Working from home full time hinders career prospects, NSW Productivity Commissioner warns

After two years of working from home, the NSW Productivity Commissioner has urged employees to get back to the office to kickstart collaboration and innovation.

Businesses that don’t encourage their staff back into the office risk getting left behind and employees who want to keep working remotely are hampering their career prospects, the state’s Productivity Commissioner has warned.

With the indoor mask mandate now lifted and the beleaguered rail network set to return to the regular weekday timetable from Monday, Productivity Commissioner Peter Achterstraat has called on people to come back to the office two or three days a week or face the prospect of their job being eventually sent offshore.

“If we were to continue just working from home, we would end up just doing tasks a bit better, but no new thinking, and that work could be done offshore,” he said.

“If you can do the work from Hornsby, you can do it from Hungary.”

Productivity Commissioner Peter Achterstraat says workers who work from home full time will risk falling behind. Picture: Toby Zerna

A Productivity Commission review into flexible work found that working from home has increased productivity on simple tasks by 15 per cent, but Commissioner Achterstraat said “innovation and strategic thinking” has suffered.

Continuing to work remotely five days a week will see people miss out on developing “water cooler capital,” the Productivity Commissioner said.

That includes benefits of catching up with colleagues, bouncing ideas off each other, and even chatting to the boss, and the concept Mr Achterstraat calls “innovation productivity”.

Working from home has drained the “water cooler capital” many workers built up over their time spent in the office, he said.

Mr Achterstraat could not quantify how much innovation has been lost due to Covid-driven working from home requirements but warned that “every month we don’t (return to the office), we’re slipping behind”.

“From a societal point of view. If we don’t have innovation and teamwork and leadership, we’re just going to end up being a factory,” he said.

“I’m very keen for people to get back in the office two or three days a week so that we can do the innovation better,” he said.

Mr Achterstraat told The Daily Telegraph that the public service should be leading the charge in going back to the office.

Premier Dominic Perrottet wants public servants to go back to the office to revive Sydney’s ailing CBDs. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

It comes after Premier Dominic Perrottet said going back to work in the city is a “civic duty” of employers and staff.

While not mandating a whole-of-government plan to get public servants back into the office, Mr Perrottet on Thursday said he had tasked departmental secretaries with creating tailored return-to-work plans for their staff.

The Premier said his government prides itself on having “flexible work practices”.

“What I don’t want to do is bring people back to the city unnecessarily and move away from those flexible work practises.

“But what I have asked for from every single Department Secretary is a return to work plan that fits into the culture and the work that they are doing,” he said.

Business NSW Chief Executive Daniel Hunter said industry will be excited about the return to office “now the mask mandate has been lifted”.

“Businesses have done a great job in engaging with their staff over the past two years, however nothing beats face-to

-face interaction and discussion, even if it’s over a coffee meeting or a drink after work.

“A balancing act needs to be performed between the in-person benefits and operational needs of business, with the needs of their staff and the advantages that they have when they do work from home,” he said.