The Future of Working from Home

Jason · 00:00Welcome to episode 143 of The Numbers Game. I'm Jason. I'm here with Nick and Marty. How are we going today, guys?

Marty · 00:07Going really well, thanks, Jase. Getting excited for Christmas. The bag's a bit skinny this year for Santa, but hey, we're going to find ways to fill it up and it starts here on The Numbers Game podcast. So I'm pumped, mate. Nick, how are you? Going well?

Nick · 00:23I'm going good. Going good. Starting to hear the Christmas carols at Coles or Woolworths, wherever your local shopping store is. I feel like it's coming earlier and earlier, but it's a good time of year whichever way you look at it. Starting to duck and weave all of the Christmas party invitations.

Nick · 00:40Trying to stick to one a week, Marty. That's my plan. I don't quite have Jase's stamina. He'd be out 5 nights a week at this time of the year, I would've thought.

Jason · 00:52Jase? It's tough. Look, I'm gonna be honest. I'm not the young man I used to be, Nick, Marty. It's these greys. As the seasons go on, these greys are getting more and more. And I reckon there's a couple coming up top as well.

Nick · 01:06But found my first one up top last week.

Jason · 01:09Yeah. Welcome to the party.

Marty · 01:11Yeah.

Jason · 01:12Marty's got a few on us, but I reckon we'll catch him. We'll catch him at some point soon. But no, yeah, this time of year, I think in our game as well, like, you know, financial services, we fortunately also get invited to all sorts of things. Things. I've got, you know, World Cup soccer game coming up.

Jason · 01:28I've got an event at the Old Melbourne Gaol. Seems to be— yeah, even, even obviously Spring Racing Carnival is a bit behind us now.

Marty · 01:37What's going on there?

Jason · 01:37I think at the, the jail they've got like an events functions things now. This thing is like from, from cuffs to cufflinks or something. So it's like a black tie, you know, fancy event, and they put on all food and drink. And I don't know, I get invited all sorts of things. And I think, Nick, you— there was an episode a long time ago where you said one of the biggest things you had to learn to do was to say no.

Jason · 01:58I think 2024, if I'm going to bring a prediction in early, 2024 is going to be the year that I learned to say no. But for the end of 2023, I'm just going to keep punishing myself for now, and we'll see where we get to.

Nick · 02:11Well, I was going to say, you know, something called Cuffs to Cufflinks, um, out of the old Melbourne jail. That to me is— sounds pretty easy to say no to, just, just quietly. So there's an opportunity here for you to to turn the tables early.

Jason · 02:25I've RSVP'd a while ago and I don't like letting people down. So also, also an issue with hard to say no when you're a people pleaser.

Nick · 02:35But you've got all the excuses.

Jason · 02:36It's good work working on that. I'm reading a book on that at the moment, Changing Habits and all that. So we'll, you know, I'll keep you posted for my 2024 numbers and we'll go from there. But before we crack into an awesome episode from yourself there, Nick, where you'll be driving, just want to once again say a big thank you to our show sponsor Dashboard Insights.

Jason · 02:57If you're looking to maximize profitability in your business, then a real-time data-driven business dashboard might be exactly what you need. They get the right information to the right people at the right time. Dashboardinsights.com, check it out, book a demo. And if you've got any questions about it, as a user, I'm more than happy to help you through that as well.

Marty · 03:18And you wonder why Jase goes to all these events? Because he's got time now because he gets his data analyzed. He, um, He knows where his business is at. So, you know, join the party.

Jason · 03:32Thank you, mate. Nico, what have you got for us today?

Nick · 03:34Today I wanted to reopen the conversation around working from home or not working from home. We've had quite a few chats ourselves about this, and generally it's been based around us getting people back into the office because we're obviously employers and that's what we like.

Nick · 03:52And we've been speaking in the past around, um, the gap, the gap that we see being created from people that come into the office and learn off mentors and pick up certain skills versus those who would rather choose to work from home.

Nick · 04:11And I think, I think one of the last things we spoke about was, you know, as an employer now, particularly if the labor market tightens up If you're sitting in an interview and you're someone who's on par with someone who's just left the interview room but is more, you know, more happy to work in the office, I think most people or most employers are going to choose those that want to work in the office.

Nick · 04:34So starting to hear more of this stuff now, and there's a couple of things that I've read in the last couple of weeks, and it's all pointing towards businesses want to get people back in the office. And at some stage, it's just going to be a given that people, if they want to progress, that's where they need to be.

Nick · 04:51But so there's a few things that have popped up recently, and the first thing I read was that Origin Energy and Suncorp, so Suncorp Bank, two massive employers in Australia, are now linking office attendance to bonus payments.

