Tim Duggan recently wrote an opinion piece in the SMH titled Working from home is the new normal, so why doesn’t Elon Musk agree?
Elon Musk and fellow American entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy were appointed in November 2024 by Donald Trump to lead the made-up ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ in the US.
Musk and Ramaswamy are unlikely bedfellows, united primarily by their fealty to Trump, and aim to use the pretence of DOGE to drastically cut back the size of the US Federal Government through executive actions instead of new laws.
One of their primary ways of doing that? Forcing all 2.2 million US federal workers to come back into the office every single day. Until now, each agency within the government has been able to choose their own workplace policy, resulting in roughly half of the total Federal workers being on-site all the time, and the rest choosing a mix of office and at-home working.
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome,” they wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.”
Duggan questions whether Elon Musk is a good role model or if employers should be following his advice. After all, Musk boasts he sometimes works 120 hours in a single week. “I go to sleep, I wake up, I work, go to sleep, wake up, work – I do that seven days a week,” he said last year. In a Tesla earnings call in April 2024 he added: “I work pretty much every day of the week. It’s rare for me to take a Sunday afternoon off.”
Musk has previously called working from home “bullshit” because not all employees have access to it, and demands that all of his workforces commute into the office and factory every single day.
In the Financial Review, Euan Black reports:
Researchers overseas claim to have confirmed what many have long suspected: white-collar workers quit their jobs in higher numbers when told to return to the office.
Academics from American and Chinese universities interrogated the job vacancy data of 54 S&P 500 firms and the employment histories of 3 million tech and finance workers on LinkedIn, and found staff turnover increased by an average of 14 per cent after firms introduced return-to-office (RTO) mandates.
LESSON FOR EMPLOYERS
The way we work and employee expectations have changed after covid and working from home, at least part of the week, has become part of our new work culture. It is now the new norm to discuss with particular employees whether they work from home.
However, there are risks and concerns relating to having your employees working from home. Employers need to consider their policies on flexible working arrangements and health and safety measures in place when they consider approving an employee working from home. The recent ‘right to disconnect’ legislation should also be considered as the boundaries between work and personal time can be blurred when an employee works from home.
Please contact us if you would like to discuss your policies and procedures in relation to employees working from home or measures you can take to comply with your obligations to support your employees’ right to disconnect.
