Right to Disconnect for Small Businesses: Compliance Is Just the Starting Point
Right to Disconnect for Small Businesses: Compliance Is Just the Starting Point
In 2025, the “return to office” debate has settled into something more complex than a tug-of-war between leaders and employees. Work-from-home levels have stabilised globally, hovering around one day per week for knowledge workers, well above pre-pandemic norms but below the heights of 2020–21 (WFH Research, 2025).
In Australia, 37% of employed people worked from home regularly in August 2023, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is a decrease from the peak of 40% in 2021, but still five percentage points above pre-pandemic levels.
At the same time, Gallup’s most recent data confirms that 8 in 10 remote-capable employees still prefer hybrid or remote arrangements, with younger cohorts, contrary to some headlines, showing a strong preference for flexible structures over a full-time office presence.
The narrative, then, is not one of “winning” or “losing” the RTO battle. It’s that the workforce has permanently diversified its preferences, and organisations must adapt not to an ideal location but to a portfolio of work modes that enable performance, culture, and talent retention.
Why Policy Alone is Insufficient
Many organisations have approached flexible work as a compliance exercise: define the number of in office days, enforce attendance, and track compliance. While this delivers short-term clarity, it rarely delivers sustained engagement or productivity.
Why? Because workplace flexibility is not a single, variable problem, it’s an interplay between:
• Nature of Work (collaborative, client-facing, confidential)
• Nature of Teams (size, dispersion, functional interdependence)
• Nature of Culture (trust levels, communication norms, leadership capability)
Treating RTO as a blunt metric risk creates culture debt: erosion of trust, increased attrition risk in critical talent segments, and a gap between stated values and lived experience.
From “where” to “how”: A Framework for HR Leaders
A sustainable approach recognises that location is one design lever among many. At PerformHR, we recommend a four-lens framework when advising clients on flexible work policies:
1. Role Criticality & Work Design
Map roles along two axes, collaboration intensity and confidentiality/risk, and assign location expectations accordingly. This avoids the “all roles, all rules” trap.
2. Anchor Points, Not Mandates
Define in-person activities that deliver disproportionate value (e.g., onboarding, cross-functional planning, client workshops). Schedule these as anchor days, predictable, purposeful, and team-aligned.
3. Outcome-Centred Measurement
Shift from time-and-place metrics to agreed outcomes, whether via OKRs, balanced scorecards, or customer satisfaction indicators. This requires leadership capability uplift, managers must coach to impact, not monitor attendance.
4. Data-Driven Adaptation
Combine utilisation analytics (e.g., occupancy sensors, booking data) with engagement surveys to inform space design and iterate policy. The data should inform, not enforce, avoiding the perception of surveillance theatre.
The Leadership and Culture Challenge
Designing a flexible work policy is a HR responsibility. Sustaining it is a leadership capability challenge.
• Leaders must articulate the why, linking flexibility decisions to business outcomes, customer value, and team cohesion.
• They must model the behaviours they expect, whether that means showing up on anchor days or adopting asynchronous tools consistently.
• They must learn to manage distributed energy, not just distributed people, identifying where connection is fraying and addressing it proactively.
A Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting a Resonant EVP
The most progressive HR leaders are no longer asking, “How many days should we be in the office?”
They’re asking:
• “Where does location meaningfully impact performance?”
• “How do we maintain trust and culture without mandating presenteeism?”
• “What data do we need to adapt, not just defend, our policy?”
The return-to-office conversation is not going away. But the organisations that will attract and retain the best talent in 2025 and beyond are those willing to design for complexity, lead with transparency, and measure what actually matters.
Hybrid isn’t about counting office days, it’s about designing a system where performance, trust, and culture thrive, wherever your people are.
At PerformHR, we help leaders move beyond blunt mandates to frameworks that engage talent, align teams, and deliver measurable outcomes. We can help you start building a flexible work strategy that works for your business and your people.
Call us on 1300 406 005 or email info@performhr.com.au
“Location is just one lever. The real work is designing culture, leadership, and measurement systems that thrive wherever your people are.”
