Productivity Commissioner Danielle Wood nailed the problem with the work-from-home debate with one simple anecdote at The Australian Financial Review Workforce Summit in Sydney on Monday.

One of her favourite WFH studies involved software engineers at a big US company, which found remote work boosted the productivity of senior coders because they weren’t being bothered by pesky junior colleagues. In the short term, productivity was going up, Wood explained. But would there be a long-term negative impact if junior staff aren’t trained up?