March 19, 2025 • 18 mins
More than a third of Australians are now regularly working from home, some five years after the pandemic forced many employees to start logging in from their kitchen tables.
This week, host Rebecca Jones asks Bloomberg News’s Peter Vercoe about the increasing opposition to remote working from business and politicians, and why it could be an issue in the upcoming Federal election.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Work from home arrangements for public service workers will end
under a coalition government. But I'm not going to tolerate
a position where taxpayers are working harder than ever to
pay their own bills and they're seeing public servants in
Canberra refused to go to work. But we don't have
to adopt all of America's policies.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Nobody's going to work from home.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
They're going to be going out, They're going to play tennis,
they're going to play golf, They're going to do a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I say they're not working. Is working from home a
luxury legacy of the pandemic that Australia can no longer afford,
or is it simply too late to try and reverse
a trend that's helped improve the work life balance for
millions of people. Well, the battle lines are being drawn. Hello,
(00:44):
I'm Rebecca Jones. Welcome to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. This
week on the show working from Home. It's been a
popular topic of conversation for the last few years, ever
since many of us were forced to open our laptops
on the kitchen table during the pandemic. Recently, we've seen
a rise in opposition to remote working from some of
the world's most powerful politicians and bosses, and yep, even
(01:07):
President Trump himself. Furthermore, it looks like working from home
is shaping up to be an issue in Australia's upcoming election.
To find out why, I'm delighted to welcome Peter Verko,
a twenty eight year veteran of the Bloomberg newsroom, to
the podcast. Pete covers global business for US, but over
the years he's worn a great many hats, including Australia Bureau,
(01:29):
chief manager of our Global front page, and team leader
of Asian economic coverage. Pete, you've been a journal for
three decades here at least. Did you think when you
started in the newsroom that we would be talking about
whether or not jobs could be done from home so much?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, No, when I started, it wasn't really even possible
to work from home. We didn't have the technology, you know,
we sort of didn't have fast internet anything like that
would allow us to work from home. And I even
recall when we first went into lockdowns in Australia, and
that was about five years ago to the day. It
is thinking, yeah, in a couple of years, you know,
(02:11):
we'll all be back at the office. Landlords will want
us back in our bosses will want us back in
the office. Yet here we are five years on and
we're still debating whether we should have to come back
to the office full time or be allowed to work
from home in some form.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I know, right, I mean, I can't believe some bank
employees are getting fired for using those mouse jiggler contraptions
that make it look like you're working when you're not
really working. I mean, maybe that says more about me.
I don't know what people want to know, Pete, is
what exactly Peter Dutton has been saying about working from home.
He's come out quite strongly against it, hasn't he What
(02:47):
has he actually said? And is he being toned to
or is this some sort of genius strategy to win votes.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, Well, Dunton was very clear We're going to an
election in May and he come out and said that
if he wins power at that election, he wants to
force all government workers to return to the office five
days a week. He did give a little bit of
flexibility for arrangements that have already been made, but there
(03:14):
wasn't a lot. It is a blanket return to office mandate.
His finance spokesperson Jane Hume said that the Public service
workforce has shown a lack of respect for the work
that went into earning the taxes that they spend, and
the work from home had become a right that was
creating inefficiency. I don't know, it's hard to see this
(03:34):
being a vote winning strategy where work from home has
become a very embedded and popular working arrangement, particularly for
women and for parents.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And what's the reaction been from labor. I'm betting this
may not be seen as a vote winner that they're
desperate to match.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Now, will labor have really latched onto this as an
opportunity to paint Darton as Trump light. They've been very
keen to do that, particularly to scare off moderate conservative
voters by sort of linking if this is one idea
that he's imported from Trump, how many others does he
(04:16):
want to import? The Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi just said
that it's lazy policy importing these ideas from the US.
I think there's a much stronger strand here as well,
where Labor have also attacked this proposal as anti women.
