Woolworths has ordered thousands of staff working remotely back to the office.
The supermarket giant’s 10,000-strong support office team will return to work at least three days a week in a phased approach across the next seven months.
The move follows similar mandates for office workers at Coles, Flight Centre, Dell, Amazon and Tab Corp.
Woolworths chief executive Amanda Bardwell acknowledged that times have changed but wants to see increased responsiveness and in-person connection from staff.
‘Over the last few years, we have seen many of our support team members successfully embrace hybrid ways of working while delivering our group purpose of creating better experiences together for a better tomorrow,’ she said.
‘A key priority for us in 2025 is to create more opportunities for in-person connection to increase our responsiveness and better serve our customers.
‘To support this, we are evolving our hybrid ways of working to ensure we better balance the needs of our customers and business with the needs of our team.’
Workers from Woolworths’ support team have been ordered back to the office
Woolworths CEO Amanda Bardwell said the company’s ‘ways of working’ were evolving to meet customer needs
Impacted staff were advised in a email on Monday that they’re expected to spend at least one day per week in the office ‘connecting with their team’ by June 2.
That will be increased to two days a week by August 4.
Staff are expected to be in the office three days a week from October 6.
They will continue to have the flexibility of working from home for the remaining two days of the week.
Staff are also welcome to transition back to the office faster if they wish.
Woolworths’ 10,000 support office staff are based at 10 different offices across Australia.
They comprise just a fraction of the supermarket’s 180,000 staff.
Woolworths wants to see increased responsiveness and in-person connection from staff
It comes after major rival Coles recently ordered its office staff back to work three days a week.
‘To ensure we continue to meet our customers’ needs, (this) year we will transition to a hybrid model which will require all office team members to work at least three days a week from either the store support centre, distribution centre or store, with one of those days to fall on either a Monday or Friday,’ Coles chief executive Leah Weckert told the Australian.
The vast majority of corporate leaders surveyed for a recent KPMG CEO outlook expect a full return to the office within three years.
