Hybrid working arrangements most popular among Aussie employees

A union is fighting for work from home provisions to be enshrined in workers’ contracts. Here’s how WFH currently looks across the country.

While Australia may be approaching three years since its last lockdown, remnants of pandemic-era living remain, especially in the workforce.

Working from home, flexible or hybrid employment arrangements have widely become the norm among employees who were able to do their job remotely during lockdown.

So prevalent is the practice, unions are now fighting to have the provision enshrined in workers’ contracts.

Hybrid working arrangements are most preferred nowadays, with fully-remote work on the decline.

According to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence Index report, nearly half of all Australian employees prefer to work mostly onsite (46 per cent), with very few preferring to work fully remote (13 per cent).

“Our data shows that the demand for hybrid work options continues to rise among both employers and employees in Australia,” LinkedIn career expert, Cayla Dengate said.

“The proportion of paid job postings that offer hybrid work has been increasing even after the Covid-mandated work-from-home periods ended.

“In contrast, fully-remote job postings have been going down,” she said.

Interestingly though, working from home habits had been slowing climbing before the pandemic, ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis told the Herald Sun.

“Before the pandemic, if you’re looking at the percentage of people that are working from home, it’s generally going up by about an additional 1 per cent every two years,” he said.

The ABS measures working from home rates every two years and collected data before Covid lockdowns in 2019, right in the midst of the August 2021 lockdowns, and then post-lockdowns in 2023.

“When we’re looking at 2019 to 2021, we saw a very large jump (in people working from home), about eight percentage points. It went up from about 32 per cent up to 40 per cent,” Mr Jarvis said.

“In the most recent data that we have in August 2023, we can see that it did come down a bit but it hadn’t come down that far.”

At the national level, the 2023 figures show working from home was down to around 37 per cent.

Working from home remains popular but less than in 2021. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics

“So some of that working from home was temporary and related to lockdowns, but the fact that it was still at 37 per cent nationally, which is markedly higher than the 32 per cent that we saw before the pandemic, highlights just how much of a change we’ve seen in labour market and how much more pervasive working from home has been,” Mr Jarvis added.

That point is reflected in SEEK’s latest job ad data from October 2023, with job ads containing at least one work from home-related word or phrase, like ‘hybrid work’ or ‘work from anywhere’, still at 10 per cent.

“Before Covid hit, very few job advertisements indicated that the role could be done from home, just 1.6 per cent in February 2020,” SEEK senior economist Matt Cowgill said.

“Since lockdowns ended in October 2021, there’s been no sign of remote work returning to anything like the pre-Covid levels.

“On the contrary, the work from home rate kept rising long after lockdowns were over,” he said.

Which industries offer hybrid working?

Most industries are either at, or very near, their highest level of work from home when it comes to job ads, the SEEK data indicates.

“For example, 42.5 per cent of job ads in Finance and Insurance in October 2023 indicated they could be done from home — unchanged from the peak in April 2023, and dramatically higher than the 3.8 per cent recorded in February 2020,” Mr Cowgill said.

In the industries that did record a fall, the declines were generally small.

According to SEEK’s data, the industries with the largest proportion of job ads with work from home-related opportunities were:

• Insurance and Superannuation
• Consulting and Strategy
• Information and Communication Technology
• Marketing and Communications
• Call Centre and Customer Service

The industries with the least work from home-related opportunities were:

• Retail and Consumer Products
• Trades and Services
• Hospitality and Tourism
• Manufacturing, Transport and Logistics
• Sport and Recreation

Working from home is more prominent among professionals and managers. Picture iStock.

Mr Jarvis added that the proportion of managers and professionals regularly working from home is now 60 per cent compared to the other six occupational groups the ABS measures, at 22 per cent combined.

“There’s a clear difference in people’s capacity to be able to work from home and the nature of their jobs.

“When we talk about managers and professionals and higher skilled jobs, they also tend to be higher paid jobs,” Mr Jarvis said.

In terms of hourly earnings, the ABS data shows that people who are regularly working from home or are able to regularly work from home tend to earn more an hour.

Nationally, it’s about $53 an hour for people who are working from home and around $35 an hour for those people who aren’t or can’t work from home.

“That also just highlights the fact that working from home is either being taken advantage of or better able to be done by people who are in jobs that are also higher paying jobs,” Mr Jarvis added.

Which states are working from home the most?

When it comes to a geographical breakdown, working from home is more common in the big states.

“Victoria was number two on 39 per cent behind New South Wales on 40 per cent,” Mr Jarvis said of the ABS figures.

This is reflected in the SEEK numbers, with proportion of job ads on the platform that indicate the role can be done from home highest in NSW.

• NSW: 12.2 per cent
• VIC 12 per cent
• ACT: 10.4 per cent
• QLD: 8.5 per cent
• SA: 7.4 per cent
• TAS: 6.7 per cent
• WA: 6.6 per cent

Proportion of job ads on SEEK in Australia that indicate the role can be done from home, by state

Mr Cowgill said that the composition of the workforce in each state is the driving factor for the differences.

“The differences between the states are mostly driven by differences in the mix of jobs, with white collar professional jobs in industries like Finance, Consulting and ICT being a bigger share of workforce in NSW and Victoria.

“States’ experience of lockdowns may also be influencing work from home trends — but the compositional differences in employment are a much bigger factor.

“This is shown by the fact that NSW’s work from home rate is slightly higher than Victoria’s, despite the southern state’s much more extensive experience of lockdowns during 2020 and 2021,” Mr Cowgill said.

Who is working flexibly?

Gen Z employees in Australia are most likely to prefer working hybrid (56 per cent), well above the Australia employee average (38 per cent), according to LinkedIn.

Only 5 per cent of Gen Z workers chose fully remote and 36 per cent prefer mostly onsite.

Gen Z employees prefer hybrid working arrangements. Picture: Jason Edwards

“Hybrid work allows employees to enjoy the best of both worlds: the convenience and autonomy of working from home, and the connection and collaboration of working onsite,” Ms Dengate said.

“However, hybrid work also poses some challenges, such as maintaining team cohesion and ensuring equal opportunities for career growth.”

If hybrid conditions aren’t part of a job offer however, there are other benefits that workers can ask for, Ms Dengate said.

“Employees can ask for other benefits that can support their work flexibility, such as paid leave, childcare subsidies, health insurance and performance bonuses,” she said.

Originally published as Hybrid working arrangements most popular among Aussie employees