It started with various CEOs claiming there is a sense of company morale that only being in an office can provide, then they warned that young workers would never get ahead if they continued to work remotely.

Some even tried to lure people back with incentives, like a free lunch or installing new standing desks for staff.

When those didn’t work, some companies took it to the next level and implemented return-to-work mandates – a move that often didn’t go over too well.

Now, there is talk of employers planning to implement a brand new tactic to make working from home seem less desirable.

In recent weeks, a debate has risen about whether people who work from home should be paid less than in-office workers doing the same role.

While the answer may seem obvious, the question has turned out to be a surprisingly contentious one.

Of the more than 13,200 people surveyed by news.com.au, just over 60 per cent were against the idea, while 37 per cent, or around 4900 people, thought the suggestion was reasonable and that people should be rewarded for going into the office.

Even though the majority of those surveyed believed pay should be based on the work not the location of the worker, a number of Aussie bosses have revealed the idea may not be as far-fetched as many people think, with some even admitting to making plans to implement this policy.

However, these employers have been warned that going ahead with approach to working from home could have serious consequences.

Ben Thompson, CEO and Co-Founder of Employment Hero, believes that

financially incentivising staff to get back to the office by threatening to pay remote workers less is not the right approach for companies to take.

“As a remote company, we’ve been most successful in attracting and retaining the best talent by remunerating based on skills and performance. We do not have different pay scales across different locations around Australia,” he told news.com.au.

“A Product Owner, for example, in Sydney earning a base salary of $X, if they are delivering the same output as our Product Manager based in remote QLD, why would we pay them differently? Our growth has been because we are a remote business, not despite it.”

The Future of Work Report 2023, published in October last year by law firm Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF), found more than one-third of large Australian employers are planning to reduce the pay of staff who continue to work from home in the next three to five years.

According to the report, 37 per cent of employers surveyed have plans to “differentiate” pay between remote and in-office staff.

The report surveyed 500 senior managers at companies with more than 1000 employees around the world, including 100 respondents in Australia.

Thirty-eight per cent of managers said they would expect working remotely will become a privilege earned through trust and seniority as companies explore “options for influencing staff’s working preferences through more formal incentivisation”.

Mr Thompson pointed out that employees have proven they are willing to fight to be able to work from home, evidenced by the growing number of legal actions over remote working disputes in the wake of return to office mandates.

He noted that this, not only harms employee morale, but also drains company resources and time.

Critically, Mr Thompson believes these current WFH conversation are reductive and miss the bigger picture.

“The debate over allowing people to work remotely or not is at the expense of more valuable discussions. Digitisation and the productivity and innovation that come with Artificial Intelligence are nothing short of monumental in terms of their impact on employment,” he said.

Flexibility for your employees is one thing; increasing their output by 50 per cent and providing them with a more engaging and enjoyable job is another thing entirely.

“The innovation and productivity opportunities for teams are huge. We should be discussing how businesses harness these opportunities for their teams.”