Woolworths wants its staff in the office at least three days a week

Woolworths is the latest large corporation to demand workers spend more time in the office, as boss Amanda Bardwell asks her 10,000 support staff to only work from home two days a week.

Woolworths CEO Amanda Bardwell wants workers back in the office. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

Woolworths is asking its 10,000 office workers to commit to working at least three days a week in the office, as it becomes the latest large corporation to demand an end to a work-from-home mindset that has seen many workers stay at home long after the Covid-19 pandemic ended.

Last year rival supermarket Coles also called for a proper commitment from staff to come back into the office three days a week – giving a six-month lead in time – while other large businesses such as Bendigo Bank, AMP, Amazon, Flight Centre, Dell and the NSW public service also attempt to snuff out flexible WFH guidelines to instead seek workers come in as much as the full five days a week.

In a letter to staff on Monday, Woolworths chief executive Amanda Bardwell said there was now an expectation that its support staff connect with their team in the office a minimum of three days per week, with the flexibility to work remotely for the remaining two days.

“Over the last few years, we have seen many of our support team members successfully embrace hybrid ways of working, whilst delivering our group purpose of creating better experiences together for a better tomorrow,” Ms Bardwell told staff.

“A key priority for us in 2025 is to create more opportunities for in-person connection to increase our responsiveness and better serve our customers. To support this, we are evolving our hybrid ways of working to ensure we better balance the needs of our customers and business, with the needs of our team.”

Woolworths has about 10,000 support office team members who work from 10 different offices across Australia, out of about 180,000 Australian team members.

Under the timetable, by June 2 all team members are expected to spend at least one day in the office, by August 4 that rises to two days and by October 6 staff need to spend at least three days a week in the office.

Large corporations are demanding an end to flexible WFH guidelines and mandating minimum days in the week workers must be at their desks. Picture: Damian Shaw/NewsWire

Coles has made similar requests of its own support staff, asking them to come into the office at least three days a week.

Last month Coles chief executive Leah Weckert told The Australian it was important to transition to a hybrid model that had staff return to their desks three days a week.

“To ensure we continue to meet our customers’ needs, (this) year we will transition to a hybrid model which will require all office team members to work at least three days a week from either the store support centre, distribution centre or store, with one of those days to fall on either a Monday or Friday,” Ms Weckert said.

Flight Centre is demanding staff come back to the office five days a week.

A recent KPMG survey argued the Covid-era work-from-home phenomenon would be over within three years, with 82 per cent of CEO respondents expecting traditional white-collar roles to fully return to the office by 2027.

Originally published as Woolworths wants its staff in the office at least three days a week