Recruitment expert revealed why WFH has gone ‘backwards’ in Australia

A recruitment expert has issued a blunt message to Aussies who are complaining about not being able to find fully remote work.

The recent push from companies to get people back into the office has left Aussie workers worried their remote and hybrid roles could soon disappear - but one recruiter believes there is a brutal reason these jobs are vanishing.

Tammie Christofis Ballis, a specialist recruiter and career coach at Realistic Careers, recently issued a blunt assessement of why workers are finding it increasingly difficult to land a WFH job.

“A lot of work from home jobs or remote jobs are dwindling because people have taken the piss, to be quite frank, and employers and big companies want them back in the office,” she said during a recent TikTok live.

“So, if you want a remote job, you need to do it yourself or start a business.”

Speaking to news.com.au, Ms Ballis said there are also other factors that come into play, such as the push to bring more money and foot traffic back into the CBD.

However, she still believes there are some people who are taking advantage of working from home privileges.

“I thought Covid was going to skyrocket work from home, and it did, now we have gone backwards because they’ve taken advantage,” she said.

Ms Ballis said a lot of the inquiries she gets from people who ask her how they can get a remote job are either from people who have families, don’t want to commute or that “don’t like human interaction”.

“They say ,’I’m an introvert, I want to work from home’, but they don’t understand that you’re still working from home for those eight hours or nine hours,” she said.

“I think people think that if they can work from home they can stop and go do the dishes, or they can stop and go hang the washing out, or they can do bits and pieces.”

However, Ms Ballis said the reality is that you are still expected to be at your desk working, the same as if you were in the office.

Ms Ballis believes there is a ‘misconception’ around working from home. Picture: iStock

She said this is the “misconception” that many have about working from home, particularly from those who have never held remote roles before.

The recruitment expert said this then leads to staff getting “upset” when employers using monitoring software to track their productivity.

“I think there’s a misconception that working from home means you can do whatever you want, but still kind of work,” Ms Ballis said.

“You need to be working just like you are in the office, but you’re at your desk [at home].”

In the past few months we have seen both Australian and global companies scrapping work from home and introducing new return to office mandates.

Amazon, Tabcorp, Flight Center and Coles are just some of the many major companies who have recently tightened the reins on WFH rules.

However, a recent Reddit thread has given insight into just how far Aussie workers will go to maintain remote working privileges, including sacrificing their pay.

A worker recently posted to the r/Australia group asking members how much of a pay cut they would take to be able to work from home.

The user said they were asking because they had received a job offer that paid $20,000 less a year than their other job, but it was completely remote as opposed to office based.

They added that it would be a difference between $120,000 and $100,000 a year.

The post immediately kicked off a major debate, many encouraging the poster to take the lower-paying, WFH role.

One person said that if they were in the same position they would take the remote job in a “heartbeat” and others pointing out the extra money they would be saving on commuting, buying coffees and eating out during the week.

While many respondents were for the idea, there were others who weren’t so convinced.

“$20k is an awful lot of money. It wouldn’t work for me, I’d not take it,” one said.

Despite this, it still seems that a significant portion of professionals would consider a lower paying WFH role if the right opportunity came along.

Global HR platform, Deel, recently asked 57,000 professionals within its LinkedIn community a series of workplace questions, one of which was whether they would consider taking a pay cut if the job they were applying for was fully remote.

Of the respondents, 45 per cent said they would consider the pay cut.

A whopping 86 per cent of voters also said working from home had improved their work-life balance in 2024, with 73 per cent believing all companies should offer flexible work options to employees.

The majority of respondents also believed they were more productive when working from home, with 87 per cent saying their productivity was either somewhat higher or much higher compared to when they work in the office.