Weeks after Woolworths faced off against striking workers resulting in a widespread operational setback at some of its supermarkets in Victoria and NSW, the retail giant is now asking thousands of its corporate office employees to return to the office for the majority of the week starting later this year.
Woolworths has told its 10,000 office-based workers they will have to be in the office at least thrice a week from October.
“A key priority for us in 2025 is to create more opportunities for in-person connection to increase our responsiveness and better serve our customers,” Woolworths Group chief executive Amanda Bardwell and chief people officer Caryn Katsikogianis said in a note to staff on Monday, seen by The Australian Financial Review.
“To support this, we are evolving our hybrid ways of working to ensure we better balance the needs of our customers and business, with the needs of our team.
“This means we will be introducing clearer guidelines to optimise our hybrid ways of working, with an expectation that our Support Office team members connect with their team in the office a minimum of three days per week, with the flexibility to work remotely for the remaining two days.”
The new rules that are expected to be applicable at 10 of its offices across the country and requires all team members to spend at least one day a week in the office by June 2. This requirement will increase to two days by August 4 and finally three days by October 6.
Woolies rival Coles took a similar step in November last year when chief executive Leah Weckert said that all head office staff in Melbourne need to work in the office one day per week starting from November itself. Weckert added that over the course of the following six months, staff would need to be in the office three days a week, one of which “should be” a Monday or Friday.
Together, Coles and Woolies control around 67 per cent of the supermarket sales nationally.
Over the course of 17 days in November and December, a standoff between Woolworths management and striking workers at some of its warehouses led to the retailer claiming a $140 million hit to its business.
“The full extent of the one-off financial impact is unknown at this stage,” Woolworths admitted to the ASX in December after reaching an agreement with the workers to end the strike. “Woolworths Group will provide a comprehensive update on the one-off impacts of the industrial action at its half-year results in February.”
