Work from home is here to stay, and any suggestion WFHers can’t be trusted says more about those obsessed with the office, writes Lynton Grace

You can claw my efficient, flexible WFH set-up from my very ready-to-work hands thanks, writes Lynton Grace.

Working partly from home is the new norm and any suggestion it should be reversed is ridiculous. WFH has saved my family’s sanity.

I don’t mean full-time, though. I’m talking about what’s become the traditional two/three-day split – two from home, three from the office.

In my view, you gotta go to the office the majority of the time; there’s no way around that, whether it’s split days or full days at home.

For my work – which hinges on creativity and communication – being in the same room as colleagues part of the week is essential.

But not every workplace is like that. Coders, for example, can work entirely remotely.

Meanwhile, the backwards NSW public service is being forced back to the office full-time – and reversing any progress the state has made.

WFH is how your general, sit-down-at-the-computer job – known as ‘knowledge work’ – should be forever, until we invent holograms and no one has to leave their homes.

Today, I had to rush the tallest son to an emergency orthodontics appointment when his new $7000 braces began to unwind.

TELL US WHY IN THE COMMENTS

Thanks to the ability to conduct multiple meetings on my phone as we wandered Fullarton Rd – and as he held it on drive back – I didn’t have to take the full day as annual leave or carers leave for what was eventually a two-minute rewiring.

That’s the flexibility that WFH has thrown up. When you’re a family with two working parents flexibility is essential or we’re all going to end up with even worse mental health.

Mid-level suits through to CEOs have to understand WFH is just another word for flexible – not bludge.

Flexibility creates a happier worker. A happier worker is more productive. While I WFH, I can crank the music to a proper level, do the school run, manage homework, hang out washing, organise dinner.

But I’m also working as well. In fact, WFH days usually end up longer than office days. Welcome to 2024.

The weird thing about the anti-WFH brigade is this unsaid implication people who like to work at home simply can’t be trusted.

As a colleague wryly noted, all their arguments could equally be taken as confessions of the fact they can’t be trusted to work independently without supervision.

These WFH haters are right – they should absolutely be banned from working from home.

If WFH hangs on productivity, then let it. If you’re more productive in the office, then work there.

It’s interesting the productivity is the first word thrown up as well – not happiness or diversity or mental health or just office accessibility.

Any argument WFHers is to blame for struggling CBD traders is wrong. If I’m not spending money in the CBD, I’m spending it locally in my home town.

Should they complain if I work full-time from the office?

Forget the studies. If you spend 10 minutes doing research on WFH productivity you can pretty much find whatever you want to back up your pre-existing argument.

Some find productivity is down, others up, while other studies found it depended if you were full time at home or a hybrid WFH-er.

So if high levels of productivity are the only thing bosses care about, hang it on that. I’ll be productive – while I hang out the washing.