The Public Service Minister Katie Gallagher said that working from
home arrangements have helped families juggle home and work responsibilities,
(04:39):
and we've really seen that not just through the pandemic,
but later. We know that women still bear the brunt
of most child reading and raising responsibilities, you know, everything
from early childcare through to doing the school run, to
ballet classes to soccer training drop offs, and working from
(05:00):
home has allowed women the flexibility to do that without
having to pull back from their work responsibilities and their
main job by giving them the flexibility of maybe clocking
off for an hour in the afternoon to do that,
and then clocking back on for an hour after dinner
to catch up on the rest of their work.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I think it's also interesting to point out as well
that we received the latest gender pay gap data around
the same time as a lot of these comments were
coming out from the Opposition that showed nearly three quarters
of all employers in Australia have a gender pay gap
that favors men, with women earning some twenty eight thousand
(05:41):
dollars less than their male counterparts.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
We know that one of the main reasons behind that
gap is the career breaks that women have to take
to have and raise children that takes them out of
the workforce. When they come back in. If they're working
in a part time role, it's harder for them to
advance their career into those senior and well paid roles
(06:05):
that will help them reduce that gap. Working from home,
or the ability to work from home, having a flexible
work arrangement can be a key part of allowing women
to come back into the workforce in those roles, of.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Course, and that extends to people that have other forms
of caregiving responsibilities too, right, like taking care of elderly parents,
or there's any number of ways that we can take
advantage of this kind of flexibility. I think you raise
a really important point here, Pete, that it is really
impossible to examine this work from home issue through just
(06:43):
one lens. I guess it is more simplistic to try
and group things into one camp or another, but the reality, right,
it's just so much more nuanced. I want to step
a little bit outside the camera bubble and look a
little more deeply into the state of work from home
from a geographical sense across Australia. I was reading recently
some data from the Property Council of Australia that showed
(07:05):
Melbourne has the highest office vacancy rates in the country,
with almost a fifth empty. Here's what the Melbourne Lord
Mayor had to say about that recently to Sky News.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I'm a very strong supporter of people turning up to
their workstation to do their work, and certainly the City
of Melbourne we take a leadership role in these things.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
We lean in.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
We believe that you know, if you're working at one
of our swimming pools, or at a local library and
the parks and guards a maternal health center, then you
have to turn up at work to do your job.
And if you're a bureaucrat working at town hall, then
you should be turning up as well, because we're all
one team Melbourne at the City.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
PETE is the work from home trend still as strong
as ever in Australia because we've managed to uncouple it
from the necessity of the pandemic and sees the good
things that we've already talked about that come from this
kind of flexibility. I am speaking obviously, is at Melbourne, who,
like many of my neighbors, was forced to stay in
a five kilometer radius of my home for many a
(08:05):
day during the pandemic. It's not the case anymore, though.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I think the pandemic showed us what was possible with
work from home. It was a real time, large scale
experiment and for most businesses, and I think of us,
it went very smoothly and it showed that yes, you
can work from home and continued to do your job
(08:30):
and do it well.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I think the idea of doing a radio hit for
Bloomberg while I had toilet training twins before the pandemic
was something that were just insight terror in my heart.
But it was possible, right. It was a great experiment.
Glad it's over.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Though.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Maybe one of the reasons too that Melbourne is still
struggling to get back to the office is that you
guys endured some of the world's longest lockdowns and just
became a bit more used to it and a bit
more used to the benefits and the advantages of working
from home.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Goodwill, babe. We do know though that employers in Australia
are starting to clamp down on work from home across
the board. What are the most recent examples or the
more prominent ones that we have of this peak.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yes, so big corporates, you know some of Australia's biggest
companies are leading the push to get workers back to
the office. One of those is the Commonwealth Bank, Australia's
biggest bank. It's required its workers to spend at least
half their working days each month in the office since
July twenty twenty three, so coming up for two years.
(09:41):
But for a long time, companies when they introduced these
return to office mandates did it almost on an honor
system that they just hope that their workers would come back.
There wasn't any monitoring of it or anything like that.
