This story was originally published in ANU Reporter Monday 28 April 2025.
It was pandemic-era lockdowns that gave many employees a taste of working from home, albeit in unusual circumstances.
But then, a power struggle ensued to get people back in the office.
In the private sector, surveys suggest that as many as 83 per cent of CEOs want a full return to the office in the coming years.
Shadow finance minister Jane Hume recently declared that it would be “an expectation of a Dutton Liberal government that all members of the APS work from the office five days a week”. Following backlash, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton clarified that this would only apply to public servants in Canberra, before scrapping the promise altogether.
But politics aside, what actually works best? How do we measure the benefits and disadvantages of working from home across productivity, efficiency, wellbeing impacts and more?
Pros and cons of the home office
Associate Professor David Cheng is a leadership and management expert from the Research School of Management at The Australian National University (ANU).
He says many of us understand the benefits of working from home from firsthand experience.
“You could do the washing, you could do the cooking and cleaning and all that. There are some benefits with that autonomy – autonomy helps with mental health” Cheng says.
But there is some difficulty tracking whether working from home is the cause for any reported increase or decrease in productivity or mental health benefits.
There was a noted global decline in mental health when working from home during the pandemic. But there were also obvious stressors outside of the working from the home set up – namely, the uncertainty caused by the global spread of a virus.
Cheng cites a meta-analysis of 170 academic studies, covering about 70,000 people, which shows that productivity appears to increase slightly when working from home.
“The official research shows productivity may have increased slightly or did not decline,” Cheng says. “[The meta-analysis] basically said that when we work from home, we’re more satisfied, we have better commitment, better engagement, slightly better productivity.”
Recent research led by ANU and the University of Newcastle as part of the Australian Workplace Index found that there was no notable difference in productivity between employees working from home versus in the office. In fact, 2024 data revealed that those who spent one or more days at home had more autonomy, saved on commuting time and were less burnt out.
And then, of course, there is the gendered element to consider. People with caring responsibilities – usually women – are able to better balance these duties with paid work when given the flexibility to work from home.
But here are also other impacts that may help improve gender equality.
“If you give men more opportunity to work from home, they can also take on caring roles, and perhaps the women can go back into the office. That has implications for equality and equity,” Cheng says.
Beyond individual-level benefits, returning to work has a whole range of flow on effects for the economy, transport systems and CBD real estate.
“If you come to work, then that puts people into the trains and the buses, there’s better patronage for the shops and businesses,” Cheng says.
“But also, how many thousands of cars are back on the road? What about climate change? There’s all sorts of aspects and I haven’t seen a study that has tried to look at and quantify every one.”
Even with the research we do have, there is variation in the results.
While some people may respond well to working from home, others may report feelings of isolation or loneliness or admit to being distracted from work by having to balance time spent on work assignments with time spent doing household chores.
Managing relationships
So why the push to return to the office? Your company’s management style is a factor. For many managers, it can simply be easier to supervise people directly in front of them.
“It’s easier to know whether people are working or whether they’re just slacking off on Facebook or baking sourdough,” Cheng says.
But he adds that, for managers, the main way to keep staff engaged, happy and productive is not a ping pong table in the break room or massage vouchers but simple acts of care.
“During COVID, some organisations sent a lot of care packs out to people working from home and perhaps [your manager] doesn’t have the budget to do that, but they can still check in,” Cheng says.
“Showing that you care allows you to have those frank conversations about productivity, mental health or whatever it is.
“If you care for them, and they know you care for them, even if they’re offsite, it’s easy to say something like ‘Hey, David, you used to be productive at X amount, now you seem to be slipping. Is there a reason behind that?’”
Having a good relationship can also help managers with tailoring work from home policies to get the most out of their team.
“Some staff, they need to be looked at to stay on task, other staff, in fact, if you’re over their shoulder, it’s the worst thing for their productivity,” he says.
“What would be ideal, and I know it’s difficult, is if everybody works out what’s best for their staff at the department level, if not the team level, if not the individual level.”
In other words, when deciding between office and home, we need to go back to the bare bone basics: what actually is the job? What tasks need to be completed in the office?
“With these sorts of debates we like blanket rules, but we need to think a bit more nuanced,” Cheng says.