Coles jumps on the back-to-office bandwagon

Supermarket giant Coles has reportedly called its office workers back into the workplace, a trend we’ve seen grow over the past few months.

Coles is the latest organisation to jump on the back-to-office bandwagon, calling upon its 5,000-office staff to return to the workplace at least three days a week to foster collaboration.

According to The Australian Financial Review, the newly introduced policy will require each employee to ensure that at least one of their three days back in the office falls on either a Monday or Friday, affecting the possibility of staff taking extra-long weekends away and working from different locations.

“While we know this is a change to our ways of working, setting clear expectations to support leaders and teams to manage hybrid working allows us to balance personal circumstances, the needs of our team, and operations into the future,” said Coles chief executive Leah Weckert in an email to staff.

Weckert stated that the changes to working arrangements are part of a broader plan “to ensure we can continue to meet our customers’ needs”.

This decision comes off the back of other major organisations implementing a return-to-office mandate. As previously reported by HR Leader, on 16 September, Amazon mandated that its global workforce return to their offices, in a move that is effective from 2 January 2025.

Following this were theories that Amazon had an ulterior motive for implementing this widespread RTO, which didn’t include the need to foster collaboration.

The theory that gained notoriety on various social media platforms was the claim that mandating a five-day return-to-office mandate is naturally going to cause some workers to walk out – thus allowing companies to avoid the public disparagement that often comes with mass redundancies while also cutting costs.

Damien Andreasen, vice president of HiBob APJ, expressed some thoughts on these other motives that organisations may have when implementing an RTO.

“There’s no question that the prospect of being forced into a full-time return to the office is incredibly unpopular among employees, especially after the success of flexible work over the past few years. In a stronger economy, companies pushing this agenda would see a mass exodus of top talent unwilling to sacrifice flexibility,” Andreasen said.

“It feels like it was yesterday when companies were celebrating the success of their four-day workweek trials and how it drove improved engagement and productivity, so call me cynical, but moving back to full-time office work doesn’t seem to be about innovation or collaboration.

“For some companies, it’s a way to encourage resignations to reduce headcount while avoiding redundancy payouts … Or, maybe the C-suite is being asked to justify the cost of their new CBD commercial tower – only time will tell.”

It will be interesting to see who also follows suit with this RTO mandate and how employees who have become accustomed to a flexible working arrangement react.