But as time went on, they started to crack down
on this. And there was an interesting story that I
had recently about the Commonwealth Bank cracking down on what's
(10:02):
called coffee badging, where a worker would come in badge
into the office, hang around just long enough to have
a coffee chat to a couple of colleagues, make sure
that their presence had been noted in the office by
a manager, and then clock out and go home and
finish their working day from home. So what we're seeing
what the Commonwealth Bank has done now it's told workers
(10:25):
that they need to spend at least four hours a
day in the office to meet their attendance requirements. We've
also seen A and ZD Bank has told staff their
bonuses may be cut if they failed to meet office
attendance requirements. That's also a policy that's been rolled out
at Insurance, Uncorp and Origin Energy.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
What does that say though, about people's desire to work
from home If they're spending that not insignificant amount of
money to commute into the Sydney CBD, badge in, make
a coffee and badge out. What about parking that's not
cheap either, is it?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
No? Well, I think what it shows is that people
still really value the ability to work from home, and
we'll you know, cut some corners or bend the rules
a little bit to make sure that they, you know,
still have the possibility to do that. Communication Consultancy SECT
Newgate's latest Mood of the Nation report found around forty
percent of workers are still working at least one day
(11:25):
a week at home, and most expect hybrid work to
continue this year. They see a little bit of drift
back to the office. And then there's been figures from
the Bureau of Statistics as well that found as of
August last year, thirty six percent of workers it usually
worked from home at least sometime during the week. The
long term average before the pandemic was between twenty and
(11:47):
thirty percent, probably a little bit higher than you expect,
but in the pandemic it jumped up to forty percent
when we were forced to work from home. So I
think the fact that it's sanly gone from forty percent
the pandemic to around thirty six percent now five years
on shows that work from home is very popular with
(12:07):
Australian workers.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And when we come back, amongst everything else that's going
on in the White House, why has Donald Trump made
that the return to office one of his big priorities?
And welcome back to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. You're here
with me Rebecca Jones and Global Business editor Peter Verco.
(12:29):
So Pete. We're seeing a slowish but meaningful ramp up
in opposition to working from home in Australia. This largely
reflects trends that have been playing out in the US.
Tell us what Donald Trump's thoughts are and work from
home at the moment and what he's done since his
own return to offers.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Well, I think it would be fair to say that
Trump is not a fan of work from home. In fact,
one of the first executive boarders he signed on his
first day back in office was to order all government
departments and agencies and I quote from it, to take
all necessary steps to end work from home arrangements and
require employees to return to in person work on a
(13:09):
full time basis. Well, that's that, that's that he wants
every government worker back in the office. I think it's
also interesting that Elon Musk, who we have seen emerge
as not only Trump's biggest political donor, but as one
of his closest advisors and probably somebody with the president's here,
has also been a very vocal figure in ordering staff
(13:32):
back to the office. He was one of the first
to do it in June twenty two at TESLA when
he told workers that they had to spend at least
forty hours a week in the office. At least forty
hours a week, and anyone who didn't comply would be
assumed to have resigned. So we are really seeing some
of the most powerful voices in US politics and business
(13:54):
trying to finally end the work from home arrangements from
the pandemic crik.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Least forty hours, What is there what is the average
big I don't want to know the answer to that.
That's tesla. What else is happening in the private sector.
What have we heard from the big US banks recently
on the work from home issue?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, well, the Wall Street banks have really been at
the vanguard of ending work from home and getting people
back to the office. And probably the loudest proponent on
Wall Street of that is JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond,
who I think would be fair to say is probably
the most powerful banker in America. He it's probably the
most powerful banker in the world. He has railed against
(14:35):
work from home, has fully supported return to office mandates,
and all JP Morgan workers will be expected back in
the office five days a week from later this month.
He's been very colorful in his opposition to work from home.
He says it doesn't work for those who want to hustle,
it doesn't work for spintaining his idea generation, and it
(14:56):
doesn't work for culture. And there was a very fun
story from last month where he was taped at an
internal town hall meeting where he used some rather salty
language that we probably can't repeat on the podcast, where
he really went to town against work from home. He
railed against employees not paying attention on the zoom. He
(15:20):
told his workers, don't give me this, that w work
from home Friday works and he said that there's not
a goddamn person you can get hold of on a
Friday when he tries to call them. So, yeah, he's
made no secret of he would like people back in the.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Office, no bones about it, is there, Pete? What is
the bigger picture here? Why do governments? Why does the
Australian government care if employees are working in the office
or not well?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
The reasons mostly cited to reduce waste and fraud and
improve productivity and efficiency. I think what it really comes
down to is that that managers want to have direct
oversight of their employees and they feel the best way
they can do this is to have them in the
office where they can see what they're doing, making sure
that they're not sitting there in their pajamas on a
(16:11):
zoom call. It's a bit of a trope that the
bureaucracy had to contend with. There's not a lot of
evidence to back that up, and it's even an argument
that the Liberal Party in Australia has used to justify
its push to get all government workers back to the office.
