Is WFH here to stay? This is the year we find out
If you had a time machine, set the date back to 2019, and asked your boss if you could “work from home” a few days a week, there’s a likely chance that it might have been your last request as an employee.
But here we are, a month into 2025, and the ability to work outside the standard office now feels like a worker’s right that prompts fierce internal debates at any attempts to roll them back.
From “coffee badging” to “hushed hybrid”, working from home is continuing to mature. But what is it growing into?Credit: Aresna Villanueva
Around 40 per cent of Australians now work from home regularly, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data from 2023, rising to 60 per cent of managers and professionals. Before the pandemic, the total number was closer to 10 per cent.
The WFH revolution is important because of what it represents. It is a long-overdue recognition that not all tasks are equal. Some of them – like creativity and consensus-building – are best done in person when everyone is in the same room together.
But many other tasks that require deep thinking or concentration – like report-writing, strategic or repetitive work – are way better to do without a colleague sitting next to you waiting to interrupt you with something funny they’ve just seen on the internet.
It’s also a reminder that we have lives outside the workplace, and being able to integrate the complete parts of us – like family, health, and relationships – is better in the long run for everyone.
WFH is more than just a passing fad that can be undone overnight. Instead, it’s the best gift we could have possibly received from COVID.
But as WFH continues to mature, what is it growing into? And how is that going to affect you this year? There are three main ways.
The first is that working from home will dig deeper into institutions, making it harder to undo just by the stroke of a pen from a senior executive. We’ve already seen an increase in the value of apartments and houses that have dedicated offices or workspaces, plus the rapid rise and now normalisation of property prices outside main cities. This year, the change will cement itself even further into the fabric of how we work and live.
