There is a case happening in Australia right now that the whole profession should be watching.
The Australian Services Union is asking the Fair Work Commission to make working from home the default position for around two million clerical and administrative staff. In other words, remote work would be presumed acceptable unless an employer can justify saying no.
Employer groups are calling it unprecedented.
Before I go any further, I need to say that I am absolutely in favour of choice – you have seen me write about it enough.
Adults doing professional work should not have to beg for autonomy. Administrative professionals proved during Covid that large parts of their roles can be delivered remotely. Productivity did not collapse. In many cases it improved.
But here is the grown up question.
When flexibility becomes a legal presumption, are we solving the right problem?
Because rigid flexibility is still rigidity.
If “everyone back to desks” is blunt and outdated, then “everyone must approve remote work unless you can prove otherwise” can also create operational problems if it ignores context, culture and role design.
Not all administrative roles are identical. Not all organisations are mature. Not all executives are leading well.
And that last point particularly matters.
Unions step in when culture fails.
If flexibility were applied transparently, fairly and strategically inside organisations, this case would not exist. But too often it is personality driven. One leader allows it. Another refuses it. Policies are inconsistent. Assistants feel least able to push back.
So the debate is not really about home versus office.
It is about power.
It is about trust.
It is about whether administrative work is still being treated as presence based support rather than outcome based contribution.
For my global audience, this is not just an Australian story.
The UK has strengthened rights to request flexibility. Spain has formal remote work legislation. The Netherlands has similar frameworks. The pressure is building everywhere.
The real opportunity here is this.
Instead of arguing extremes, we need to design work properly.
Role clarity.
Outcome measurement.
Transparent criteria for refusal.
Intentional hybrid models.
Flexibility should be strategic capability, not industrial warfare.
If leaders do not build mature frameworks, regulation will fill the vacuum. That is the pattern in every labour shift in history.
The question is not whether working from home is a right.
The question is whether we are mature enough as organisations to manage it without a tribunal telling us how.
That is the conversation we should be having.
