‘Nearly double’: Biggest sign yet Australian businesses won’t completely abandon WFH policies

The past 12 months have been marred by uncertainty for hybrid and remote workers, now Aussies have been hit with a big prediction for 2030.

The past 12 months have been marred by uncertainty for remote and hybrid workers, but a global survey has hinted that, for Aussies in particular, working from home won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

The return to office debate has impacted workers across the globe, with Amazon, Dell, Tabcorp, Salesforce, Flight Centre just some of the major companies that have recently backflipped on flexible working policies.

In the US, one of President Donald Trump’s first official acts after taking office was to sign an executive order requiring federal workers to return to the office full time.

“Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements,” the White House said in a statement confirming the executive order.

Despite these changes and the growing debate, a new major workplace report has revealed the situation may not be as dire as it seems when it comes to remote work.

Have your say in The Great Aussie Debate. Take the survey here:

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The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that business leaders in Australia plan to use remote working opportunities to tackle anticipated workplace challenges over the next five years.

The report found that some of the major drivers expected to transform the global labour market by 2030 include technological change, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and climate change mitigation policies.

The Future of Jobs Report includes perspectives of more than 1000 leading global employers, collectively representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies from around the world.

For businesses operating in Australia, a mix of technological, green and demographic transitions are anticipated to be key drivers in how the workforce will be shaped in the coming years.

The report found that 65 per cent of Australian employers surveyed identify skills gaps as a key business challenge over the 2025-2030 business period, with 45 per cent also viewing the inability to attract talent as another obstacle.

Almost half of the Australian respondents flagged attracting more global talent as a way to bridge the skills gap, with offering remote working opportunities key to achieving this goal.

“Additionally, 49 per cent of businesses operating in Australia anticipate offering cross-border remote work options, nearly double the global average,” the report found.

“And 63 per cent identify tapping into diverse talent pools as an effective approach to increasing talent availability in the country.”

Australian business leaders have indicated they are open to using flexible and remote working arrangements to close emerging skills gaps. Picture: iStock

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The need to tap into diverse talent pools is a trend that is being seen across a range of global economies, with 47 per cent of all surveyed employers now “emphasising the potential of this strategy”.

This is a major increase from the just over 10 per cent of respondents that held this view in the 2023 edition of the report.

“These findings highlight the potential of skills-first approaches in identifying and attracting talent based on skills rather than traditional credentials,” the report noted.

While the findings showed Australia is above the global average when it comes to backing remote working options, there has still been an upwards overall trends in employers showing an interest in offering flexible work measures.

Overall, 27 per cent of respondents showed an interest in enabling remote work across national borders and 26 per cent wanted to support workers with caregiving responsibilities.

Ironic detail in Aussie return to office push

Last week, a new survey shed some much-needed light on who is really behind the push to get people back to the office, revealing a rather ironic detail about how the debate has been playing out in Australia.

While the results showed flexible work is still of value for the majority, one in three Aussies still prefer being in the office full time.

Ahead of the launch of The Great Aussie Debate - a new survey that will reveal what Australians really think about all the hot topics of 2025, from the lighthearted to the serious - news.com.au asked a sample of Aussies their thoughts on an array of issues, and found some surprising results when it came to the return-to-office push.

Of the 1870 surveyed, 35 per cent said they would prefer to work from the office five days a week, 31 per cent believe one to two days working from home is optimal, 22 per cent prefer working three to four days from home and 12 per cent believe WFH full-time is the best set-up.

But there is an intriguing detail in the statistics.

Of those who believe full-time office work is ideal, almost half (45 per cent) are retired.

More than half (56 per cent) of over-75s were in favour workers showing up to the office full-time, along with 42 per cent of Baby Boomers.

In contrast, only 29 per cent of Millennials and 23 per cent of Gen Zers hold his perspective.

Of the current full-time employees surveyed, 69 per cent believe that anywhere between one and five days working from home was acceptable, with Gen Z and Millennials making up the vast majority of those holding this opinion.

When news.com.au hit the streets of Parramatta, we asked everyday working Aussies if they would accept jobs that offered no options to work from home.

People who were still working weren’t very receptive to the idea.

“Hell no. Times have changed,” one man said.

“Absolutely not,” a woman claimed.

“I don’t think so,” another said.

One young Aussie said that because the job market is “insane” right now, she would consider a job with no flexibility, but she certainly doesn’t think it makes “any sense” to force people back to offices.

Another said it was “2025 and we do things differently”, before arguing that any retiree who thinks workers should return to the office full-time needs to accept that they’ve “had their time”.

Originally published as ‘Nearly double’: Biggest sign yet Australian businesses won’t completely abandon WFH policies