as more Aussies forced back to office

A major Aussie gambling company has ordered staff to return to the office full-time and other workers have been warned they could soon follow suit. Tab Corp has jumped on a growing trend of having workers be in the office from Monday to Friday.

While many workplaces have been adopting a hybrid work-from-home model in recent years, some are going the other way and reverting back to five days a week in the office. Recruitment expert Graham Wynn told Yahoo Finance it's not a matter of if but when for millions of Australians currently enjoying flexible work.

"This will continue. The private sector has been pushing this back to the office for quite a while now," he said.

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"I think, realistically, people have to accept it is going to happen, and we're certainly seeing a huge decrease in the number of companies offering jobs with work-from-home or hybrid opportunities."

It's an issue that can have huge implications for Australian workers, with a Yahoo Finance poll of more than 3,200 people revealing 69 per cent would leave their jobs if they were forced back into the office.

Why is Tab Corp going back to the office?

There are about 1,500 staff across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane impacted by the return-to-office order.

CEO Gillon McLachlan said the move would help create a "winning culture", with workers told there will be some flexibility if there is a genuine need to work from home.

The change is effective immediately but allowances will be in place for some staff to re-align their schedules.

“Having us together as a team, focused and driving towards our goals will deliver outcomes and success,” staff were informed via email.

"Being connected as a team also drives a winning culture and supports us to collaborate and achieve our best.

“At times, you may need to work flexibly, for example starting or finishing work at different times, or working remotely for a day – you should discuss and agree these requirements with your manager.

“Some of you may have formal flexible working arrangements in place and in these cases, nothing changes. To be clear however, your default position is to come into the office every day.”

Amazon's end of working from home

Tab Corp's move comes hot on the heels of Amazon, who recently told its 7,000 Aussie staff that they would be required to come back into the office full-time.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy broke the news to employees world-wide that the company would be returning to its pre-pandemic office requirements from January 2.

The e-commerce giant has required staff to come into the office at least three days a week since May.

“When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant," Jassy said.

It's also not far behind the NSW public sector, which recently announced an end to working from home arrangements for hundreds of thousands of staff.

Ending WFH privileges isn't 'shooting themselves in the foot'

While working from home has been a major perk for the past few years, Wynn believes many workplaces won't feel pressured to keep it going because of the current job market in Australia.

"There's enough people out there looking for work and if people who choose not to conform to this way of working and want to leave those organisations, they will find somebody else," he told Yahoo Finance.

"So I don't think companies shoot themselves in the foot that much."

The number of workers required to work from the office full-time has doubled over the last 12 months.

About two in five Aussie employees are now expected to head into the office five days per week, research from Robert Half recently found.

The vast majority of Aussie companies (86 per cent) require staff to come into the office at least once a week, with five days the next most common arrangement, followed by three days a week (17 per cent) and four days (12 per cent).

Robert Half director Andrew Brushfield said employers were taking advantage of the tight labour market and a lack of “candidate leverage” to get staff back to the office.

"The pendulum is swinging back to pre-pandemic levels where working from home was an anomaly rather than an expectation,” Brushfield said.

Why working from home could soon be a right

While Wynn believes more companies and businesses could soon jump on the back-to-the-office bandwagon, some workers could soon have a right to work from home.

The Fair Work Commission is conducting an investigation into whether a WFH precedent should be set for clerical workers in the private sector.

The types of roles in a Clerks Award include administrative assistants, receptionists, bookkeepers and many others. HR expert Lara Nercessian told Yahoo Finance there is a lot riding on this inquiry.

"A lot of businesses and organisations are going to be quite apprehensive in terms of the way that this unfolds," she said.

"After their significant efforts and attempts to get people back into the office full-time, I think a lot of organisations may see it as undoing the work that they've done.

"Depending on the outcome of this hearing, it may also serve as a model for other modern awards, not just the Clerks Award, and could have a much broader impact."

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