Stay At Home Workers Face Being Dumped First As Downturn Looms

With a downturn looming in Australia stay at home workers, face being the first to get cut, as businesses trim headcounts experts have warned.

Brian Kropp, chief of human resources research at the consulting firm Gartner claims that working from home may provide comfort but not job security.

Industry employees who work remotely risk getting axed over their in-person colleagues as firms alike get squeezed by rising interest rates and plummeting stock prices issues that are already squeezing Companies.

In Australia brands such as Wesfarmers the owners of Bunnings, Officeworks, Kmart and Target are already running a ruler over their headcount due to rising cost and falling sales.

Workers looking to hold onto their jobs should consider ditching their pyjamas and getting back into the office if they want to hold onto their jobs, the experts claim.

“Managers believe employees who work remote are lower performers than those that come to the office,” Kropp said recently.

“They will on average be more likely to lay off those who are working remote than those who are coming into the office.”

In Australia thousands of employees have resisted returning to the office with Government departments and commercial businesses now facing fights with employees over working from home.

Kropp summed it up “Simply put it’s out of sight, out of mind,” he added.

Already big social media Companies such as Google, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta have implemented a hiring freeze earlier while smaller firms including Netflix, Peloton along with several leading retail groups are cutting staff.

At Facebook’s parent Meta where hundreds of staff have been working from home in Australia the hiring slowdown will hit “almost every team across the company,” according to an internal memo leaked to a media organisation. The memo said the freeze would last through the rest of the year.

The New York Post reports that On Blind, an anonymous corporate message board with verified members, tech workers have been fretting about layoffs and the potential end of remote work in recent weeks.

“Will recession / layoffs bring everyone back to office?” one employee of a software firm wrote recently

“Yes, it will, no doubt,” a Google employee responded.

“Can’t go into an office if you’re laid off,” another Google employee quipped.

In a separate thread, an Apple employee wrote that tech companies missing revenue targets and making layoffs are a “dream come true for [the return to office] lobby.”

“If I’m evaluating who I’m going to get rid of, I might choose to keep the person who’s in the office and is near me all the time,” one senior recruiter said.

According to Kropp, women work from home more frequently than men. If companies axe employees based on whether employees work in-person, they therefore risk ending up with a male-dominated workforce, he said.

“If we’re not really careful as organizations are laying people off, there’s likely to be gender bias in terms of the people that they lay off,” the HR expert said