The Liberal parties Jane Hume, in a speech, recently claimed
(16:33):
that one federal employee was allowed to work from home
full time, but in reality it was frequently uncontactable because
they were traveling across the country in a caravan with
their family. It's probably a bit of a stretch to
take one example and tar every government worker with that,
but that is the reputation that the public services had
(16:53):
to contend with for a long time. We've also seen
that kind of lazy worker rhetoric in the US when
we had that episod of Elon Musk's Department of Government
Efficiency or government workers with an ultimatum to respond with
five bullet points of things they had achieved in the
previous week of face termination.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
What do you reckon, Pete? Is work from home here
to stay? What does the stats tell us? Can we
get out the crystal ball?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I think work from home is here to stay in
Australia in some form or another, probably in that hybrid
model that has mostly been adopted now. That second Newgate
Mood of the Nation survey found that while most people
are happy with their current arrangements, thirty two percent want
to work more from days from home, and unsurprisingly that's
hire among women at forty percent, and also among younger
(17:42):
workers aged eighteen to thirty five, also at forty percent.
So I think while older, predominantly male, wealthy executives would
like to see more people at their desks every day,
the reality is if companies want to retain and higher talent,
particularly women and young workers, they're going to have to
(18:03):
continue to offer work from home as a flexible working arrangement.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Anthony Albenezi, Peter Dutton. I hope you're listening, Peter Verco.
Thank you and thank you for listening to the Bloomberg
Australia podcast. I'm Rebecca Jones. This episode was recorded on
the traditional lands of the Wlwondery and Gadigal people of
the call and ani Or Nation. It was produced by
Paul Allen and edited by Chris Burke and Ainsley Chandler.
Don't forget to follow and review the show wherever you
(18:30):
get your podcasts, and sign out for Bloomberg's free daily
Newstter Australia Briefing. Go to Bloomberg dot com to subscribe.
Work from home arrangements for public service workers will end
under a coalition government. But I'm not going to tolerate
a position where taxpayers are working harder than ever to
pay their own bills and they're seeing public servants in
Canberra refused to go to work. But we don't have
to adopt all of America's policies.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Nobody's going to work from home.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
They're going to be going out, They're going to play tennis,
they're going to play golf, They're going to do a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I say they're not working. Is working from home a
luxury legacy of the pandemic that Australia can no longer afford,
or is it simply too late to try and reverse
a trend that's helped improve the work life balance for
millions of people. Well, the battle lines are being drawn. Hello,
(00:44):
I'm Rebecca Jones. Welcome to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. This
week on the show working from Home. It's been a
popular topic of conversation for the last few years, ever
since many of us were forced to open our laptops
on the kitchen table during the pandemic. Recently, we've seen
a rise in opposition to remote working from some of
the world's most powerful politicians and bosses, and yep, even
(01:07):
President Trump himself. Furthermore, it looks like working from home
is shaping up to be an issue in Australia's upcoming election.
To find out why, I'm delighted to welcome Peter Verko,
a twenty eight year veteran of the Bloomberg newsroom, to
the podcast. Pete covers global business for US, but over
the years he's worn a great many hats, including Australia Bureau,
(01:29):
chief manager of our Global front page, and team leader
of Asian economic coverage. Pete, you've been a journal for
three decades here at least. Did you think when you
started in the newsroom that we would be talking about
whether or not jobs could be done from home so much?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, No, when I started, it wasn't really even possible
to work from home. We didn't have the technology, you know,
we sort of didn't have fast internet anything like that
would allow us to work from home. And I even
recall when we first went into lockdowns in Australia, and
that was about five years ago to the day. It
is thinking, yeah, in a couple of years, you know,
(02:11):
we'll all be back at the office. Landlords will want
us back in our bosses will want us back in
the office. Yet here we are five years on and
we're still debating whether we should have to come back
to the office full time or be allowed to work
from home in some form.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
I know, right, I mean, I can't believe some bank
employees are getting fired for using those mouse jiggler contraptions
that make it look like you're working when you're not
really working. I mean, maybe that says more about me.
