After NAB proposed to increase its in-office attendance, NAB employees began tallying their hours spent commuting to and from work.
In just one day, they tallied 174,304 minutes.
That means, on average, NAB employees spend 2.2 hours each per day commuting.
That’s time that could have been spent with family, not to mention money wasted on petrol and crowded public transport.
Why does this matter to all FSU members? NAB is one of Australia’s biggest private employers, and the standard set at NAB will have flow-on effects for the rest of the finance sector.
We know that working from home is a win-win. It’s good for productivity (NAB posted a $7.1 billion profit last year) and it’s good for our work/life balance.
“Two hours behind the wheel just to log into Teams all day. That’s not connection,” said one NAB employee.
“I’m paying to sit in traffic when I could’ve already been working. That’s not productive,” said another employee.
Despite these logical arguments, NAB – along with other employers – are determined to live in the past and take us down the slippery path of increasing our commute times.
That’s despite studies showing a lift in job satisfaction thanks to working from home arrangements, and an increase in women’s workforce participation, among other things. A recent productivity commission study concluded that hybrid work arrangements were best for both job satisfaction and productivity.
Any move to scale back flexible work in 2025 is regressive and unnecessary. Together, let’s make sure every employer gets it: working from home works!
If we want to protect our working from home rights across the finance sector, then we need enterprise agreements that contain strong flexible working clauses. Reach out to your FSU Organiser if you’d like to find out more about how we can achieve this in your workplace.
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