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More than half of Australian business leaders are perceived to have an in-built bias towards working from home practices and will need to adapt quickly in order to better meet the expectations of a post-COVID workforce, according to new research from global recruitment firm, Robert Walters.
A survey of over 1,000 Australian professionals has revealed only 36 per cent of Australian organisations had implemented work from home practices within one-two days of the COVID-19 outbreak, compared with 68 per cent in the US, 57 per cent in New Zealand, 52 per cent in the UK and 50 per cent in Japan.
Furthermore, 60 per cent of respondents believed senior leaders' preference for traditional ways of working is a barrier to enabling more employees to work from home.
Robert Walters' managing director - ANZ, James Nicholson, said, “There is no doubt COVID-19 has been the biggest event to have impacted the business world since the global financial crisis. In a tremendous effort of maintaining business continuity, whilst at the same time ensuring the safety of their employees, business leaders made swift changes to the way they work, leading to an unprecedented acceleration in remote working.
“With many businesses now going back to the office, the changing expectations of employees in a post-COVID-19 world has meant that organisations and particularly senior leaders will need to adapt their thinking and implement what flexible working now looks like.”
While 50 per cent of professionals felt that working from home prior to the COVID-19 outbreak was an exception rather than the rule, 76 per cent now believe their their leaders will use this experience to enable more employees to work from home on a regular basis.
“For many senior leaders, the mandatory lockdown has been a trial run for embedding workplace flexibility into new ways of working,” Mr Nicholson said.
"It is great to see that organisations are taking the need to adapt and be flexible with work practices seriously, which has been effectively demonstrated in the diverse range of back to the office strategies that are being considered.”
While work from home priorities dominated findings, other areas that business leaders will need to quickly adapt to include:
In further proof of the demand work from home practices have, the number one mental health concern for workers was commute time, with 89 per cent of respondents believing it to be the biggest drain on their mental health.
“In less than a decade, the average commute time in Australia has jumped by 23 per cent. The growth in commute time [is] obviously having an impact on employee mental health,” added Mr Nicholson.
“Increasing and maintaining flexible working arrangements that were introduced during lock-down will go a long way to increasing the health, safety and wellbeing of employees now and into the future.”