Nick · 05:09So I will add that both of those businesses have flexible working arrangements. But basically, if you're not hitting your KPI of being in the office, you are going to negatively impact your bonus payment. So I read that and thought, geez, that's interesting.

Nick · 05:24That's a couple of banks, or a couple of big employers, sorry, making a stand that no, no, you need to have office presence. I then saw something around a recent global survey by law firm Herbert Smith Freehill. Where they, they surveyed high execs and managers in Australia, and that survey found that 37% of senior executives plan to differentiate pay between remote and in-office staff in

Nick · 05:55the next 3 to 5 years. So you don't have to be Einstein to work out that those that come into the office are going to be paid more than those that don't. Um, thoughts on that, Jase? Are you seeing any of that with any of your business owners starting to have these conversations?

Jason · 06:12Definitely having the conversations at a very high, like, level. Look, I love having people in the office. I think it's great for culture, but I think culture and having people in the office, while it feels great, doesn't necessarily translate to results for the business. So I think there needs to be underlying KPIs and data to show that, you know, if you are going to give someone a bonus, usually it should be tied to performance.

Jason · 06:35If somebody comes to the office and they're distracting, they drag other team members down, they talk too much, you know, or they do less work in the office than they would have done at home, then all of a sudden you're in the wrong— you're kind of like heading in the wrong direction.

Jason · 06:50So I think the bigger business strategy of the culture and what it means to be in the office, but what the outcomes you're driving are to make work successful. And there's— look, I mean, there's so many intangibles as well though. Like, how do you train juniors to get better if they're not surrounded by the seniors?

Jason · 07:07So, and that's probably harder to put a KPI on or something to measure without that in there. So yeah, I've— I find it hard to tie bonuses or, you know, pay into being at the office all day every day.

Jason · 07:22But at the same time, I think it's easier to manage and read performance if you can see people in the office. And look, if you're not in the office, I do then believe that if you're— you don't have travel time, you're not paying petrol and car running costs or travel costs to get to and from the office for an extra 1 or 2 hours a day, do you need to be remunerated as much as someone who's making the effort to get to the office every day and wearing those costs?

Jason · 07:48Maybe not. That's where I can see a difference coming in the future.

Nick · 07:53That's, that's a really good point, and that's something I didn't think about. What are the extra costs to get into the office and should you be paid in a different way because you're bearing that cost? Um, that's interesting. And I guess the question I was going to ask is, and it's because you talked about being able to look at people's output, which you can do now with Dashboards.

Nick · 08:13And, you know, this is obviously Dashboards as a sponsor, but this is, this is a legitimate question. Is that program, uh, showing you any kind of trends around people working from home versus not? Are you actually seeing that? Because you're actually measuring— you're— it's hard for us to measure output because we're, um, you know, we don't charge by the hour.

Nick · 08:35Um, a business like yours that charges by the hour, are you seeing any trends there?

Jason · 08:40Yeah, look, I think I haven't analyzed the at-home versus at-work, but over a given month, our team get X amount of days from home versus X amount of days now. So we're trying to— we're basically minimum half-half is what we've guideline our team, just said If you work full-time, more than 50% of your time should be in the office.

Jason · 08:58So that might be, you know, 3 days one week, 2 days the next, and you've met your 50/50. The thing that makes it really easy for us, in a sense, and we're maybe a unique business in that sense, but a team member will get a monthly target. It might be billing $20,000.

Jason · 09:13And over that month, if they bill $22,000, $23,000, $24,000, tick, they get a big green tick next to their name. They've hit their billable target. We can see all the jobs, all the timesheet entries, all the client work that went out the door through the dashboard and the data that's collected.

Jason · 09:29Where somebody misses their target or goes under, we then drive the conversation as to what happened, you know, why didn't you hit your target, what can we do to support you? So it's always a positive conversation about how we support that person hit their targets. But honestly, at the moment, that it doesn't— for us, it's not coming down to was it due to being at home or being at work.

Jason · 09:49But, you know, it's something that I'll definitely start to pay attention to because some of our team do are pushing towards more days at home than the office. Whereas, you know, it's almost a bit of a weird kind of fluctuates from the trend because as soon as we said, hey, we want people back in the office, there was a mad rush for everyone to be in the office and it was good vibes and good energy.

Jason · 10:08And now towards the back end of the year, I don't know whether it's because the workload has gone up and it's quite— there's a bit of pressure to get, to get work done, whether people feel like by staying at home not having the 1 or 2 hours of travel time to or from work, they can jump online earlier or stay online later.