I don't know what people want to know, Pete, is
what exactly Peter Dutton has been saying about working from home.
He's come out quite strongly against it, hasn't he What
(02:47):
has he actually said? And is he being toned to
or is this some sort of genius strategy to win votes.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, Well, Dunton was very clear We're going to an
election in May and he come out and said that
if he wins power at that election, he wants to
force all government workers to return to the office five
days a week. He did give a little bit of
flexibility for arrangements that have already been made, but there
(03:14):
wasn't a lot. It is a blanket return to office mandate.
His finance spokesperson Jane Hume said that the Public service
workforce has shown a lack of respect for the work
that went into earning the taxes that they spend, and
the work from home had become a right that was
creating inefficiency. I don't know, it's hard to see this
(03:34):
being a vote winning strategy where work from home has
become a very embedded and popular working arrangement, particularly for
women and for parents.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And what's the reaction been from labor. I'm betting this
may not be seen as a vote winner that they're
desperate to match.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Now, will labor have really latched onto this as an
opportunity to paint Darton as Trump light. They've been very
keen to do that, particularly to scare off moderate conservative
voters by sort of linking if this is one idea
that he's imported from Trump, how many others does he
(04:16):
want to import? The Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi just said
that it's lazy policy importing these ideas from the US.
I think there's a much stronger strand here as well,
where Labor have also attacked this proposal as anti women.
The Public Service Minister Katie Gallagher said that working from
home arrangements have helped families juggle home and work responsibilities,
(04:39):
and we've really seen that not just through the pandemic,
but later. We know that women still bear the brunt
of most child reading and raising responsibilities, you know, everything
from early childcare through to doing the school run, to
ballet classes to soccer training drop offs, and working from
(05:00):
home has allowed women the flexibility to do that without
having to pull back from their work responsibilities and their
main job by giving them the flexibility of maybe clocking
off for an hour in the afternoon to do that,
and then clocking back on for an hour after dinner
to catch up on the rest of their work.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I think it's also interesting to point out as well
that we received the latest gender pay gap data around
the same time as a lot of these comments were
coming out from the Opposition that showed nearly three quarters
of all employers in Australia have a gender pay gap
that favors men, with women earning some twenty eight thousand
(05:41):
dollars less than their male counterparts.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
We know that one of the main reasons behind that
gap is the career breaks that women have to take
to have and raise children that takes them out of
the workforce. When they come back in. If they're working
in a part time role, it's harder for them to
advance their career into those senior and well paid roles
(06:05):
that will help them reduce that gap. Working from home,
or the ability to work from home, having a flexible
work arrangement can be a key part of allowing women
to come back into the workforce in those roles, of.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Course, and that extends to people that have other forms
of caregiving responsibilities too, right, like taking care of elderly parents,
or there's any number of ways that we can take
advantage of this kind of flexibility. I think you raise
a really important point here, Pete, that it is really
impossible to examine this work from home issue through just
(06:43):
one lens. I guess it is more simplistic to try
and group things into one camp or another, but the reality, right,
it's just so much more nuanced. I want to step
a little bit outside the camera bubble and look a
little more deeply into the state of work from home
from a geographical sense across Australia. I was reading recently
some data from the Property Council of Australia that showed
(07:05):
Melbourne has the highest office vacancy rates in the country,
with almost a fifth empty. Here's what the Melbourne Lord
Mayor had to say about that recently to Sky News.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I'm a very strong supporter of people turning up to
their workstation to do their work, and certainly the City
of Melbourne we take a leadership role in these things.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
We lean in.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
We believe that you know, if you're working at one
of our swimming pools, or at a local library and
the parks and guards a maternal health center, then you
have to turn up at work to do your job.
