A major new report asked employers and workers about their experience with working from home
More than a quarter of Australians who work remotely admit they do personal tasks when working from home, according to a new study.
Researchers from the Swinburne University of Technology recently polled 799 employees working in roles covered by the Clerks Award to gain insights on how they work from home.
Among 531 respondents who indicated they had an entitlement to WFH, 29.9% said they are "always" or "often" attending to personal matters when working from home.
Another 42.6% said they "sometimes" do it, while 20.9% said they do it "rarely."
The research found 43.9% of employers allow their staff who are working from home to attend to personal matters, slightly higher than the 38.1% of employers who allow them to do so even if employees are in the workplace.
The study was commissioned by the Fair Work Commission as part of its case looking into the development of a WFH term in the Clerks Award, which the commission said requires "priority consideration" given its impact on balancing work and care.
The study found a variety of benefits reported by clerical employees who are able to access working from home benefits, with the majority of them saying it had a positive impact on:
Three in four respondents (75.3%) also said working from home has a "moderate" or "significant" positive impact on their performance and productivity in the workplace, according to the report.
The top benefit cited by employees working from home is the time saved because of the arrangement, with women more likely to cite this than men.
Women are also more likely to experience greater levels of benefit when it comes to household management compared to men, according to the report.
"The 'household management' result in particular supports previous Commission findings about the unequal burden of household work for females that WFH and suggests this has not changed since the COVID-19 pandemic," the report said.
Only 5.5% of the employees surveyed said they did not benefit from the ability to WFH.
Overall, 66% of clerical employees in Australia are able to WFH to some extent, but only 52% are currently doing so, according to the report.
