Greg lets his staff work from home every day – but there’s a catch

Gus McCubbingReporter

Apr 12, 2024 – 5.17pm

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Already a subscriber?

Sydney boss Greg Weiss doesn’t mind if his staff work from home every single day – but he will monitor their screens if productivity lapses.

Mr Weiss, who has five full-time employees in Australia across his two recruiting businesses, Soulidify and Career365, as well as a handful of part-time staff overseas, reckons the hybrid work model is here to stay.

Greg Weiss says none of his staff want to come into the office. But he doesn’t mind. Nick Moir

Productivity Commission boss Danielle Wood says while the balance of evidence suggests there is no productivity gain or loss from hybrid work, purely remote work has a negative effect.

But Mr Weiss, who adopted the hybrid work model before COVID-19 and describes himself as a “modern Baby Boomer”, says this is a risk worth taking for some employers if they have overseas staff and a smaller workforce, provided accountability measures are put in place.

These include scheduling regular meetings, asking his staff for daily reports and installing screen monitoring tools if performance wanes. He recognises that micromanagement invariably increases staff turnover, but says in this situation the employees aren’t the right fit for remote work anyway.

The pay-off, he argues, is that the trusted staff who can perform from home are happier, while bosses can achieve lower overheads.

“None of my team want to work in the office at all,” Mr Weiss, who has a small office space in Chifley Tower in the CBD, told AFR Weekend.

“I go into the office two or three days a week, for my own sanity, but I’m a firm believer in remote work, as long as there’s accountability. Productivity can be ensured with good systems and confidence in your staff.”

Damien Sheehan, the Australian boss of International Workplace Group, which has 60 coworking centres representing about 80,000 square metres of office space, says employees are heading back to the office in droves.

Wi-Fi data from IWG’s spaces in Brisbane increased by 69 per cent when comparing March to the same month in 2023, while Sydney jumped by 44 per cent and Melbourne rose by 33 per cent.

Adelaide and Perth both showed smaller increases (16 and 10 per cent), but Mr Sheehan said those cities weren’t as far behind in terms of office occupancy. Meeting room bookings for IWG across the country were up by 23 per cent year-on-year.

“The hybrid work megatrend has been coming for a long time, with digitisation allowing anyone to work anywhere on any platform. But the pandemic brought it forward by about a decade,” Mr Sheehan said.

The boom in hybrid work meant IWG was expanding to the suburbs and regions, with new spaces opening later this year in Newcastle, NSW, and Port Lincoln, South Australia, along with Artarmon on Sydney’s north shore and Preston in Melbourne’s north.

The rush of workers returning to the office has coincided with an uptick in workplace attendance mandates, as well as policies linking time in the office to bonuses and annual performance reviews.

Ms Wood predicted this trend would continue as the jobs market softened.

“When you look at survey data, employers are less likely to perceive productivity benefits in hybrid than workers,” she said.

“Survey information that suggests for workers, the opportunity to work in a hybrid way in a job is worth about a 7 per cent pay rise. Given those differences in views overall, as the labour market softens and employers have more power … we may well see somewhat of a swing in the pendulum.”

Gus McCubbing is a journalist at the Australian Financial Review in Melbourne. Connect with Gus on Twitter. Email Gus at gus.mccubbing@afr.com