Many local tech players say they will take a steady approach to enable a permanent mix of working from home and office attendance.

“We don’t have any intention until much further down the track to make any mandate; we want people to make the choice for themselves.”
Carsales.com.au chief people officer Jo Allan sits in an empty Melbourne head office, working out how the space will now be used in an era of physical distancing.  Josh Robenstone
Ms Allan said that for some people such as those who live alone, remote working plus the grind of various other lockdown measures is becoming a real mental-health issue. For others, the concept of coming back into the office too soon is a bigger source of stress.
“There are people who, for their own health and safety reasons, would prefer to come into the office, and people who, for their own health and safety reasons, would prefer to stay at home.”
Carsales’ return-to-office plan includes measuring desks, working out where people should now put their stationery caddies, stocking up on antibacterial wipes and hand sanitiser, providing cleaners with the best equipment for daily and nightly cleans, and posting social distancing reminder signage around the office.
“The government guidelines we see as the minimum, and then we do our own research about it and see how we can go above and beyond. So that’s how we are managing it,” Ms Allan said.
Carsales employees now have Zoom accounts, but she says that all this physical distancing comes at the price of all the other ambient productivity, connectivity and informational benefits of pre-COVID office life.
“That natural flow of information just happens when you are all in an office together. But we have found that you have to make a more concerted to catch up more regularly now,” Ms Allan said.
Meanwhile, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said the social network’s employees would be some of the last back to various global offices as society reopens. The company is also not hosting meetings with 50 or more people until June 2021.
Facebook Australia and New Zealand managing director Will Easton said locally the company would continue to “take a cautious approach” and aim to give its people the “choice to return” when restrictions allow and data indicates that they should.
“Our number one priority across the ANZ business is to ensure that everyone is safe, secure and comfortable. We have a series of fantastic tools such as Facebook Workplace and Portal video conferencing devices that allow our teams to seamlessly work remotely,” Mr Easton said.
“When we do return to the office there are a number of health and safety measures we will use. These include physical distancing, face coverings available in all our offices, mandatory temperature checks, enhanced daily cleaning and no self service options in our cafe. We will limit meeting room capacity, bring people back in shifts where necessary, and prioritise everyone’s health.”
In tech start-up land, Mina Radhakrishnan, the co-founder of digital property management start-up :Different, is working out how to ensure its 50-odd staff practise social distancing across its Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Colombo (Sri Lanka) offices, but without being too prescriptive about it.
Earlier this year, Ms Radhakrishnan was contemplating finding a bigger Sydney office space than the company’s current Paddington digs, but that plan is now off the table.
Instead :Different will head back to the office on a rotating basis that places priority on particular teams being able to go in and work together on specific day or days.
“We’re going to have to be adaptive. The situation is constantly changing. But the main thing for us is about how we are going to foster both effectiveness and togetherness,” she said.
Indeed, Gartner analysis found that 48 per cent of employees would probably work remotely at least part of the time after the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 30 per cent pre-pandemic. This affects everything from office real estate and public transport to technology use and work-life balance.
I was watching a TV show and they shook hands, and I had like a visceral reaction. I was like, ‘Oh no!’
Mina Radhakrishnan, :Different co-founder
Ms Radhakrishnan said Google Sheets and Miro had been essential technology tools for collaborating in real time when working remotely, but onboarding and hiring new staff was more of a challenge.
Mina Radhakrishnan: “We’re going to have to be adaptive.”  Supplied
But you can light a candle for the poor pre-COVID handshake and mentally prepare for the sheer awkwardness of navigating a world with no cultural consensus on a COVIDSafe professional greeting.
“I was watching a TV show and they shook hands, and I had like a visceral reaction. I was like, ‘Oh no!’ I think that will be funny, just that you won’t be shaking anyone’s hand for a bit,” Ms Radhakrishnan said.
“Some people are into the fist bumps, which are not really my thing, I have to say it feels a little too casual. I am thinking more like a wave.”
Palo Alto Networks regional chief security officer Asia Pacific and Japan Sean Duca said the company was looking at implementing and an A and B team-style return to roster, with the goal being to use about 50 per cent capacity in its various offices around Australia.
The global company has offices in every state except Tasmania and the Northern Territory, which have all been sitting empty since March 16.
Bringing people back will involve earmarking where people can sit in the spaces, which vary from WeWork-style offices to whole floor leases, having people to use different entry and exit points to reduce traffic flow, as well as making hand sanitiser a ubiquitous office feature.
“We are just trying to reduce the amount of people who will be in the office. But being a high tech company, we are also used to working from home. The bulk of our users if not all of our users, are mobile and laptop users, so working from home is the norm,” Mr Duca said.
“We’ve always had the approach of being a bit more relaxed. You don’t need to be in the office eight hours every single day five days a week, depending on the role.
“I think what changes, I can’t see us running out en masse to do industry events, or getting our customers to attend events, because it’s going to be hard to maintain social distancing. I think we are going to be leveraging technology a lot more in a lot of areas. If I think about training courses that we used to offer … is it prudent to do that right now? Probably not.
“We have all experienced how quickly those social distancing laws came in but I don’t think we will be coming out of them as quickly.”
ASX-listed Elmo Software’s Sydney offices are a shrine to tech company office vibes, with an indoor amphitheatre used for company-wide meetings, ping pong tables and multiple breakout hubs.
But Elmo Software chief human resources officer Monica Watt said it was in no hurry to have its 400 employees back using spaces as before. The focus will be on what staff need to come in, rather than a staggered or roster type approach.
Right now, staff are all using Elmo’s own software tools, Zoom and Slack to work remotely, and that mix will likely continue for some time.
“In a perfect world, if you moved to remote working, you have made that choice. COVID-19 took that choice out of every business’ hands and what that did was forced the hand of so many,” Ms Watt said.
“We have made a decision to keep working from home throughout May, and are actively working out what our return to office will look like … When it comes to Elmo, we have a plan to actually develop a plan. It is a [moveable] feast.”
This involves consulting employees through various “pulse surveys” about how they feel about remote work, whether they feel about Elmo’s support is sufficient, and how they feel about the idea of returning to the office.