For almost a decade, Jenny Searle has had the same job.
However, in the past two years, everything has changed for the better.
"It's not the same life at all," she says, her 12-week-old puppy Wally running around her feet.
"For me, it's a much better balance. I'm a lot more relaxed."
A merchandising manager for newsagency marketing group NewsXpress, Jenny now permanently works from home in Melbourne's outer suburbs.
Until 2020, she would drive between two and two-and-a-half-hours a day, commuting every weekday to her office in the inner suburb of Hawthorn.
In future, she'll only visit once a year.
"Where it was quite dark when [my partner and I] would get home for work … now we go for walks, we go boating. We can do that after work now and we could never do that before."
Jenny is part of a social revolution that has swept the nation in the two years since March 2020, when governments mandated people who could work from home should do so, to stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The restrictions tightened and eased. But even cities and states largely spared lockdowns and mandated mask-wearing have seen huge falls in central business district (CBD) office occupancy and foot traffic.
Jenny may be a rarer case of #WFHforever. However, working remotely, or only a few days from the office, was until recently a rare perk or the preserve of senior executives, consultants, some in-demand IT workers and the self-employed.
Now, for many white-collar employees, it's simply work.
Here to stay
The staff of telecommunications giant Telstra were already working flexibly before COVID-19 up-ended norms.
Outgoing chief executive Andy Penn points out the difference between working under lockdown conditions and the choice of working in a "hybrid" way: Sometimes at home, sometimes in the office, sometimes travelling or in the field.
"There was nothing flexible about working from home during COVID, locked in the house for many months on end," he says.
More than 60 per cent of jobs can't be done from home. For the millions of frontline workers who need to physically be somewhere to complete their work, things won't change much.
However, the Productivity Commission, the government's think tank, found that about 35 per cent of jobs have aspects that allow them to be done at home.
These jobs tend to be better paid, more likely to be full-time, and the workers tend to be female. As our economy continues to evolve, that percentage is likely to expand.
The Telstra boss — leading a company that's benefited financially from the expanding need for data and connectivity — says the shift proved that different ways of working can co-exist.
The shift is having concrete consequences, as major employers such as Telstra weigh up the need to keep paying for half-empty city skyscrapers, with the added demand for suburban and regional hub offices that can accommodate teams and individuals.
Concrete demand
Luke Anear, chief executive of software company SafetyCulture, is standing inside his new building, pointing out different spaces in the eight-storey office adjacent to Sydney’s largest train station.
Although the project was started two years before COVID-19 and completed two years into a worldwide work-from-home transformation, forward thinking about the nature of work means little has changed from the pre-pandemic plan.
"Our role as an employer is to give people the option and give them the flexibility to be able to work in the best way that suits them," he says.
"Some prefer to work at home for periods, and others love to be in the office. So we need to make sure that we're building workplaces that provide teams that flexibility so that they can do their best work each day.
Change at home too
City sandwich shops and retailers have been the most obvious losers from the epic shift towards work from home, as tens of thousands of customers shunned the office.
However, there have been social impacts too.
Almost one-in-four women considered quitting the workforce altogether during the COVID-19 pandemic, a global survey found last year.
Many different factors powered that sentiment, but a key one was the toll of unpaid work, particularly home-schooling during times when schools were closed.
Megan Motto is chief executive of the Governance Institute, a peak body for professionals that oversees how companies are run. In a note to members, she urged employers to keep that imbalance in mind as hybrid work models cemented into place
"The lockdown periods also prompted a disruption in gender relations, but not for the better," she notes, "with women typically picking up more than their fair share of home school duties and domestic chores, all while trying to keep their own professional lives on track."
That imbalance needs to be considered as some employees transition back to the office and others embrace the flexibility now on offer.
Employers change, too
Mark Fletcher is Jenny's boss and has around 75 employees at NewsXpress and small business point-of-sale software company called Tower Systems.
Before the pandemic, only two employees ever worked from home. Now, he's got employees who've moved home to New Zealand, and he's just hired a staff member interstate.
"It's for a role we would have had based here in Melbourne. But this person is living in Perth, they want to stay in Perth, they're very happy in Perth. And we're happy to have them on board," he says.
"And it makes our people happier, I think."
Productivity has improved and staff retention is up. One of the reasons, Mr Fletcher says, is that people are happy where they are more productive.
"That's really important for us as employers, because team member happiness benefits us in ways that we just can't measure," he explains.
For his business, and countless others, COVID-19 has taken tools available for, sometimes, decades — such as email, video-conferencing and document sharing — and given employers and employees a chance to focus on what works best for them.
Trust earned
Two years into the pandemic, Caitlin Guilfoyle reflects on the "rumblings" about the uneven balance between work and life that were growing before the cascading events of March 2020.
Ms Guilfoyle, a future of work leader at consulting firm PwC Australia, goes into companies and has seen the impact.
What didn't exist before the pandemic forced bosses to change was trust that employees working remotely would put in the effort required.
"Trust didn't really exist in organisations to enable [work from home] to a large extent. So workers had asked for it and weren't necessarily being afforded it," she recalls.
"Or, if they were, it was under a special case or special circumstances that they were given that ability."
When public health orders required non-essential workers to stay at home, the experiment began. And the experiment worked.
"And it has worked — there have been really positive outcomes for organisations and for people."
Employee choice
Jenny isn't coming back to the office. With an extremely tight labour market — meaning hot competition for skilled workers — and record petrol prices pushing up the cost of commuting, any push for a full return to the offices across Australia will meet resistance.
Data from the Property Council of Australia shows dire occupancy levels for the central business districts of the nation.
As a percentage of the pre-COVID rate, February's reported occupancy in Melbourne was just 15 per cent, Sydney's was just 18 per cent.
Even cities that avoided the brunt of lockdowns such as Brisbane (41 per cent), Adelaide (47 per cent) and Perth (55 per cent) are seeing far more empty desks than late in 2019.
Jenny wouldn't have got her new puppy, Wally, if she was spending more than two hours a day commuting — and her core daylight hours in the office.
"In an office environment, you are pretty much go, go, go for the whole day.
"Working from home and setting your own schedule just allows you to take the time away when you need it," she says, adding, "and I think that indicates a mutual respect from the organisation and from us in how we do our jobs."
Jenny's job involves visiting a select number of newsagents, meaning she's not in front of the computer at home all day.
Most surveys suggest office workers want to be in the office two or three days a week, out of the standard five-day work week.
Two years into an enforced global experiment, Jenny's situation suits her and her employer
"Just like in school, where some students learn with lots of others around them and others prefer to learn a little bit more isolated, I think giving the flexibility to your employees to work at home allows you to work the best way that suits you," she says.