And if you're a bureaucrat working at town hall, then
you should be turning up as well, because we're all
one team Melbourne at the City.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
PETE is the work from home trend still as strong
as ever in Australia because we've managed to uncouple it
from the necessity of the pandemic and sees the good
things that we've already talked about that come from this
kind of flexibility. I am speaking obviously, is at Melbourne, who,
like many of my neighbors, was forced to stay in
a five kilometer radius of my home for many a
(08:05):
day during the pandemic. It's not the case anymore, though.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I think the pandemic showed us what was possible with
work from home. It was a real time, large scale
experiment and for most businesses, and I think of us,
it went very smoothly and it showed that yes, you
can work from home and continued to do your job
(08:30):
and do it well.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I think the idea of doing a radio hit for
Bloomberg while I had toilet training twins before the pandemic
was something that were just insight terror in my heart.
But it was possible, right. It was a great experiment.
Glad it's over.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Though.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Maybe one of the reasons too that Melbourne is still
struggling to get back to the office is that you
guys endured some of the world's longest lockdowns and just
became a bit more used to it and a bit
more used to the benefits and the advantages of working
from home.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Goodwill, babe. We do know though that employers in Australia
are starting to clamp down on work from home across
the board. What are the most recent examples or the
more prominent ones that we have of this peak.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yes, so big corporates, you know some of Australia's biggest
companies are leading the push to get workers back to
the office. One of those is the Commonwealth Bank, Australia's
biggest bank. It's required its workers to spend at least
half their working days each month in the office since
July twenty twenty three, so coming up for two years.
(09:41):
But for a long time, companies when they introduced these
return to office mandates did it almost on an honor
system that they just hope that their workers would come back.
There wasn't any monitoring of it or anything like that.
But as time went on, they started to crack down
on this. And there was an interesting story that I
had recently about the Commonwealth Bank cracking down on what's
(10:02):
called coffee badging, where a worker would come in badge
into the office, hang around just long enough to have
a coffee chat to a couple of colleagues, make sure
that their presence had been noted in the office by
a manager, and then clock out and go home and
finish their working day from home. So what we're seeing
what the Commonwealth Bank has done now it's told workers
(10:25):
that they need to spend at least four hours a
day in the office to meet their attendance requirements. We've
also seen A and ZD Bank has told staff their
bonuses may be cut if they failed to meet office
attendance requirements. That's also a policy that's been rolled out
at Insurance, Uncorp and Origin Energy.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
What does that say though, about people's desire to work
from home If they're spending that not insignificant amount of
money to commute into the Sydney CBD, badge in, make
a coffee and badge out. What about parking that's not
cheap either, is it?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
No? Well, I think what it shows is that people
still really value the ability to work from home, and
we'll you know, cut some corners or bend the rules
a little bit to make sure that they, you know,
still have the possibility to do that. Communication Consultancy SECT
Newgate's latest Mood of the Nation report found around forty
percent of workers are still working at least one day
(11:25):
a week at home, and most expect hybrid work to
continue this year. They see a little bit of drift
back to the office. And then there's been figures from
the Bureau of Statistics as well that found as of
August last year, thirty six percent of workers it usually
worked from home at least sometime during the week. The
long term average before the pandemic was between twenty and
(11:47):
thirty percent, probably a little bit higher than you expect,
but in the pandemic it jumped up to forty percent
when we were forced to work from home. So I
think the fact that it's sanly gone from forty percent
the pandemic to around thirty six percent now five years
on shows that work from home is very popular with
(12:07):
Australian workers.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And when we come back, amongst everything else that's going
on in the White House, why has Donald Trump made
that the return to office one of his big priorities?
And welcome back to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. You're here
with me Rebecca Jones and Global Business editor Peter Verco.
(12:29):
So Pete. We're seeing a slowish but meaningful ramp up
in opposition to working from home in Australia. This largely
reflects trends that have been playing out in the US.
Tell us what Donald Trump's thoughts are and work from
home at the moment and what he's done since his
own return to offers.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Well, I think it would be fair to say that
Trump is not a fan of work from home. In fact,
one of the first executive boarders he signed on his
first day back in office was to order all government
departments and agencies and I quote from it, to take
all necessary steps to end work from home arrangements and
require employees to return to in person work on a
(13:09):
full time basis. Well, that's that, that's that he wants
every government worker back in the office. I think it's
also interesting that Elon Musk, who we have seen emerge
as not only Trump's biggest political donor, but as one
of his closest advisors and probably somebody with the president's here,
has also been a very vocal figure in ordering staff
(13:32):
back to the office. He was one of the first
to do it in June twenty two at TESLA when
he told workers that they had to spend at least
forty hours a week in the office. At least forty
hours a week, and anyone who didn't comply would be
assumed to have resigned. So we are really seeing some
of the most powerful voices in US politics and business
(13:54):
trying to finally end the work from home arrangements from
the pandemic crik.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Least forty hours, What is there what is the average
big I don't want to know the answer to that.
