Now we’ve worked from home, do we want to keep doing it?

There has been a lot of focus on the degree to which working from home is going to be a feature of the future labour market.

Commentators and management consultants are frequently advising employers to adopt flexible employment practices to lock in the perceived benefits of allowing staff to work from home. These benefits are said to include greater productivity and better work-life balance – both seemingly attributed to allocating the time saved commuting to work or home matters.

Labour force benefits are said to include greater inclusiveness and opportunity for participation for groups that have historically faced greater barriers in managing the daily commute – including primary caregivers and people with disabilities.

Critics of working from home point to the increased potential for social isolation, loss of informal networking, learning and problem-solving opportunities, and social divisions between those who are able and those who are unable to work from home.

Whatever side of the fence you fall in the working from home debate, it is clear that our experience of COVID-19 has promoted much more attention to how we work. Out of this has emerged a claim that employers are about to confront a tsunami of resignations. In the US, the Microsoft work trend index recorded 40 per cent of people wanting to change jobs this year. In British survey by Personio, a Human Resources company, report a figure of 38 per cent.

At first sight, this sounds like bad news for employers. However, there is a big difference between people wanting to change jobs and actually going through with it. Ask people on Sunday night, Wednesday, or any day with a “y” in it: you’ll find plotters galore. Then they decide it is all too threatening and hard, the money is not so bad, they like or tolerate their workmates, and it is close enough to home, or even in their own home. They stay put.

In fact, the ABS data on job mobility paints a very different picture. They define job mobility as the number of people who changed jobs during the year as proportion of people who were employed at the end of the year. In the most recent report, for the year to February 2021, they found only 7.5 per cent of employed people changed jobs – the lowest figure on record. Further, this appears to be part of a downward trend. The last time the number was in double figures was for the year ending 2012 (10.5 per cent); the highest figure recorded was 19.5 per cent in the year ending 1989. It bumped around 10-12 per cent in the main until 2012.

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These figures are nowhere close to the surveys of intentions. The reasons for leaving a job were roughly just as likely to be involuntary (retrenched, temporary job ended, ill-health, and dismissed) as they were to be wanting a change or better job.

The impact of COVID-19 on work is unprecedented in living memory, and it is possible that the past will not be a guide to what happens next. However, the difference between intentions and action may reflect a reality that for many work is a necessary, but not always satisfying means to an end. Work, whether we do it from home, an office, upside down, or underwater, ultimately is still work.

Jim Bright, FAPS is Professor of Career Education and Development at ACU and owns Bright and Associates, a Career Management Consultancy. Email to [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @DrJimBright