‘Dystopian nightmare’: The unlikely opponents of working from home
Before the coronavirus pandemic reached Australia in March last year, 25-year-old Jakeb Fair loved his job as a creative at digital content production start-up Engage Digital. His day-to-day duties involved interviewing athletes to create engaging videos and graphics for online audiences.
The University of Melbourne master’s graduate enjoyed the buzz of the company’s Collingwood office and thrived when bouncing ideas between colleagues. But everything changed when the country went into lockdown and working from home quickly became permanent. “I just didn’t have any good ways of separating work from home,” he says. “It became this catalyst for burnout.”
Fair put a desk in his bedroom that transformed his Yarraville share-house into a makeshift office, but says “overall, the experience sucked”. “There was no real way to switch off. The thing I used for relaxation was the same thing I used for work.”
The flexible work revolution triggered by COVID-19 is set to endure in Australia long after the danger of the pandemic has passed. A survey of 50 of the nation’s biggest companies conducted by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald this week found that major employers are overwhelmingly planning to adopt hybrid work models permanently, and only seven respondents will require workers to be in the office a set number of days each week.