That's tesla. What else is happening in the private sector.
What have we heard from the big US banks recently
on the work from home issue?
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, well, the Wall Street banks have really been at
the vanguard of ending work from home and getting people
back to the office. And probably the loudest proponent on
Wall Street of that is JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond,
who I think would be fair to say is probably
the most powerful banker in America. He it's probably the
most powerful banker in the world. He has railed against
(14:35):
work from home, has fully supported return to office mandates,
and all JP Morgan workers will be expected back in
the office five days a week from later this month.
He's been very colorful in his opposition to work from home.
He says it doesn't work for those who want to hustle,
it doesn't work for spintaining his idea generation, and it
(14:56):
doesn't work for culture. And there was a very fun
story from last month where he was taped at an
internal town hall meeting where he used some rather salty
language that we probably can't repeat on the podcast, where
he really went to town against work from home. He
railed against employees not paying attention on the zoom. He
(15:20):
told his workers, don't give me this, that w work
from home Friday works and he said that there's not
a goddamn person you can get hold of on a
Friday when he tries to call them. So, yeah, he's
made no secret of he would like people back in the.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Office, no bones about it, is there, Pete? What is
the bigger picture here? Why do governments? Why does the
Australian government care if employees are working in the office
or not well?
Speaker 3 (15:51):
The reasons mostly cited to reduce waste and fraud and
improve productivity and efficiency. I think what it really comes
down to is that that managers want to have direct
oversight of their employees and they feel the best way
they can do this is to have them in the
office where they can see what they're doing, making sure
that they're not sitting there in their pajamas on a
(16:11):
zoom call. It's a bit of a trope that the
bureaucracy had to contend with. There's not a lot of
evidence to back that up, and it's even an argument
that the Liberal Party in Australia has used to justify
its push to get all government workers back to the office.
The Liberal parties Jane Hume, in a speech, recently claimed
(16:33):
that one federal employee was allowed to work from home
full time, but in reality it was frequently uncontactable because
they were traveling across the country in a caravan with
their family. It's probably a bit of a stretch to
take one example and tar every government worker with that,
but that is the reputation that the public services had
(16:53):
to contend with for a long time. We've also seen
that kind of lazy worker rhetoric in the US when
we had that episod of Elon Musk's Department of Government
Efficiency or government workers with an ultimatum to respond with
five bullet points of things they had achieved in the
previous week of face termination.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
What do you reckon, Pete? Is work from home here
to stay? What does the stats tell us? Can we
get out the crystal ball?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
I think work from home is here to stay in
Australia in some form or another, probably in that hybrid
model that has mostly been adopted now. That second Newgate
Mood of the Nation survey found that while most people
are happy with their current arrangements, thirty two percent want
to work more from days from home, and unsurprisingly that's
hire among women at forty percent, and also among younger
(17:42):
workers aged eighteen to thirty five, also at forty percent.
So I think while older, predominantly male, wealthy executives would
like to see more people at their desks every day,
the reality is if companies want to retain and higher talent,
particularly women and young workers, they're going to have to
(18:03):
continue to offer work from home as a flexible working arrangement.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Anthony Albenezi, Peter Dutton. I hope you're listening, Peter Verco.
Thank you and thank you for listening to the Bloomberg
Australia podcast. I'm Rebecca Jones. This episode was recorded on
the traditional lands of the Wlwondery and Gadigal people of
the call and ani Or Nation. It was produced by
Paul Allen and edited by Chris Burke and Ainsley Chandler.
Don't forget to follow and review the show wherever you
(18:30):
get your podcasts, and sign out for Bloomberg's free daily
Newstter Australia Briefing. Go to Bloomberg dot com to subscribe.
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