Jason · 10:25And as soon as they finish up and shut the computer, they're at home and they don't have that travel time. But to answer the question, haven't, haven't analyzed the data to see what somebody's productivity is like at home versus in the office, but that we could definitely analyze to that level if we needed to. And I think if somebody was struggling performance-wise, we would be able to look at that data and then have the conversation with them to say, hey, seems like when you're at home, you're distracted or not focused.

Jason · 10:50Or, hey, when you're at home, you're actually getting more work done. What's stopping you from concentrating when you're in the office and how do we put things in place to help support you?

Nick · 10:59Marty, you're dealing with a lot of business owners. What are you seeing?

Marty · 11:04It's a good point. I mean, business owners in general like to have their teams in the office just because of the compounding knowledge and culture that's built around that. But Jase makes a really good point. There is an acknowledgement that even even with someone staying home, you know, one day a week and not having to do the travel time and can really focus on tasks that they will actually allocate tasks accordingly to that day as well on stuff that they need to get done.

Marty · 11:33And at first I thought, like, I've always been an advocate of being in the office because I just see there's so many benefits, but I did have a day working from home and what Jay said about the travel time, did make an impact. Like, when I finished, I finished, and I wasn't getting the distractions I'd usually get in the office, so I could really focus and achieve more.

Marty · 11:57Now, I think, I think if that was more than a day, it would be a problem. I don't think I, I would perform at my best. But actually, to have a day during the week where you are working at home can have some benefits, and I think people are genuinely overwhelmed.

Marty · 12:14There's so much work going on that sometimes they do need focus time. Now, in the office, you can always lock yourself away in an office and do that as well. So I think there's definitely— you can get very isolated if you're locked away for too many days a week at home.

Marty · 12:29But I see the merit in the results being performed at an optimal level with some flexibility. And I never would have said that in the past and I'm seeing business owners be much more open to that, but just not on a, you know, like you're 50/50, Jase, right?

Marty · 12:52Which is working for you, but there would be no way that a lot of the business owners I'm talking to would go anywhere near 50/50. It's probably more 80/20.

Jason · 13:01And to be honest, our team are probably doing 60, 70, 80% in the office. You know, we try and create a great environment where they want to be in the office and around each other. I think that's one of the things, you know, if you've got the right people in the right role with the right, you know, drivers, KPIs, targets, and they feel motivated and excited to do their job, whether they're in the office or at home, it's— you're most likely to get some great results.

Jason · 13:27And if you're creating a great environment where they want to be around each other, then great, they're going to be in the office. There is types of roles and types of businesses where, you know, working from home might be fine. But for most businesses and most business owners now, they want their team in the office.

Jason · 13:44They want to see their team getting in. And a lot of that does come from that next generation of employee coming through. How are they learning? How are they getting mentored and training? And I've seen it where, you know, one of our grads, if he's at home and he's trying to make calls to people, he's not getting the support and mentoring that he would get if he was sitting in the office next to one of the more senior team members.

Jason · 14:04So that's why, I mean, look, we put the guideline at 50-50, but we talk a lot about visibility and contribution, right?

Marty · 14:12And even with referral partners, when we're dealing with referral partners, we always say, all right, you got to be visible. It's important to be visible and it's important to be contributing. And what I would say is what you said about results is really key because if we are coming into more challenging times in 2024, You want to be seen and you want to be contributing, right?

Marty · 14:32So I go, if you're not performing then and you want to have 2 or 3 days working from home, then that's a whole different Pandora's box right there.

Nick · 14:44So in my mind, to that point though, Marty, I'll— and I'll— this, this is where I think it's going to play out. If businesses are going to cut costs and there's there's 6 people that, that need to go out of 12. 6 of those people are regularly in the office and are regularly having a coffee at 10 o'clock in the kitchen with the manager, who— and, and they're all performing the same.

Nick · 15:09Who do you think's going?

Marty · 15:11Absolutely. Yeah.

Nick · 15:13And so I guess, I guess where I'm going with this is I think I'm totally with you guys. Like, I think for the right people, um, for sure work from home, you can get some really good efficiencies And I think you're spot on there, but I think the fact that we're seeing businesses start to link bonuses to getting people back in, business leaders saying they're considering making the REM structures different, I think what we're talking about is great, but I reckon it's

Nick · 15:43a small part of the workforce because if businesses are thinking this, they're thinking something else. And these big businesses have definitely got the numbers on who's performing and who's not. And if they're bringing in these initiatives, then they must think there's inefficiencies there.

Marty · 15:57There definitely would be.

