Why Australian bosses raging over Victoria’s potential right to work from home are hypocrites

Yes there are distractions at home but companies can tell whether work is being done.

Corporate Australia has been in meltdown for months now. Absolute meltdown. End of civilisation as we know it.

The cause? The Victorian government wants to let people work from home two days a week. Two days. Out of five. And CEOs are reacting as if Jacinta Allan has announced mandatory veganism and public floggings for anyone who owns a yacht.

On Friday, NAB boss Andrew Irvine stood up at the bank’s AGM and declared: “It’s not really something we think government should get involved in.” It should be, he reckons, a matter for employer and employee to sort out between themselves.

Jacinta Allan’s government isn’t making friends in high places. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

You can bank on NAB’s Andrew Irvine to oppose the plan. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Which sounds reasonable, democratic. Until you remember that in this “negotiation” one side controls your salary, your mortgage payments and whether you have a job tomorrow. And the other side is you, asking nicely to save $5300 a year on petrol and six days annually not sitting in traffic.

Ryan Stokes calls it a “disaster”, a “sledgehammer to productivity”. Mike Cannon-Brookes says it’s “draconian”. Ben Pfisterer from the fintech company Zeller says it’s the “antithesis of what the Victorian economy needs”.

The antithesis!

Of a law letting people avoid sitting behind a Camry on the M1 listening to furniture warehouse ads. Or that Frank Walker tile guy. Pfisterer should try it sometime. He should literally try sitting in traffic on the M1 at peak hour. Because if there’s a genuine human rights violation happening anywhere in Australia on any given Tuesday, that’s it.

Does Ryan Stokes ever work from home? Picture: John Feder

Zeller founder Ben Pfisterer.

And draconian, is it? Funny, because during the pandemic, Cannon-Brookes’ company, Atlassian, went from having basically zero staff in Victoria to having 650 employees. Melbourne became one of their fastest-growing hubs anywhere in the world. All while everyone was working from home.

Except now what worked exceptionally well for Atlassian’s explosive growth is suddenly draconian when workers might have an actual legal right to it.

Then there’s the culture police. IAG’s Nick Hawkins worries you can’t build culture remotely. Irvine talks about needing “strong, cohesive culture” and people in the same room. And we’d like to take them seriously. We really would. Except their cultures survived two years of Zoom meetings during lockdown. Either everything’s fine, or they’ve been catastrophically damaged and everyone’s too polite to mention it.

If you work for Todd Barlow’s Washington H. Soul Pattinson then don’t plan to furnish your home office. Picture: John Feder

Soul Patts boss Todd Barlow requires staff in the office five days a week. Five. For “collaboration, mentoring and fast decision making”. Which is tremendous, assuming none of his talented employees use that decision making to cut loose and run into the arms of a company with flexibility.

And given that 74 per cent of Victorian workers consider working from home “extremely important”, Todd’s basically fishing in a pond that’s three-quarters empty. And then wondering why he’s catching old boots and shopping trolleys.

Bunnings chief Mike Schneider. Picture: Josie Hayden

Bunnings boss Mike Schneider makes a sensible point: most of his 57,000 staff can’t work from home. Which is true. You can’t sell someone a hammer via Zoom. Well, you can, and then you’d be Amazon and everyone would hate you.

But Victoria’s proposal only applies to jobs that can be done remotely. Nobody’s proposing checkout staff work in their pyjamas. Although you’d watch that reality show. Anyone from EndemolShine reading this?

Pfisterer’s right about one thing: starting a business is hard. Know what makes it harder? Ignoring what three-quarters of your employees want while your competitors offer exactly that.

All of which is to say that, yes, the pandemic was horrible. Truly the pits. But it did do some good. Workforce participation in Victoria went up 4.4 per cent. Parents returned to work. Carers found jobs. People with disabilities were hired in roles that didn’t exist before.

Everyone else saved $110 a week on commuting and reclaimed three hours weekly. That’s 156 hours annually. Six-and-a-half entire days of not listening to ads for the bloody Blind Factory.

So what does this terrifying, draconian, sledgehammer of a law actually do?

It says if your job can reasonably be done from home, you can do it from home two days a week. Office attendance is still required when genuinely necessary. It means Stokes and Irvine and Pfisterer can’t just say no because they miss seeing your face around the building.

Or because the office lease was expensive.