RESEARCH

This collaborative project with Swinburne University of Technology and Third-Place.org, investigates the rising trend amongst ‘laptop workers’ for using hospitality venues – such as cafes, restaurants and bars – as casual places of work, and was recently featured in Forbes magazine.

Whilst working from cafes and pubs has been commonplace amongst freelancers and digital nomads for many years, it is the newly-hybrid workers who are now driving significant growth in this trend, capitalising on the improved flexible work arrangements they now have access to.

We discovered that users typically visit third places for a mental break, and organic social interactions and spontaneous conversations, which help them to think more creatively and re-focus on work tasks. They are particularly attracted to venues where they are made to feel welcome, that offer easy access to Wi-Fi and a power socket, and where working behaviour like this is normal and accepted.

Our findings revealed that third places are great for deep individual work, creative thinking, reading, admin tasks, emails, and small meetings, but not for larger meetings, tasks which require bulky equipment, or confidential work which might carry security or privacy risks.

🩺 When asked, 'to what extent do you think working from third places contributes positively to your overall wellbeing?' – the average answer was 4.3 out of 5.

For hospitality venues, third place customers present an opportunity to expand upon traditional revenue streams and increase takings during their quieter periods.

A free copy of the full report is available to view and download below 👇

Following the success of the 'Making Fair Work FlexWork' report with Deloitte and Swinburne Edge published in June 2022 (see below), the team are back together again to deliver four Industry Insights Packs, each delving deeper into the role of flexwork in particular sectors.

The first pack in this series, which focuses on the Government sector and provides a valuable overview of our key findings in relation to government workers, is available NOW!

Please click on the link below to access your free copy: 

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/risk/deloitte-risk-swinburne-report-government-insights-120922.pdf?nc=42

WorkFLEX Founder John Hopkins, was recently involved in a research collaboration with Deloitte, and Swinburne Edge - the national survey of 2,084 workers across Australia indicated there are four main flexible working challenges facing employers today:

1. Workers expect better work-life balance and well-being outcomes, 

2. Organisations need to heed their employees’ concerns about unsustainable workload, 

3. Our Fair Work System is not equipped to enable this employee-led flexible working (FlexWork) revolution,  

4. Employers must renew their focus on employees’ connection with the organisation: a team and organisational culture based on developing trust and fostering a sense of belonging and meaningful collaboration.

The research underlines how employers now have a valuable opportunity to engage with their workforce around this fundamental reframe and redesign of work – the where, when, and how it’s done – to improve the employee experience whilst simultaneously supporting the organisation’s overall mission, culture, and values.  

To access a FREE copy of the full report, please click on the link below 👇   

https://lnkd.in/dg3i7GZW

The pandemic has demonstrated that many jobs can be effectively done from home, and it appears likely that the number of people working from home will remain much higher than it was previously. 

This new paper from the Australian Productivity Commission considers how decisions about location of work will be made as firms and workers continue to learn how to organise their work, and what an increase in working from home might mean for workplace regulation, urban centres and wellbeing more generally. 

WorkFLEX's John and Anne had the great privilege of being invited to participate in the PC's roundtable discussion, alongside a range of key individuals, firms, industry bodies, and government agencies, as part this national study.

A copy of the report is available here: https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/working-from-home/working-from-home.pdf

In August 2020 we ran a poll on LinkedIn, to try and gain a quick understanding of how workers were currently feeling towards working from home, and how often they think they will continue to work from home in the future.. and the results were fascinating.

We joined a current trend on LinkedIn, for running polls using the LinkedIn reaction emojis, to ask whether workers predicted they would work 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 days from home per week in the future, once all COVID-related restrictions had been lifted. After 322 responses the option of working full-time from home (5 days per week) was the clear winner, attracting 35% of the vote, whilst only 5% predicted they would return to working 5 days per week in the office once all restrictions had been lifted.

This was particularly interesting, as the WorkFLEX team asked exactly the same question as part of a survey earlier in the year, and the results were very different (see below). Back in April, only 5% of participants in our survey predicted they would work from home full time in the future, so what has caused such a change of heart in only a matter of months?