Nick · 15:58Yeah. And I guess for me, what I want to talk about today is for our employees, like, make sure that you're not one of those people, you know, that isn't seen and, you know, that isn't the easy one to let go of because no one has a relationship with you because you work from home a majority of the time or 80% of the time, whatever it might be.

Nick · 16:19And the thing that I came across, this was only yesterday, I came across this late in the piece, but it was an investor, it was a millionaire Indian investor, Iqbal Singh, his name was.

Nick · 16:34And what the article was talking about was, it was talking about wealthy Indian families are actually now looking to invest into Australian businesses. The top 4, top 4 industries they're looking at the moment are education, healthcare, clean energy, and financial services.

Nick · 16:53Indian, it went on to talk about the fact that Indian money coming into our country is up at the highest it's been in quite some time. Since 2019, it's soared 210% and to $35 billion, and that's from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Nick · 17:15What the article was talking about was these Indian families looking at investing and coming into businesses in Australia. And it was talking about outsourcing. So, you know, if they've got efficient teams that are running offshore and are running at the cost of, his suggestion was 10 to 15% of the cost to run a workforce here.

Nick · 17:38What's the first thing these investors are going to look to do? They're going to look to say, okay, what's the value of that of that role? Can we offshore that or can we outsource that to India? Yes, we can. So if you're someone that's doing a regular role and you're just working from home, the question they're asking is, is there more value in you doing that than there is by someone in India doing that at maybe 15% of the costs?

Nick · 18:04And you might sit back and you might say, well, okay, well, no, but the business is still going to make that decision and they want to look after Australian employees. What this is saying is they won't be making that decision because the investment money is coming in from families in India who will actually be owning these businesses and making decisions on what they do with the cost base.

Nick · 18:25So I read that and I thought, geez, if again, it just backs up everything we've been saying. You've got to put yourself in a position where you are valued. And it'll get to the point, particularly as the labor market tightens up, which it is going to with migration, that's coming in, businesses looking to cut costs.

Nick · 18:44Like I know, and Marty, you would know this, but businesses are looking to cut costs. We spoke about this in the last episode. What are you doing as a business to make sure that you're going to be secure in the next 12 to 24 months if we have a downturn? First thing you look at is your fixed cost base.

Nick · 19:01What's the biggest line on your fixed cost base generally? It's your employment. So if there's a way to outsource that role at say 15, percent, even if it's 30% of the cost, what are businesses going to do? And the people that will go, in my opinion, are the people that don't hold relationships within the business that the business owners or the managers see easily replaceable.

Nick · 19:24So I guess where I'm going with this here was more about our employees out there to just make sure you position yourself as really valuable in the business because this is what's coming. It didn't take me long to find all these articles when I started searching, which to me is a real sign that businesses are thinking similar things.

Marty · 19:46Well, particularly if there's a 10 to 15% expense of the actual cost that's being charged now. I mean, that's pretty significant. And you said an important word, and I've always said this. I got told this going back 20, 30 years ago.

Marty · 20:02How difficult is it to replace you? Make it really difficult for you to be replaced and you'll always be okay. Whether it's generating revenue, providing an exceptional experience in combination with that, that's really what you always want to be thinking about because when you hear things like that, someone bringing in a function at 10 to 15% expense, then that's a no-brainer from a business standpoint, from

Marty · 20:33an economic standpoint.

Nick · 20:35And things continuously evolve. And I think we've actually done an episode on outsourcing, but outsourcing or offshoring is completely different to what it was 10 years ago. It's no longer the mundane task, the main data entry task.

Nick · 20:50You know, we've got offshore staff. These people are highly trained and highly skilled. What we're also seeing now in our industry is actually a move away from traditional countries like the Philippines or Kuala Lumpur because they're actually becoming quite expensive. So what we're seeing now is countries like Nepal, we're seeing offshoring businesses being built in countries like Nepal where staff are a lot cheaper again.

Nick · 21:19So things continuously evolve and, you know, business owners will be looking at ways to navigate trickier times to make sure they're still hitting profit margins. And if you've got investment coming in from, from overseas and they've got the ability to make decisions, then they'll make the decisions that they need to, to make sure that they, they're getting return on their investment.

Jason · 21:42We've definitely seen an increase in our business clients asking for advisory and consulting from us on whether they should hire an offshore team or what it would cost. Is it more affordable? How much money they can save? And they're looking at the types of roles that can be offshored and whether that's you know, social media, some marketing, as you said, data entry, SEO, website development.

Nick · 22:04Like, there's—

Jason · 22:05and it's not just those areas. I mean, right down to accounting and finance, bookkeeping, you know, the back end of mortgage processing. There's all these— even, um, you know, we've got clients that a lot of their developers in, in like really cool tech industry, a lot of their developers are offshore, and whether that's India and other markets.

