Leaked audio reveals Adelaide Uni leader's work from home remarks before shock exit
Leaked recordings of two Adelaide Uni meetings can be revealed, showing the moment that sparked a staff revolt, and the top boss backdown that followed.
Hot-desking complaints and work from home fury overshadowed an Adelaide University all-staff briefing, with leaked audio uncovering a senior leader’s remarks that set off a major controversy before she resigned.
Recordings obtained by The Advertiser reveal exactly what Deputy Vice-Chancellor Paula Ward told about 1000 staff during an October 28 town hall meeting as she outlined new work-from-home measures, sparking backlash just weeks before her shock exit.
The briefing came as staff brace for changes when the University of Adelaide and UniSA merge at the end of the year.
Around 15 minutes in, Ms Ward said new work from home rules were set to be introduced to prevent staff getting “four-day weekends” by working remotely on both Friday and Monday.
It’s understood the changes relate to professional staff and not academics.
“So there’s a minimum of three days that you are expected to be on campus,” she said.
“Up to two days per week you can elect to work from home, and that’s by agreement with your manager, in alignment with what your workload is and what’s going on at any particular point in time, and obviously always in alignment with legislative obligations.
“And then one day during your week must be a Monday or a Friday, effectively not looking for people to have a four-day weekend on a regular basis.”
In response staff erupted in criticism in the comments, some denouncing the remarks as “absurd”, “insulting” and “ill-befitting of leadership”, and questioning whether the rules would apply even if they were unwell.
The backlash continued when Ms Ward suggested some staff would be hot-desking and using lockers instead of keeping personal items at a workstation, saying: “If you are in an assigned desk, it means you are more regularly in your workplace for four or more days.”
One commenter shot back: “Did knowledge of the general distaste for co-locating/hot-desking inform the decision to make it that anyone on campus less than four days will have to hot-desk? It reads as a decision made to try and minimise work from home.”
By the next town hall on November 12, Ms Ward was absent and her superiors were in full apology mode.
Co-vice chancellors Peter Høj and David Lloyd opened the meeting by distancing the university from her remarks about working from home and four day weekends.
“We fully understand why this particular expressed view would have upset many people and you just need to know that we do support flexible working arrangements,” Professor Høj said.
Professor Lloyd added that: “The view expressed was retracted by the person who said it, but we just want to make it very clear that it’s not our view and it’s also something that we’re sorry for the impact that it’s had in the organisation.”
“We are advancing a working from home policy and that working from home policy will be … built around balancing individual needs, institutional needs, but anchored around trust.
“And it’ll also be commensurate with the fact that we have to balance the policy with two existing enterprise agreements and not get in front of the forthcoming enterprise agreement, which is still under negotiation.”
A spokesman from the university said they are still conducting enterprise bargaining negotiations with the National Tertiary Education Union, and “to respect those negotiations and the good faith obligations both parties have under workplace laws, it would be inappropriate to discuss them publicly.”
“The work from home principles proposed for Adelaide University are very similar to those already in place at the two antecedent universities,” he said.
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Originally published as Leaked audio reveals Adelaide Uni leader's work from home remarks before shock exit
