Ordering staff back to office risky business

Businesses around the country will be watching with great interest the situation playing out at One NZ as the telco tries to get staff to spend more time in the office. Just before Christmas, One NZ changed its workfrom-home policy, requiring contact centre staff to work three days a week in the office, up from the previous two.

The move didn’t go down well, with 112 unionised staff fighting back against it. One NZ spent last week in mediation with Unite Union, and if that doesn’t resolve things there’s talk of stop-work industrial action.

One NZ says it’s still a strong advocate for working from home for part of the week, however, some of its teams “felt it was difficult to foster team culture, support personal development and build connections across the business when people are working remotely”.

It’s a situation workplaces worldwide are grappling with post-pandemic.

Last month, Seek released an Economic Insights report showing the work from home rate remains high in New Zealand.

“Before Covid hit, it was rare for New Zealanders to work from home. Only 1.3 per cent of job ads in February 2020 indicated that the role could be done from home. Now, the proportion of job ads that indicate they can be done from home — what we call the ‘WFH rate’ — is much higher, at 8.9 per cent in December 2023.”

Seek says that’s largely driven by white-collar, office-based industries. The report shows it’s also much more common in cities; Wellington (13.4 per cent) and Auckland (11.5 per cent) have the highest WFH rates, with Marlborough (3.3 per cent) the lowest rate.

Seek senior economist Matt Cowgill says labour markets still have not settled down from the “dramatic lurches of the Covid period”, and it’s still not clear “where the WFH rate will settle, in NZ or elsewhere”.

“A loosening in the labour market, with unemployment rising a little and fewer jobs on offer, may mean employers are more able to attract and retain candidates even if they reduce opportunities to work from home.

“But employers who move aggressively to reduce their WFH rate may still find that they lose workers to competitors who offer the ability to WFH.”

He says over time we will reach a more stable point, but one economist has predicted we’ll first follow a “Nike swoosh” — a short-term decline as labour markets soften followed by a longer-term rise.

“2024 may see modest declines in the WFH rate, but that’s not likely to be the end of the story.”

Perhaps One NZ is writing this chapter in the story as it navigates the complexities of hybrid working in a post-pandemic world, with us all bearing witness.

But for others looking to follow suit, it’s clear a great deal of finesse and business acumen will be needed.