Jason · 22:22So, you know, that Absolutely great advice and love the direction of this episode, that it's more about for that next gen of young Australians getting into work at the moment and the up-and-comers, um, as you're going to work, think about how are you making sure you're seen, how are you adding value to the organization you work for, and how do you maintain that, that you are in line for a promotion or a pay rise.

Jason · 22:46How are you continuing to learn and develop and excel? Um, because yeah, sitting at home, you know, head down in the trenches. Yeah, you might feel like you're working and getting lots done, but what are the things you're missing out on by not being in the office or by pushing and driving for more days at home?

Jason · 23:02Um, if your employer wants you in the office, it's probably not just a big brother thing because they want to keep an eye on you. They've probably got your best interests at heart as well. And I encourage having good open conversations around what it means to your employer to have you in the office and what the outcomes they want to drive from that.

Marty · 23:19Yeah, definitely. Like even from a sales team perspective, what I'm hearing out there with business owners, it's not just the back office logistics and it's even in the frontline sales where people will say coming into 2024, one of the things we're going to do is move on two of our average salesperson people and bring in a gun and we'll pay them a bit more, for a better result.

Marty · 23:44So, you know, so business owners are pretty savvy. And, but the thing is, they're also human as well. So again, if you're contributing and you are performing, they still want to maintain culture, you know, at the end of the day.

Marty · 23:59At the end of the day, the business owner's job is to protect the business and then the people it supports ultimately. But they still have to protect the business first. That's the responsibility of the business owner. So you just got to make sure you're up there contributing and putting your best foot forward.

Marty · 24:15And if not, then if you are replaceable, then it doesn't matter whether you're in sales or back office or whatever the case may be. Everyone is replaceable at the end of the day if they're not stepping up and performing.

Nick · 24:28So I'm really glad you brought culture up, Marty, because as part of your role as an employee in our business, and I know Jason's business is the same, it's not just about billable hours. It's not just about writing loans and looking after clients.

Nick · 24:44A big part of it is contributing to our business culture because that is what makes our business strong, what makes our clients get a good customer experience. It's what helps us retain our other staff members. So, you know, one of our KPIs with all of our employees is their contribution to the culture.

Nick · 25:02And it's very hard to contribute to culture if you're never in the office. So I think people just need to think beyond, oh, I'm doing my numbers or I'm doing the hours required. Businesses need more than that because you spend so much time of your life working inside an organization that the culture needs to be good.

Nick · 25:23So I think, yeah, people just need to remember that. So I like you said culture and I like you said think about it from the business owner's perspective because that's what we're thinking about. Good teams, culture, and creating a really fun working environment to retain people. And it's the employees that contribute to that and actually drive that.

Jason · 25:42Yeah, and let's be honest, when we think, when we make our decisions as business owners, a lot of the time we are thinking about our employees' best interest. We want what's best for our team. I mean, we don't just do this, uh, you know, and not take into consideration that people are dedicating their lives to working at our businesses, and we want them to have a good life too.

Jason · 26:00So it's a two-way street. So If us business owners are thinking about our team, then it's, you want to make sure that we're encouraging team members and employees out there to think the other way around as well as to how they can better support the business and make sure that they've got a great successful organisation to work for.

Marty · 26:18Yeah, you go further together always, but you got to be together. Not in that way.

Jason · 26:26Well, no, so very interesting points and look, it's very timely and it's very on trend. And I think again, we've talked about some trends heading into 2024 and beyond. And I think, you know, we're only hearing more and more noise about working from home diminishing and then working back at the office surrounded by great people doing great things only going up more and more.

Nick · 26:48Iqbal Singh, he's coming for you.

Jason · 26:50Well, if Iqbal wants to make an investment into FutureAdvisor or Innovate, we're in the professional services area. We're ready and open for your offer, Iqbal. Please come our way. And in the meantime, if you are running a business and we've touched on some data points and KPIs and business management and measurement as well, if you haven't checked it out, dashboardinsights.com to go and see what we're talking about.

Jason · 27:14And in the meantime, we're here to support business owners, employees, and everybody out there who listens to The Numbers Game. Very grateful for your dedication to learning and checking in with us and all the different things that we're talking about. So please keep listening to our show. We love it.

Jason · 27:29And until next time, like, follow, subscribe. You might see more of us on YouTube soon as well. We're just excited to provide value for our lovely audience. Until next time.

Marty · 27:41Well, you don't want to be working from home 5 days a week without any pay. So better together, step up, have fun, game over.