A growing number of Australian workers are being ordered back into the office five days a week as employer mandates create a “domino effect” of widespread acceptance that the work-from-home party is winding to a close.
Thirty-nine percent of businesses have mandated five days a week in the office in 2025, a 3 percent jump from the previous year, while the average number of required office days has increased from 3.43 to 3.64, according to a survey of 500 Australian employers by recruitment firm Robert Half.
“The medium- to large-sized businesses mandating four to five days versus one to two, that has a domino effect on those larger corporates,” said Robert Half director Nicole Gorton.
“What I am also seeing which plays against that, kind of a dichotomy in the employment market, is that the smaller-sized enterprises are taking advantage of this domino effect as a lever to attract talent. They are more likely to be one or two days in or even fully remote. Smaller-sized enterprises don’t always have the capacity to uplift remuneration so they will lever benefits.”
Twenty-two percent now require four days, 20 percent require three days, while just 8 percent will allow two days — the working arrangement that saw the biggest decline, down from 13 percent last year.
Only 4 percent mandate one day in the office — unchanged from last year — while 7 percent of employers allow full work from home, a decline from 9 percent in 2024.
Five days in the office was the preferred option among the employers surveyed, followed by four days and three days.
Eighty-four percent of respondents said they were influenced by other businesses ordering staff back to the office, while 63 percent said resistance from workers continues to fall five years on from Covid.
Gorton said employers were definitely “back in the driver’s seat” and dictating office attendance, knowing others were doing the same.
“As workers adjust back to the pre-pandemic way of working and observe similar mandates elsewhere, they are less reluctant to oppose these mandates in their current workplace,” she said.
The survey respondents were drawn from a range of small- and medium businesses as well as large private, publicly listed, and public-sector organizations across Australia.
20 percent salary increase demands
While 28 percent of employers said attitudes towards returning to the office had stayed the same compared to 12 months ago, 9 percent reported staff resistance had somewhat or significantly worsened.
Victorian employees, who saw more working from home time during the pandemic than other states, are the ones kicking up the biggest stink about coming back to the office.
Thirteen percent of Victorian employers said attitudes have worsened since last year, compared with 12 percent in NSW, 10 percent in Western Australia, and just 2 percent in Queensland.
Gorton said she had heard from employers of some staff demanding pay rises “even up to 20 percent.”
“There are people saying, ‘I want a salary increase and I’ll come back into the office,’” she said. “Companies are saying, ‘We’ll review your salary in the normal process.’”
Those who are resisting may have changed their lifestyle circumstances and “those changes are a higher priority to their in-office days.”
“What they’re giving up in commuter time or leisure time … to get back into the office is not worth it,” Gorton said. “For that group, they’re saying, ‘Pay me. I’ll come in but make it worth my while.’”
Others may simply be at a point in their career where they know they can comfortably perform their duties from home and are not looking to advance or take on new responsibilities.
‘On the f**king Zoom’
Major employers including Amazon, CommBank, and the NSW government have been gradually mandating a return to office since around 2023, initially sparking furious pushback from workers.
In the US, one of President Donald Trump’s first official acts after taking office in January was to sign an executive order requiring federal workers to return to the office full-time.
“I happen to be a believer that you have to go to work,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
“I don’t think you can work from a home. Nobody’s going to work from home. They’re going to be going out, they’re going to play tennis, they’re going to play golf. They’re going to do a lot of things — they’re not working. It’s a rare person that’s going to work. You might work 10 percent of the time, maybe 20 percent. I don’t think you’re going to work a lot more than that.”
JP Morgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon last week also delivered a stunning tirade against remote work, hitting out at young bankers sending text messages and looking at mail while “on the f**king Zoom”.
“What we are definitely seeing as a generalization is people want to progress their career and they are realizing they can’t do it today from home,” Gorton said.
“That the work-from-home environment, while it was highly desirable and worked, it was a moment in time. That as people want to progress their career, they are being impacted by inflation and they want to earn more money, that learning is caught not taught — you can’t progress from your bedroom. Also socially, people just want to come back to the office.”
So much so, in fact, that reduced office footprints at many large corporates now using desk booking systems were causing frustration, according to Ms Gorton.
“Some people wanting to come into the office four or five days a week are finding they are not able to,” she said.
Canberra WFH ‘blank cheque’
Federal public servants in Canberra, meanwhile, continue to enjoy effectively unlimited access to flexible work arrangements under a deal struck by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) in 2023.
The opposition has hinted that it would like to see federal public servants return to the office if it wins the election — although the CPSU deal does not expire until 2027.
The Coalition has been seeking data on office attendance from federal departments through Senate Estimates. Last month, Home Affairs revealed more than a quarter of staff worked from home three or more days per week, while that figure was 22 percent for Services Australia and 20 percent at the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations.
Opposition public service spokeswoman Jane Hume told The Australian the Albanese government had given public servants a “blank cheque not to be in the office.”
A number of departments have not explicitly answered the question.
Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS) deputy secretary Nicola Hinder appeared before Senate Estimates on Monday where she was grilled by Hume, who said it was “extraordinary” that the DPS had not been more forthcoming.
“In response to one part of the question, which was to list the number of employees by the number of days that they work from home, you stated that it was ‘too difficult to calculate’, which I find extraordinary,” Hume said.
“However, you then provided the number of staff when asked for the number who work from home three or more days a week. Why was that?”
Hinder said she would “be the first one to admit that the department’s HR systems require enhancement to be able to pick up that type of data.”
According to the DPS, more than half of the staff who work from home three or more days a week were Parliamentary Executive Level (PEL) 1, which starts at a salary of $85,907.15 (135,665 AUD).
Hume asked whether it was “appropriate for more senior staff to spend most of their time outside of the office.”
“We require our senior staff to do an assessment as to whether or not it is actually feasible and practical for these officers to work from home and for how long they work from home,” Hinder said.
“On occasion, I work from home, and I think I’m much more productive than I am in the office. There are lots of very talented folk … who manage their staff really, really well, regardless of whether or not they have a footprint in the office or whether or not they’re undertaking part of their duties from home.”
