With Return-to-Office (RTO) mandates set to driving higher office attendance in 2025, a key challenge for organizations is ensuring adherence to mandate while maintaining productivity. A critical factor in this transition is having the workspace capacity to seamlessly scale attendance from (e.g.) 40% to 60%, without the complexities of ongoing space planning and change management. Thankfully, Secuber DBS is here to help organizations navigate this pivotal phase with ease and efficiency. #chro #hohr #hr #rtomandate #returntooffice #2025 #workplace #secuber #dbs #hrtransformation #automation
#Coles has told its 5000 office workers they will soon have to attend the workplace at least three days a week to foster collaboration. The new policy will require each employee to ensure at least one of their days in the office falls on a Monday or Friday, effectively ruling out staff taking extra-long weekends away and working from further afield. Chief executive Leah Weckert said in an email to staff on Wednesday that the change was part of broader efforts to update the supermarket chain’s ways of working “to ensure we can continue to meet our customers’ needs”. “While we know this is a change to our ways of working, setting clear expectations to support leaders and teams to manage hybrid working allows us to balance personal circumstances, the needs of our team and operations into the future,” Ms Weckert said. She told employees the new policy would “provide teams with opportunities to foster relationships and work collaboratively, while also acknowledging the importance of flexibility and the benefits that hybrid working can provide”. The announcement is the latest example of a major employer introducing a mandate that forces workers to attend the workplace more regularly after the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a shift to working from home. In September, Tabcorp and Amazon ordered staff to return to the office five days a week, while Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Origin Energy and AGL have threatened to cut workers’ bonuses if they do not meet minimum attendance requirements. At Coles, employees who predominantly work from home will not be forced to change their working habits overnight. Ms Weckert said the policy would be phased in gradually over six months with each team allowed to adopt it “at a pace that suits them, allowing time to plan and adjust”. According to workplace sensor data from XY Sense, average workplace utilisation, which refers to the percentage of total available spaces in a workplace that are used regularly, came in at 40.6 per cent in the June quarter. This was the highest figure since the pandemic. And yet, going to the office every day remains the exception to the rule in today’s white-collar economy, even if some CEOs complain about this privately. A survey of 1300 Australian knowledge workers by Swinburne University in May found just 17.5 per cent went into the office five days a week, while 10 per cent worked remotely full-time and 72.5 per cent had a “hybrid” arrangement. Full story in The Australian Financial Review below. #office #hybridwork #remoteworking