University executive faces staff revolt after questioning work-from-home culture | Caleb Bond
The removal of a university's HR deputy vice-chancellor over WFH comments has created an unprecedented power struggle with the zoo animals now running the zoo.
My phone has been running hot this week and I have for you, dear reader, an exclusive story – the amalgamated Adelaide University will be moving from North Tce to a new campus on Frome Rd when it opens in January.
The site of Adelaide Zoo, to be precise.
It sure as hell seems the animals are running the zoo now that deputy vice-chancellor Paula Ward has been pushed out for daring to question those who think working from home is their God-given right.
She barely had her feet under the partners desk before the staff turned on her for saying those who worked from home on Mondays and Fridays were enjoying “four-day weekends”.
I think the staff are revolting.
Her only crime was to call out those who shirk from home.
She is right that people working from home on Mondays and Fridays are effectively enjoying four-day weekends. Working from home is a lifestyle matter and the only reason one elects to spend the beginning and end of the week at home is to extend the leisure of the weekend.
Otherwise, why couldn’t you work from home on Tuesday and Wednesday or Wednesday and Thursday? That’s not to say they aren’t doing any work on Mondays or Fridays but c’mon – we didn’t come down in the last shower.
You’d just rather roll out of bed later on Monday and plonk your lazy arse on the couch an hour early on Friday.
And if your employer is happy with that then go for your life – but what gives staff the right to dictate to bosses when and where they will work?
This all started because the bureaucratic cough police decided, five years ago, that we must work from home to stop the spread of Covid. I remember being told we needed “two weeks to flatten the curve” and then all would return to normal.
That, as we know, did not happen and so people spent months at home forming new habits that they’ve been fighting to maintain ever since.
People have seemingly forgotten – or chosen to wilfully ignore – that it was a temporary measure and not a permanent shift in industrial relations.
But bosses have found themselves seemingly powerless to stop the comfortable hordes from running the show and doing their chores when they should be on the clock.
A survey by Finder, released this week, found that 39 per cent of respondents did things other than work during working hours while at home. Twenty per cent admit to doing household chores on the clock, 18 per cent are watching movies, 13 per cent are hitting the hay and nine per cent are, ahem, enjoying extra-curricular activities. On the job indeed. Why should the boss be paying for that?
This should be a matter between you and your employer – if it is written into your contract that you can work certain days of the week from home then good for you.
But others who have no such agreement, and simply want to work from home because they were made to do so during Covid, should have no right to dictate such terms.
God forbid your boss wants you to show up to your place of employment where they can see what you’re doing and talk to you. Ms Ward should be congratulated for saying the quiet part out loud. If only we could clone her and put her in every other university.
Originally published as University executive faces staff revolt after questioning work-from-home culture | Caleb Bond
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