More than half of Aussie tech companies ‘losing staff to rivals’ who offer WFH arrangements

Tech workers are resisting office work mandates, with a new survey revealing most tech companies are losing staff to more flexible rivals.

More than half of Australia’s tech companies are losing staff to rivals who offer remote working arrangements and greater flexibility, a new global survey has revealed.

Amazon, Tabcorp, Flight Centre, the NSW government and others are ordering staff back to the office — with a KPMG study finding working from home will be largely over within the next three years. But, flexibility remains key to attracting and retaining staff, according to global human resources platform Remote.

Remote surveyed more than 4000 businesses, including 506 leaders in Australia, and found 58 per cent of local tech companies were losing staff to rivals who offer remote working arrangements.

And 74 per cent reported increased demand for more flexible work options, giving the likes of Atlassian, Telstra and Medibank — who say working from home is here to stay — a competitive edge.

And Atlassian has moved to poach workers who disagree with return to the office mandates, encouraging them to apply for any of the 300-plus jobs available at the software giant.

Remote co-founder and chief executive Job van der Voort.

Remote co-founder and chief executive Job van der Voort said: “we have only just begun writing the playbook on remote work and will need to work together to identify and tackle these challenges”.

“This data echoes what we hear from many of our customers — the benefits of flexible and remote work far exceed the challenges. We believe that distributed work is paving the way to a more successful, balanced and fair business world and are committed to helping other companies in adopting flexible work and attract great talent from everywhere,” Mr van der Voort said.

ASX-listed Siteminder — which supplies the global hotel industry with software to help manage bookings and pricing — has attempted to strike a balance, requiring staff to come into the office at least two days a week.

Chief people officer Dionne Woo said the two-day minimum showed the company still catered for flexibility and collaboration between teams. Ms Woo said this has so far proven successful to attracting and retaining talent in a tight labour market.

Siteminder chief people officer Dionne Woo.

“We very rarely have lost an employee coming into the business because they obviously want to be fully remote,” Ms Woo said.

“We have remained committed from the very beginning of being a hybrid workforce and we feel it’s reasonable that employees are in the office two days a week but they also get the flexibility to work from home three days a week.”

Ms Woo said Siteminder — which has a market value of $1.73bn — asked staff to chose two days out of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to come into the office.

“Monday, Friday, there’s just never enough people in the office to have any kind of atmosphere. We’ve really said it’s about building social connections, the professional connections.

“Do your team-building on those (office) days, and also the knowledge-sharing whiteboard sessions, where you really know there is a purpose … as opposed to just sitting behind your desk and doing the same job as you would do sitting at home.

“I can’t see off the top of my mind that we’ve lost any — or very few have been lost — to a fully remote role because I think the flexibility we offer is very competitive.”

Siteminder’s two-day requirement is unusual. Most companies who have continued to offer flexible arrangements have ordered staff back to the office at least three days a week.

Ms Woo said it was about attempting to strike the right balance.

“We’ve got some employees who choose to come into the office five days a week, three days a week, four days a week …, whatever it may be. But, we felt if we could get employees together two days that gives them those three days of flexibility on that work life balance.

“The reason we didn’t think one (day) was not quite enough, was it becomes just a social day. Let’s say you’re on holiday for two weeks, and you come back in and you haven’t seen anyone … the first few days that we were back, it was just high five and everything about social, which is great.

“But as a business, we have got to do work as well.”

KPMG’s latest survey of the nation’s chief executives found 82 per cent expected traditional white-collar roles to fully return to the office within the next three years. More than 1300 CEOs were surveyed.

Crucially, 78 per cent of Australian CEOs surveyed said they were likely to reward employees who made the effort to come into the office with incentives such as raises, promotions or better projects.

KPMG Australia chief executive Andrew Yates told The Australian he did not believe work from home would end, but it would probably evolve into flexible working arrangements.

Originally published as More than half of Aussie tech companies ‘losing staff to rivals’ who offer WFH arrangements