Anna Caldwell: It’s selfish for big business to issue Covid work from home edicts

Telstra and Westpac’s work from home push may appear socially responsible. They can afford to care. But at what cost to small business?

Big corporate players who have gone harder than the public health advice and encouraged their office staff to work from home as this Covid winter wave takes hold want you to think they are being socially responsible.

Wrong.

This is an opportunistic reach to masquerade social responsibility without a care in the world for the small business owners and retailers they’ll cripple on the way.

Such a call to forge ahead with work from home-friendly Covid policy, in a big old nod to the zoom class, is in fact deeply irresponsible and a fast track back to the dark days of 2020.

As this winter wave takes hold, every day we are faced with doomsayers who want to return to the dim days of lockdowns and misery.

We’ve got to accept these kinds of weirdos will exist forevermore — some people just like living under a doona and would like everyone else to do the same.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

But, this week, seeing corporate giants like Telstra and Westpac issuing advice to encourage tens of thousands of staff to work from home was a concerning turning point.

Alex Badenoch, a Telstra group executive said in a statement: “We are strongly encouraging our people to work from home if they can, wear a mask when they can’t socially distance, and get their booster shot if they’re eligible.”

Westpac told its staff there was “no requirement to be in the office”. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

Westpac declared there was “no requirement to be in the office”.

It came as Covid cases creep up to near record levels – but we must keep this in perspective.

In NSW on Thursday there were just 55 people with Covid in intensive care units. We have the capacity for hundreds.

With massive vaccination rates the envy of the world and more than two years of knowing precisely what a Covid symptom looks like, we are more than equipped to manage ourselves without being “encouraged” to go home.

The moves from Telstra and Westpac followed updated advice from Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly this week.

Professor Kelly on Tuesday said the AHPPC “called on employers to allow work from home if feasible”.

It is not a mandate. It is not official NSW government policy. It is not even enforced national health policy.

Big corporates in Australia have long been masters of virtue signalling and moonlighting in social policy when they should be sticking the business of business. And here we go again.

Telstra ‘”strongly encouraged” staff to work from home if they can. picture: NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

The impact of the decisions by Telstra and Westpac on retailers and small businesses as well as CBDs will be tangible. If other big corporates follow in their footsteps, it will be worse than tangible – it will be devastating.

Just as we’ve started to breathe life back into our CBDs the last thing we need to do is encourage people to go home again.

Anthony Albanese has been wisely measured on the topic. Pressed earlier this week on why governments won’t introduce stricter Covid mandates, he pointed to two things – mental health concerns of ongoing restrictions and our high vaccination rates.

Pressed multiple times on whether businesses should send staff home, Albanese has refrained from issuing an edict, instead acknowledging businesses would make their own decisions.

He also acknowledged the bigger economic picture.

“If you’re a business that relies upon people coming into the CBD to shop, in retail or hospitality, then your business can be hurt by that as well. So it’s a matter of getting the balance right.”

This is smart.

Of course companies and employers should have the authority to try to manage outbreaks in teams and to protect their workforce.

For example, if the NRL institutes a Covid bubble it would do so to save play.

But a blanket call encouraging tens of thousands of office workers to go home is a different beast.

It smacks of corporates making decisions that have little impact on them but a big impact on everyone else.

Blended work weeks – like two days at home and three days in the office – are one of the benefits to workers which have come out of the pandemic. These are here to stay.

But small retailers and hospitality groups, who have already had to adjust to this and been knocked down time and time again, don’t need another blow on a corporate whim.

Surely we are advanced enough now to stay home when you’re sick and go out when you’re not.