Work from Home, Quiet Quitting and how HR can help
Work from Home – factual context
The new world of work continues to present many challenges from a people and culture perspective. According to PWC’s report: ‘Balancing Act: The New Equation in Hybrid Working’ (02/2022):
- Pre-pandemic, almost half of workers were in the office every day (48%). Today, that figure is (4%) [p 6];
- The average number of days that knowledge based workers want to work from home is 3.2 days [p 7];
- Almost half of workers surveyed reported that their “organisation doesn’t genuinely support hybrid working” [p 8];
- Saving money on travel is reported as being the highest ranked benefit of working from home “reflective of the decline in real wage growth, concerns around inflation and rising fuel costs” [p 9];
- 73% of survey respondents reported that their mental health and well being had improved with hybrid arrangements [p 12].
Hybrid model
Perhaps the most common way that work from home has established itself in many contemporary workplaces is by way of hybrid working arrangements. A blend of office contact time for team meetings, face to face activities and culture building together with home based work days. This may be a mix of 3 x office days and 2 x work from home days for a full time employee, a % split of work from home and office based duty days (such as 60/40) or in some cases, the requirement for employees to be present onsite on a given work day each week. From an HR perspective, we have observed that organisations tend to consider work from home arrangements by staffing population given that some role types are better suited to remote work and others, such as those requiring face to face client service delivery are not. To this end, a blanket standard may not be fit for purpose across the entirety of an organisation’s workforce. The AICD Company Director Magazine (March 2023, Volume 39, Issue 3) reported that 77% of ‘future work survey respondents’ agree or strongly agree that offering remote/hybrid working will be critical to retaining talent (p 45).
Recruitment advertising
If you already have an established approach to work from home and/or flexible work arrangements (including remote work) then it is critical that you promote this as part of your employer value proposition. Whether you are working with a recruitment partner or advertising across online job boards, we recommend a simple statement or paragraph that highlights your business. It could be something like this:
‘Here at [insert organisation name] we embrace flexible ways of working including work from home. We encourage you to talk to us during the recruitment process about our hybrid model and how we support work/life balance’.
We also recommend that you include a reference to work from home arrangements in the teaser bullet points on any online advertisement:
- ‘Flexible work arrangements including work from home (hybrid)’
Right to Disconnect
With the increase in remote work arrangements post pandemic, the boundaries between work and home have become increasingly blurred especially with new technology that makes it difficult to disconnect or switch off. To this end, a newly established workplace right under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) that will shortly take effect is the ‘right to disconnect’. The right to disconnect is essentially a right by an employee to refuse contact outside of regular working hours provided that the refusal is reasonable. We have covered this topic in another article in quite some detail which you can access here.
Quiet Quitting
Quiet Quitting has emerged as another people and culture challenge whereby people present for work and perform their role to the very minimum standard set out in their role description. Quiet quitters may display little to no initiative, engagement or willingness to contribute to organisational initiatives. Quiet quitting can be a particularly difficult issue to manage in remote work situations. Nevertheless, if you are struggling with employees who are simply turning up each day and going through the motions, you may be interested to know that there are actually a variety of tools and interventions in the HR space available to you. Depending on the nature of your business, one or more of the following may be relevant:
- Engagement assessment activities
- Contract provisions (including in relation to monitoring)
- Coaching contracts
- Performance objectives and measures
- Variable compensation
- Absence management processes
- Re-establishing and articulating reasonable boundaries.
We can work with you to determine which combination of these types of HR interventions may add the most value. Together, we can help you explore options to strengthen engagement and reduce the impact of the ‘silent resignation’ movement.
What (else) can HR do right now?
When it comes to Work from Home, the HR function can be of valuable support, guidance and advice in relation to the following:
- Development of a work from home/hybrid/flexible working arrangements policy
- Determining the most appropriate work from home policy arrangements for different work groups and staffing populations
- Refreshing any existing work from home policy to ensure that it is up to date and fit for purpose
- Development and completion of work from home risk assessment safety checklists
- Conducting difficult or challenging conversations with team members regarding work from home
- Directing people to attend the workplace when reasonably required
- Carefully managing internal communication regarding work from home
- Ensuring that external recruitment advertising reflects your employer value proposition regarding work from home and flexible work arrangements.
Resources
We can guide you with implementing learnings from emerging case law decisions from the Fair Work Commission in relation to work from home: see Gregory v Maxxia Pty Ltd [2023] FWC 2768 via this link: https://www.fwc.gov.au/hearings-decisions/find-decisions-and-orders
The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) has also recently released a discussion paper on Work and Care as part of the 2023-24 Modern Award review. This paper (as at 29 JAN 2024) contains valuable information that may guide the way ahead in relation to work from home and other related models of work:
Contact us today for immediate HR support with your work from home related enquiries. You can also read more on this page here.