Is WFH here to stay? This is the year we find out

If you had a time machine, set the date to 2019 and asked your boss if you could “work from home” a few days a week, it might have been your last request as an employee.

But here we are, a month into 2025, and the ability to work outside the standard office now feels like a worker’s right that prompts fierce internal debates at any attempts to roll them back.

WFH is a reminder that we have lives outside the workplace. Credit: Aresna Villanueva

Around 40 per cent of Australians now work from home regularly, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data from 2023, rising to 60 per cent of managers and professionals. Before the pandemic, the total number was closer to 10 per cent.

The WFH revolution is important because of what it represents. It is a long-overdue recognition that not all tasks are equal. Some, such as creativity and consensus-building, are best done in person when everyone is in the same room together.

But many other tasks that require deep thinking or concentration – report-writing, strategic or repetitive work – are way better to do without a colleague sitting next to you waiting to interrupt you with something funny they’ve seen on the internet.

It’s also a reminder that we have lives outside the workplace, and being able to integrate the complete parts of us – family, health, and relationships – is better for everyone.

WFH is more than just a passing fad that can be undone overnight. Instead, it’s the best gift we could have possibly received from COVID.

As WFH continues to mature, what is it growing into? And how is that going to affect you this year? There are three main ways.

The first is that working from home will dig deeper into institutions, making it harder to undo just by the stroke of a pen from a senior executive. We’ve already seen an increase in the value of apartments and houses that have dedicated offices or workspaces, plus the rapid rise and now normalisation of property prices outside main cities. This year, the change will cement itself even further into the fabric of how we work and live.

The second aspect is that the “home” part of WFH will become less relevant with the rise of “third spaces” that are neither home nor the office. This might include a hotel, a cafe, a co-working space or anywhere really. The ability for someone to be productive outweighs the location their laptop is plugged into.

The hotel industry, in particular, is capitalising on this, reconfiguring spaces to allow for workers, casual drop-ins and conference calls. On a recent trip to Bangkok, the breakfast room at my hotel morphed into a co-working space as soon as the buffet dishes were cleared.

Hordes of remote workers colonised tables with computers and coffees, all taking advantage of the new ability to WFH (in this case, Work From Hotel).

The final way that working will change this year is that employees will find fresh ways to subtly assert their power. One trend to watch is “hushed hybrid”, which refers to what happens when individual managers allow their team to work from home for more than the official company policy.

Another, “coffee badging”, describes a trend of workers come into the office only to swipe their “badges” so the system knows they are present before going back out for coffee. A recent report by Owl Labs estimated around half of all respondents said they had done some version of this.

This year is the year that WFH will mature and morph. Yes, there’s going to be a lot of noise around it, and occasionally, it might get messy as loud voices try to dominate the debate.

But the past five years have shown that WFH is more than just a passing fad that can be undone overnight. Instead, it’s the best leftover gift we could have possibly received from the COVID years.

Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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