Boomers may dislike WFH, but they're not the ones in the office
How old are you? I know, that can be a slightly rude question depending on what the situation is and exactly who's asking, but your answer has a surprisingly strong correlation to how you feel about one of the most vexing issues of modern workplaces: the work from home (WFH) debate.
Let's start by dividing the population into three main cohorts depending on how long you've been working: early career, mid-career and late career.
Early career workers are Gen Z, or those in their teens up to late twenties. They're still pretty fresh to the workforce, so all the tumble-wash of changes we've experienced over the past decade is all they've ever known.
If you entered the workforce in the last five years, then it's perfectly natural that most 20-somethings just expect that every job includes some days sitting in an office cubicle, and others inside your house.
For mid-career workers, predominantly Millennials in their 30s and early 40s, the sudden shift to WFH was a rude shock after they'd spent a decade or two getting used to commuting five days a week. However, now that it's been successfully integrated into their busy lives that often involves raising young families, it's hard for an employer to take that flexibility away.
For late career workers, or Gen X and Baby Boomers in their 50s and 60s, the home and the office were two distinct locations that rarely crossed over. For many older workers, the concept of spending entire days working inside their houses cuts against decades of deeply ingrained habits, reinforced by generations before them.
Breaking it down by generations, Gen Z had the highest attendance in the office full-time.
Many late career workers hold senior positions of power, and have struggled with managing teams and culture in a hybrid world, leading to some of them becoming the most vocal proponents for returning to the office full-time.
Now let's look at the data. Researchers from the Swinburne University of Technology found last year that people's reactions to WFH varied by age. They surveyed 1300 Australian knowledge workers and found that only 17.5 per cent of them went into the office for five full days a week, with the vast majority of people – 72.5 per cent – working a hybrid combination of some days in the office and some at home.
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