1y ago

Australians are so mad about the return to office, they’re taking companies to court to stop it

apple.news Australians are so mad about the return to office, they’re taking companies to court to stop it — FORTUNE

A union for banking professionals asked Australia's labor tribunal to help stop an office mandate from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

It does not surprise me companies are making people go back to the office. Not just in Australia but around the world. There are a lot of people abusing the situation. It sucks but I saw this was going to happen when work from home first started getting rolled out back at the beginning of Covid.

The companies are going to use what ever means and reasoning they need to. But at the end of the day all that matters dollars. If they would have seen more productivity with people working from home and if the company made more money, the people would be allowed to continue to work from home

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This is about estate properties. Banks and investors have huge stakes in office estates and are reluctant to acknowledge that work from home will be a reality.
- This needs to be more common knowledge for why the need to get people back in office. I think there was an article on this too
  
  It should be common. Its no secret who owns these buildings. Its glaringly obvious especially when you compare the insane benefits of WFH for the employee. Any sane employer wouldn't cancel it, until you consider their 650 million in enterprise real estate.
- This a million times over!
  For a fun little proof of concept, go look at the authors of most of these business mag op-eds talking about how WFH "just isn't working". A disproportionate number of them are somehow heavily entwined in corporate real estate investments.
  It is absolutely blatant frantic thrashing from people who had an easy ticket to cheap money and lost a lot of that value.

If I ran a company right now, I would be poaching so many good people with work from home. So much production is lost with the commute back and forth, and employee work/life balance immediately is impacted. Hopefully, you Aussies win this case.

What the heck are you on about? When we went into full work from home at my former company, productivity went UP.
There's studies showing that companies forcing their workers back into the office suffer huge brain drains and cannot hire as fast as more flexible employers.
https://fortune.com/2023/08/01/research-damaging-results-mandated-return-to-office-worse-than-we-thought-rto-remote-work-careers-leadership-gleb-tsipursky/
The people have spoken.
- There are some companies the productivity went up. There are some that it has gone down.
  At one company that I personally know of: the manager will message an employee via the internal messaging program in the computer (sorry I’m being vague but I need to because of how I found out) … anyway she will message the employee and get no response. Half hour later she will message again… no response.. try again and again… she will email a few times.. two to three hours later finally get a bull shit response of “oh I’m so sorry I didn’t see your message”..
  If that happens once, ok fine I get it. Continuously from most of the department? Yeah bull shit they weren’t at their computer. It will show they are busy but yet no response.
  She is about ready to tell everyone back in the office full time.
  So I get why some companies are saying get back in the office.
  I remember when Covid first started that there was post after post of people asking how do I make myself look busy on the computer when I’m not. Doesn’t take much to put two and two together.
  I know that studies have shown that when a company says get back in the office people quit. So I do see that side.
  Is it good that your company the productivity went up when you did work from home? Well yeah it’s good. It’s just not true every where.
  For the banks… well let’s be honest… if their people are more productive at home and they are still saying get back in the office AND the company knows if the employees are told to get back in the office they will quit… well then maybe the banks need to figure out a better way.
  
  Sounds like someone who disrespects and/or underpays their employees and is seeing the rightful consequences of it.
  
  To be fair, that sounds like poor people management. The first time it happened there should have been a email sent round reminding people that they're expected to be promptly available during work hours and those that aren't will be pulled up on it.

... there was more productivity.
- Yup, productivity went up but paying money on a multi year lease is costing them so they want to justify paying the money. It's stupid
  
  Are we out of touch about work from home? No, it's the workers who are wrong.

This issue is fueled by insecurity and ego on the part of business management. They don't get to grandstand in front of a room of people and it's killing them. We'll come to the office when it's convenient for us or they can pick up the tools and have a go at this work. We'll find some other place that values our work as specialists, not seat warmers in some dismal office block. The CEO-manager class of people can eat my refuse.
- Also, a lot of them are paying for spaces that aren't getting utilized to full capacity. I've noticed here in the states that many companies are clearing out whole floors and starting to rent them out to smaller companies to even out the cost a bit since they can't seem to convince anyone that the office is better.

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