Working from home has many pros and cons

The widespread migration of workers to remote working during the pandemic didn't just stress-test the capacity of the NBN. It also fuelled the anxieties of managers and supervisors, who feared employees might not do their jobs if they were out of sight. That particular phobia is one of the issues that has emerged in the Federal Court case between the ATO and the Australian Services Union.

The ASU alleges the ATO discouraged employees from requesting remote working arrangements and breached workplace laws by calling staff back to the office during the pandemic without the notice periods required under the enterprise agreement.

The ATO rejects this, saying the transition of thousands of staff to remote working was an emergency response to the pandemic, and not the same as staff requesting formal working from home under the workplace arrangement.

Regardless of the outcome of this case, both the technology and white-collar workers in general passed the remote-working test with flying colours. ATO staff, along with tens of thousands of other public servants who had been forced to flee their offices at short notice, played a key role in rolling out JobKeeper, JobSeeker, and broader health and community responses to COVID-19.

This has led to a dramatic change in what work for millions of people now looks like. The quiet transition to working from home that had been gathering momentum thanks to broadband internet and new communication technologies such as Zoom and Slack jumped forward at least a decade.

And, in what should have come as no surprise, workers liked the new flexibility that this gave them. This included the ability to integrate household chores and walking the dog with the demands of the normal working day. It also eliminated costly commutes and parking worries.

This flowed through to environmental benefits, with fewer cars on the roads and less demand for public transport, which was scaled back during the pandemic.

That said, however, this is a highly nuanced issue, with a significant number of downsides. It has also further exacerbated the division between the so-called "laptop" class who can work from home - or even from a holiday house on the coast if they so wish - and workers who have to be physically present in the workplace.

Many of these are, by the very nature of the jobs they do, in lower-paid and often more insecure work. Think retail, hospitality, aged care and health workers for example.

There are also pitfalls for those who do work from home; especially for extended periods. These include the potential for workplace injury if the home workspace is not up to scratch, cabin fever - especially for those stuck in a small high-rise apartment - social isolation and lack of workplace camaraderie, and the impact on promotion opportunities that comes from being out of sight and out of mind.

While these issues can be addressed, it is a truism that remote working has to work for both parties; the employer and the employee. Productivity needs to be maintained, or preferably improved, as part of any long-term working-from-home arrangement.

While there is no doubt working from home is here to stay it is a complicated issue which demands give and take from all involved.

There are no easy "one size fits all" solutions. A case-by-case approach, enshrined within an award or an enterprise agreement, would appear to be the best way forward.

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