TELECOMMUTING – AUSTRALIA

Work from Home: Another Great Australian Divide

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Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 20-Aug-25

New research from Roy Morgan highlights a clear divide across Australia’s 150 federal electorates. Nationwide, 47% of working electors (around 5.94 million people) work from home at least some of the time. However, this flexibility is concentrated in just 45 electorates, and the majority of working electors continue to work in-person in the remaining 105 seats. The highest work from home electorates are concentrated in Australia’s inner-cities: Sydney (67%), Wentworth (66%), Bennelong (65%), Kooyong (65%) and Grayndler (62%) lead the nation. These affluent electorates are dominated by professional white-collar workers and are held by Labor or high-profile Independents. The electorates with the lowest levels of working from home are found in large regional and remote electorates, where on-site industries dominate; they include Mallee (31%), Durack (31%), Forrest (29%), Lingiari (28%) and Gippsland (28%). Among the 45 electorates where a majority work from home, Labor dominates with 30 seats, reflecting its strength in metropolitan hubs where hybrid work is most entrenched.

CORPORATES
ROY MORGAN LIMITED, AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY

More than 6.7 million Australians work from home

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Original article by Roy Morgan
Market Research Update – Page: Online : 13-Aug-25

New research from Roy Morgan shows that over 6.7 million Australians (representing 46% of employed Australians) work from home at least some of the time, paid or unpaid. The remaining 54% work entirely in-person. A slim majority of full-time employees (51%) work from home at least some of the time, compared to 36% of part-time employees. Australians living in capital cities are more likely to work from home than those who live in regional areas. A majority of workers from Australia’s largest cities of Sydney (55%) and Melbourne (52%) work from home, as do 51% in the nation’s capital in Canberra/ACT. Working from home rates are lower in the smaller capital cities led by Hobart (45%) and Adelaide (44%), and followed by Brisbane (43%) and Perth (40%). In contrast, regional areas show lower adoption of working from home, led by Queensland (40%), (NSW 39%) and Victoria (37%).

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ROY MORGAN LIMITED

Unions warn Coalition’s job cuts could exceed 41,000

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Original article by Ewin Hannan
The Australian – Page: 6 : 8-Apr-25

Opposition leader Peter Dutton is under scrutiny over his backdown over plans to slash federal public service numbers. The Community & Public Sector Union’s national secretary Melissa Donnelly says the Coalition’s new policy of reducing the public service via natural attrition and hiring freezes over five years could result in the loss of much more than the 41,000 jobs that Dutton had initially flagged. ACTU secretary Sally McManus in turn has criticised Dutton’s backdown on a return-to-office mandate for public servants; she says legal advice suggests that Dutton could not enforce this without legislative changes that would also remove working-from-home rights for all workers.

CORPORATES
LIBERAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA, COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC SECTOR UNION, ACTU

Union vows to fight Dutton’s five-days-in-office edict at the tribunal

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Original article by Olivia Ireland, Josefine Ganko
The Sydney Morning Herald – Page: Online : 5-Mar-25

The Community & Public Sector Union says it will pursue a Fair Work Commission challenge to any mandate for public servants to return to working in their office five days a week if the Coalition wins the upcoming federal election. The CPSU’s national secretary Melissa Donnelly has accused the Coalition of being ‘tone-deaf’ to the challenges that working families and working women face in their working life. Opposition leader Peter Dutton rejects suggestions that the policy discriminates against women with children, arguing that it will apply to all public servants; he adds that the Coalition would use common sense when considering any exceptions to the policy.

CORPORATES
COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC SECTOR UNION, AUSTRALIA. FAIR WORK COMMISSION, LIBERAL PARTY OF AUSTRALIA

Penalty rates for WFH outdated

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Original article by David Marin-Guzman
The Australian Financial Review – Page: 7 : 13-Mar-24

Key employers’ groups have used submissions to the Fair Work Commission’s review of industry awards to opposed providing employees with a general right to work from home. However, the Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Australian Industry Group have argued that overtime and penalty rates should not apply to remote workers who opt to work in the early evening to ‘make up’ for time lost during ordinary working hours, such as to attend to personal needs such as picking up their children from school.

CORPORATES
AUSTRALIA. FAIR WORK COMMISSION, AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, THE AUSTRALIAN INDUSTRY GROUP

WFH curbs for public servants

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Original article by Tom Burton
The Australian Financial Review – Page: 9 : 8-Mar-24

Employees of more than 70 federal government agencies have now endorsed a sector-wide enterprise agreement that removes all caps on the number of days they can work from home. However, Assistant Public Service Minister Patrick Gorman has emphasised that government employees will still require approval from their agency to work from home, and notes that some frontline public sector jobs simply cannot be done remotely. The new enterprise agreement also includes a pay rise of 11.2 per cent over three years and better parental leave entitlements.

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Staff disconnects from Tony Burke’s own office

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Original article by Joe Kelly
The Australian – Page: 5 : 13-Feb-24

The Department of Employment & Workplace Relations has disclosed that 36 per cent of its employees had an approved working from home arrangement at the end of October 2023. However, an Australian Public Service employee census survey shows that 72 per cent of the department’s staff had worked remotely at some point during 2023, including on an informal or ad hoc basis. The release of this data has coincided with the federal government’s push to introduce a legislated right for employees to ‘disconnect’ from their workplace outside of their designated working hours. Meanwhile, some 57 per cent of employees across the public service who completed the survey had access to working from home arrangements in 2023, compared with 46 per cent in 2021.

CORPORATES
AUSTRALIA. DEPT OF EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE RELATIONS

‘Uncharted territory’: 60pc of public servants now working from home

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Original article by Joe Kelly
The Australian – Page: 4 : 30-Nov-23

New data shows that 57 per cent of federal public servants now have access to working from home arrangements, compared with 46 per cent in 2021. Australian Public Service Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer says the growing number of public servants who are working from home has implications for resources, property management and workplace design. Meanwhile, de Brouwer says the latest ‘state of the service’ report shows amongst other things that bullying and harassment rates in the public service are still too high, while the gender pay gap has narrowed to 5.2 per cent.

CORPORATES
AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION

New overemployment trend sees Aussies earning double

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Original article by Bek Day
Herald Sun – Page: Online : 31-May-23

The shift to working from home during the pandemic has resulted in strong growth in ‘overemployment’ in Australia, whereby people are working two or more full-time jobs – often at the same time and without their employer finding out. A 2022 report from human resources software company Employment Hero found that 51 per cent of knowledge workers in Australia have a secondary income stream. A spokesman for Employment Hero says overemployment is much more common in fully remote roles and task-based jobs such as software development and computer programming.

CORPORATES
EMPLOYMENT HERO

More than one in five Australians worked from home at height of 2021 lockdowns, census shows

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Original article by Caitlin Cassidy, Nick Evershed
The Guardian Australia – Page: Online : 12-Oct-22

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that 25 per cent of capital city residents were working from home on Census day in August 2021. Some 20 per cent of people nationwide worked from home on the day of the Census, which coincided with COVID-19 lockdown restrictions across most of eastern Australia. The figures also show that 31 per cent of NSW residents worked from home on Census day, compared with just 4.8 per cent in 2016. Likewise, 26 per cent of people in Victoria were working from home, up from 4.6 per cent in 2016. Australian statistician David Gruen says the 2021 Census provides a "fascinating insight" into how Australians worked and lived during a global pandemic.

CORPORATES
AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS