Opinion
Almost six years after workers were sent home at the first signs of the pandemic, the WFH wars are just heating up. Every time there’s a new prominent legal ruling, it’s celebrated by advocates or claimed by detractors as definitive proof that will finally settle the working from home debate.
Depending on which way you choose to interpret each case, you could argue that WFH is reaching its final throes, or that it’s now so deeply ingrained that it’s never going to revert to what it was.
Last week, the Fair Work Commission upheld that a Melbourne worker was legally sacked for not adhering to a new three days in the office policy, despite his original contract saying his employment was able to be done from home. On the surface, it looks like a win for employers being able to enforce their working arrangements.
At the end of last year, a staff member from Westpac successfully challenged the bank’s WFH policy when the same commission ruled that she didn’t need to report to the office for their required two days a week. Chalk this one up to employees who fight for their rights.
The only certainty is that the Fair Work Commission will be kept busy over the coming months and years as they adjudicate more of these battles. Each one will be held up as an attempt to read the tea leaves on where all of this is heading.
But – and here comes the giant caveat – you can’t draw any firm conclusions about wider trends based on individual cases. Each one is decided on its own merits, depending on unique contracts, circumstances, behaviour and legal fine print.
However, they do reveal some insights on the overarching question on whether WFH is now a right or a privilege.
Despite years of struggle, employers still ultimately have the upper hand. They are the ones depositing a worker’s pay each cycle, setting the ground rules for working environments, and deciding who is hired and fired.
Last week’s ruling, for example, detailed that the employer had run hybrid work trials, measured engagement on the policy and model, and consulted staff over making changes to it. Based on that, they decided to implement a staged transition for all relevant employees to return to the office three days a week. Where you work is a decision that a business makes, and it can change over time. Most employment contracts now state that the employer can alter the location you work from.
While employees were handed more power than they’d ever had during the early years of the pandemic, employers have been fighting – case by case – to claw some of it back. They have been successful, but still not as much as they’d like.
Hybrid working, in whatever flexible format works for each individual business and its staff, is now an established part of many workplaces. Roy Morgan data from August 2025 showed that 46 per cent of employed Australians, or 6.7 million people, work from home at least some of the time.
The latest global WFH trends compiled by Professor Nick Bloom from Stanford University showed that WFH has stabilised at about 25 per cent of work days. Bloom collects data on US workers as part of the Survey of Workplace Attitudes and Arrangements and documented a threefold increase compared to pre-COVID that hasn’t shifted much in recent years.
The guiding principle for all workplaces should be how reasonable a policy is. Workers need to be reasonable with their demands to balance WFH with what an organisation wants, and businesses also need to keep this in mind as they craft, measure and implement their plans.
Both sides will continue to skirmish, and individual battles will be won and lost in the legal system. Neither side can claim full victory, and the WFH wars will continue on the frontlines of work for many years to come.
Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com
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Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards, Cult Status and Killer Thinking. He co-founded Junkee Media and writes a monthly newsletter called OUTLET.