Raven HR reposted this
Founder of Raven HR | Senior HR/IR/ER Professional | Legally Qualified | Solver of Problems | Mentor |
🏡 WFH v Return to the Office 🏪 Part 2 Further to my post yesterday: 👩🏭 The 5-day workweek originated with Henry Ford in 1926 and applied to manufacturing employees. Today’s modern workforce, primarily comprised of knowledge workers, has dramatically different needs and responsibilities that require more flexible options. 🇦🇺 In Australia there is no right to work from home (WFH), however employees who meet certain criteria (e.g. pregnant, have caring responsibilities etc) can make a request to work from home as part of a flexible working arrangement. 👩🏻⚖️ The Fair Work Commission (FWC) is currently reviewing whether the Clerks-Private Sector Award covering administrative workers, should include the right to work from home. The review will decide whether to include a general right to work from home in the award, which could then be expanded to other Modern Awards and flow on to enterprise agreements across Australia. 👩🏻💻 This has the potential to extend WFH rights to approximately 91,000 administrative and clerical employees. This could potentially impact over a million workers nationally and will be decided by the FWC in 2025. ABS data shows around 37% of Australian's work from home regularly, which is 5% higher from pre-pandemic levels. 🇺🇸 In America, Amazon’s decision to mandate a return to the office 5 days a week drew a lot of attention and controversy among employees. A survey conducted by the professional social network Blind showed that 91% of workers are dissatisfied with the mandate, and 73% are searching for new jobs. According to Forbes the data speaks for itself: 🔹 Return to the office mandates lower engagement, morale, productivity and retention, all without benefiting the bottom line. ⚠️ 🦘 Employers in Australia need to be cautious about following the mandates in America as they could face a rise in indirect discrimination claims from employees and likely many high performing employees will leave. 🔹 Instead of forcing employees back to the office, listen to what they want and need. 🔹 Then collaborate with them to find the best solution. Only then will you cultivate a culture of trust and respect that benefits everyone and promotes diversity and inclusion. —————————————————————————————— If you found this post useful follow Melisa Raven 🐦⬛ and click the 🔔 to ensure you see all my posts. Raven HR #HR #IR #Consulting #Outsourcing
Trust begets trust and with that comes rewards. Thanks for sharing your insights, Melisa.
It's a really interesting topic and it was good to hear your thoughts on it Melisa - thanks for sharing!
Founder of Raven HR | Senior HR/IR/ER Professional | Legally Qualified | Solver of Problems | Mentor |
3dIn my opinion giving employees choice is the way to go. Employers who do this will attract the best talent, and employees are likely to be more productive, reduce burn out, improve work/life balance etc. Employers need to rethink their organisational design and ways of working for the future, rather than holding on to the past and retrain their leaders to be leaders of the future where employees performing clerical/office roles can work from anywhere.