What 'delayering' means for your employment and inside the WFH standoff

The rapid fall in inflation is “unambiguously good news” that reduces the risk of the Reserve Bank of Australia going too far and causing a hard landing, senior Chanticleer columnist James Thomson wrote yesterday.

But, as Thomson pointed out, that doesn’t mean interest rates will come down anytime soon. And we are likely to see many more businesses announce redundancies as they seek to reduce costs and shore up profit margins diminished by 12 rate rises in just 14 months.

In fact, Commonwealth Bank became the latest big name to announce major cuts this week.

CBA will cut 271 roles ?and redeploy a further 571 to improve the bank’s performance, Lucas Baird reported. It follows hot on the heels of Westpac’s 800 cuts in June. And it’s not just the banks.

The technology industry has seen some of the largest cuts as the industry forges ahead with its so-called ‘delayering’.

It’s an old term that you may have heard recently to describe how tech companies are cutting out layers of management and asking more workers to get back on the tools in a bid to lift productivity.

The trend was spearheaded by the likes of Twitter and Meta, and more recently embraced by local companies such as Atlassian.

This week,?we talk to recruiters and industry insiders about the trend ?and why some companies are adopting it. We also reveal how?ANZ has agreed to give staff “the right to switch off from?work” , explain why a rising number of companies are offering?six months of paid parental leave , and share?some fantastic?career?advice from this year’s cohort of BOSS Young Executives .

You can also send any?career?questions or problems you need help with to?[email protected] . As a regular reader of this newsletter, you’ve earned the right to some free, personalised advice. I’ll get an expert to answer your question and keep your name and details anonymous.

Oh, and don’t forget the?BOSS Young Executives Summit ?is coming up on August 8.

You're missing out!?These stories and more are available in full when you?sign up ?to our free?Work & Careers?newsletter: direct to your inbox, every Thursday.

Life & Career

The two things Millennials and Gen Z need to watch in their super It’s a new financial year, and if you’re a young person reviewing your retirement savings, there are things you need to know, writes Lucy Dean .

Boards pull back on investment amid slowing economy BOSS this week met with boardroom heavyweights from some of our largest companies around the country who warned the economy is in “very mixed” shape, writes Patrick Durkin and Anthony Macdonald .

The best piece of advice this CEO was ever given If someone says you can’t do that, either take their advice at face value or use it as a motivator to do it anyway, says Who Gives a Crap founder Simon Griffiths, writes Sally Patten .

By the numbers

Employers and workers only agree on the number of hours people should spend in the office about a third (37 per cent) of the time, a survey by the Melbourne Institute and Roy Morgan suggests.

The analysis was based on responses from almost 4700 Australians who can?work?from home.

As the blue line in the above chart shows, the proportion of workers who agree with their bosses on office hours has remained relatively stable over the past two years.

But if we move beyond the chart and focus on workers who would like to?work?from home more often, we see larger changes.

The survey found workers who fall into this category want to spend two-thirds of their workweek at home. For full-time workers, that equates to 1.75 more days at home than their employers would allow, which is a sizeable gap. But it’s narrowed since April 2021 when workers wanted to spend 2.1 more days per week at home.

This suggests that, although?employers want their workers in the office ?more often than workers would like, the disagreement over?working?arrangements has softened slightly over the past two years.

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