Major sign flexible work ‘more than just an experiment’ as huge companies embrace trend

A recent move by retail giant Bunnings could end up being a huge win for countless Aussie workers across the nation – including you.

Five days for work, two days for rest.

It’s been 75 years since Australian workers won the right to a 40-hour, five-day working week and created a schedule of workdays and non-work days that has been unchallenged for a generation.

But in 2023, the way we understand full-time work is once again on a path of change.

Recent moves by retail giants such as Bunnings and Unilever to trial a four-day work week have paved the way for all Australians to reconsider how, when and where we work.

Although we’ve all grown used to juggling life through a revolving door of weekdays and weekends, work for Australian men and women wasn’t always 9 to 5.

When the 40-hour working week was introduced in 1948, it was challenged as “an unnecessary and dangerous experiment”.

Recent moves by Bunnings and Unilever prove employees are winning the fight for flexible work. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Mariuz

The years leading up to this revolutionary change saw Australia adjusting to a post-war landscape.

Between 1939 and 1943, female workforce participation increased 31 per cent as 200,000 women entered paid work in jobs previously reserved for men.

Fast-forward 80 years, and we can see history repeating itself.

The pandemic has also changed the way Australians work and great change is once again born out of necessity.

Australia’s workforce is adjusting to a rise in flexible work arrangements and altered hours of work.

Recent Ranstad research found four in five Australian workers (83 per cent) want the flexibility to work when they want, and three in four (75 per cent) want flexibility to choose their work location.

Importantly for Australian employers, workers said they were prepared to walk if a job wasn’t meeting their needs.

More than half (57 per cent) indicated they wouldn’t accept a job if they thought it would negatively impact their work-life balance and just under 50 per cent said they would quit their job if it was preventing them from enjoying their life.

Applying a gender perspective to flexible work reveals even deeper insights.

With women still taking on the majority of unpaid care and domestic responsibilities in Australia, they’re also more likely to want or need more flexible or part-time paid work.

This is reflected in the gender equality data that employers with 100 or more employees report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) each year.

The pandemic has also changed the way Australians work. Picture: iStock

Our data shows that women still account for most of the workforce in lower-paying industries and job roles and a higher concentration of women work in part-time and casual employment: just 42 per cent of women work full-time compared to 67 per cent of men.

This has flow-on impacts for promotional opportunities, with women being passed over for senior roles, in part, due to their being employed on a part-time or casual basis.

However, there’s good news for employees seeking to negotiate flexibility to better balance work with the daily demands of life.

Like Bunnings and Unilever, with their trials of the four-day work week, our dataset shows a growing proportion of employers are opening the door to other forms of flexibility like adaptable hours of working and hybrid or remote working arrangements.

Companies are also shifting their focus to attracting, retaining and promoting top female talent with progressive approaches to management that design these roles – traditionally viewed as full-time work – around part-time hours or as a job-sharing arrangement.

These are just some of the ways leading employers are playing their crucial role to accelerate progress for workplace gender equality and close the gender pay gap.

Flexible work is here to stay. Picture: Unsplash/Israel Andrade

Employees can check their employer’s progress on WGEA’s website. Our Data Explorer publishes the information reported to us each year by Australian employers.

It’s also where employees will be able to view their employer’s gender pay gap when it’s published for the first time in early 2024.

When women are supported to work how they want or need, outcomes improve.

Attracting and retaining diverse talent is crucial to future-proofing the workplace and the Australian economy more broadly.

Making workplaces more flexible and responsive to the needs of employees is a key way of doing this.

Flexible work is proving to be a key enabler of gender equality in Australian workplaces.

It’s more than just an experiment – it’s here to stay.

Mary Wooldridge is the CEO of Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA)