There is no turning the clock back on home-based work

The start of 2025 has seen a flurry of exhortations to Canberrans for a full-time ‘return to the office’.

These include calls by business and property groups for a mandated return to the office, including from the Property Council and the Canberra Airports Corporation.

Region also reported that Liberal Senator Jane Hume used a speech at the Menzies Research Centre to flag that it will be an expectation of a Dutton Liberal government that all members of the APS work from the office five days a week.

Readers following events in the United States will see echoes of Trump edicts requiring US Federal employees to return to face-to-face work, but they might also feel familiar to Canberra public sector workers riding trends and fads over many decades – be it the productivity push of the 1990s, regionalisation in the 2000s or the outsourcing push across the 2010s.

Unlike those trends, which all partly stemmed from real social, technological, economic or cultural changes, this push to sweep us all back to the cubicles feels oddly disconnected from the market realities, new technologies and consumer preferences at work in 2025.

It’s not like public sector work was all done ‘in’ an office to begin with, or even by public servants. In reality, the caravan has moved on and COVID fast forwarded a 2020s workplace revolution on par with the industrial revolution or the use of electricity to light offices after dark.

Work 2.0 includes work from home in the mix and it’s here to stay. While it’s an overused comparison, some of those who want a blanket return to work 1.0 really are starting to sound like the Luddites who railed against the mechanisation of looms at the start of the industrial revolution.

Neither looms nor Zooms are going away any time soon.

The truth is that many workers and organisations have found that working and meeting on screen using new platforms integrated with desktop technologies is a better way of working with more opportunities for efficient collaboration, coworking and scheduling than darting between buildings with a PowerPoint on a wall. It’s also cheaper for employers who can save on infrastructure.

Some of us have no offices to return to.

Far from sitting around in our pyjamas, most who work from home in office jobs are actually busier than ever, jaunting from meeting to meeting with very few breaks and high productivity. That raises its own questions, especially about mental health and also what we’ve lost in the online world, but they are not going to be solved by a doomed nostalgic push to roll the clock back to halcyon days spent between the printer and watercooler.

There is gathering evidence on the productivity front. Working from home and hybrid arrangements are facilitating a shift from hours spent working, or simply being visible in an office space, to actually achieving outcomes. Recent research from UNSW also found that flexible arrangements prompt managers to ‘step up’, becoming increasingly intentional in their management style and placing a high premium on team wellbeing and cohesion. There is also the added benefit of empowering employees to have agency over their own work.

Speaking of productivity improvement, a more useful approach from the Opposition, the Property Council and Canberra Airports Corporation alike would be to look at barriers, impediments and disincentives which make face-to-face work unpalatable.

The reality is that in the 2020s, people are voting with their feet and rendering a verdict on poor infrastructure and lousy conditions in the workplace which include timewasting, toxic work cultures, a lack of flexibility, unrealistic workloads, poor transport, poorly maintained offices and inattention to worker comfort, poor parking or access to family friendly benefits like affordable childcare. And don’t get us started on accessible air travel.

The trend towards work from home in the 2020s has also lifted the lid on false expectations by employers and the absurdity of some of the rituals associated with face-to-face work.

Take non-urgent interstate meetings. Seeking to highlight the alleged absurdities of work from home, Senator Hume opined during her speech that “a stakeholder travelled to Canberra only to be shown into a meeting room where they were greeted by all departmental participants dialling in from home”.

While this might have been a bewildering experience for the stakeholder, it does beg the question – what would have been the actual value of having one or all of them in the same Canberra conference room? Would they have sniffed each other and compared personal fragrance choices? Indulged in a group hug?

Most likely they would have compared horror stories about exhausting day trips, Canberra taxis and delays at the airport while dreaming of hot towels and a glass of warm merlot in the Qantas Club.

In hindsight, day trip meetings across the continent are a denial of the realities of a country with vast distances between capital cities. Many of us would be familiar with the experience of interstate day trips to and from Canberra which involve a 4 am start and a day’s whirl of travel, ground transfers, taxis and delayed flights for a harried hour-long meeting only to turn around and go back the same way. What, really, was the point?

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton thundered: “People refusing to go back to work in Canberra is not acceptable. We need an efficient delivery of government services.” Canberrans who’ve been around the block might chuckle at the Opposition equating efficiency with chaining public servants to desks in Woden, Parkes or Braddon five days a week.

It’s not that long since we were all exhorted to get out of the Canberra bubble and trek among the real folk. Curious are the winds of change which waft our way via Sky News and talkback radio.

Laughs aside, a blanket ban on work from home risks harsh consequences and real unfairness. People with complex family and caring responsibilities report that work from home has enabled them to retain employment. Likewise for people with disabilities, work from home empowers some folk to be involved and productive without the hassles, accessibility issues and transport challenges involved in dragging ourselves into an office.

COVID continues to be a risk to vulnerable people, including workers, despite all of the amnesia and political hokum surrounding it. It is one of the reasons why some of us are staying away. Suppose the alternative government was serious about encouraging a return to workplaces. In that case, they’d be looking carefully at the recommendations of last year’s safer air report, which contained manageable and sensible measures to improve air quality in indoor spaces.

Failing this, the return-to-office push feels like yet another populist talking point in search of a problem in an election year – one that sadly displaces a more sensible conversation about this brave new world and how we can make it fair, sustainable and effective for public sector workers and the Australian public they serve.

Craig Wallace is Head of Policy at Advocacy for Inclusion and has worked from home since 2021. You can follow him on X at @CraigWtweets.