About the episode

Where do you typically log on for work? For many people, it’s no longer a simple answer. A few days at home. A few in the office. A routine that shifts depending on the week, the workload, and when your dishwasher repair person is arriving.

Hybrid work promises more balance. But it also brought a new set of problems. How do you stay focused when you are always contactable? How do you switch off when work is always within reach? And for leaders, how do you build a cohesive team, when your people are scattered?

UNSW Scientia Professor Manju Ahuja has spent years researching how hybrid work is shaping decision-making and relationships, and how to reclaim the flexibility that was supposed to make work better.

If you’re interested in how to create better, healthier workplaces, listen to our previous episode with UNSW Associate Professor Carlo Caponecchia on psychosocial safety at work.

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Transcript

Dr Manju Ahuja: There are so many benefits to remote work, but we have to do it mindfully, partly because it has a cost for wellbeing. It has a cost for relationships, and it has a cost for work outcomes, such as creativity and innovation and deep thinking.

Dr Juliet Bourke: When you log on for work, where are you set up? Is it a commute into the office, a desk at home, or a mix of both? Because the way white-collar workers operate has changed. What started as a pandemic response has become a six-year real-world experiment, and now we can take stock of what's working and what isn't. There are clear upsides. You have more flexibility and more autonomy over how work fits into life. But there's a downside too, that same flexibility can let work creep into everything, emails after dinner; Zoom calls at odd hours and no real off switch. UNSW's Scientia Professor Manju Ahuja calls this tech intrusion, and it's reshaping how you think and how you make decisions.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Hi, I'm Dr Juliet Bourke, Adjunct Professor at the School of Management and Governance, and this is The Business Of, a podcast by the UNSW Business School. Manju, can you set the scene for knowledge workers in Australia in 2026, how are we working now? And what's fundamentally changed compared to a few years ago.

Dr Manju Ahuja: Covid changed everything. Because we were thrown into it. Everybody had to work from home. There was no alternative. And thankfully, because of Zoom and Teams and Skype back then and all these technologies, we were able to keep going like nothing happened. You know, people were still productive. They were still working. There were very few interruptions. And now what's happened is that people have a taste of it, so you can get your work done, but you're also home, you don't have to commute. So this time savings, cost savings, and kids get picked up on time, and things get done, and you can catch up on work later if needed. So, it's just all very flexible, and people have a taste of it, and they are not giving it up.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Do you think we're doing flexibility in 2026 differently to the initial burst? Are there fundamental things about the way we're doing flexibility now compared to the initial burst at covid...

Dr Manju Ahuja: In some sense, because the fact is, you know, because we were thrust into it, this wasn't a gradual move, where we learned things and then we changed something, and then we learned more and we changed something. It was just one shot. So what I would say is that we are in a transition period where we are learning and there's this tension. So two things are happening simultaneously. Employees want to work from home. They don't want to give it up, but some employers want people to come back because they think it's better for productivity, and if they can't see people working, they don't know if they're really working. They feel like the team culture is not there, and they find it hard to monitor. So what does a typical work from home day look like now compared to pre-covid? You know, people have their meetings. So that's the structured time beyond that, I think it's quite flexible. So you might take time to pick up kids, you might take time to prep dinner, and then you might come back to work after dinner and catch up on those things that you might have done during those times. So it's all very fluid. It's all very flexible. And we did this interesting study recently where, what happens when two partners work from home? So these are some challenges where, okay, so what if you're sharing an office? What if you're sharing a space and you're both on Zoom calls at the same time. How do you plan out the day? Are you planning out who's picking up the kids, who's planning dinner, who's doing dinner, who's paying the bills? And is that happening during the time, or shopping? Because of this flexibility, and because there's no specific work hour, right? So we're not doing nine to five. We are working whenever, wherever. The flip side of it is from managers perspective; they too can reach you anytime, anywhere, and sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not, and they're not clear. So it's all you know, transitional and fluid from their perspective also.

Dr Juliet Bourke: The integration between sort of work and life, and the ability for someone to contact you whenever they need to contact is that a good thing? Is that a benefit for individuals and for organisations? Or what's your perspective,

Dr Manju Ahuja: I would say there are benefits. But on balance, it's not. There are benefits, of course, that you know, I could be at my daughter's ballet recital and answer some emails. So that's the benefit. And you feel productive. You feel like you got something done. But the problem with this constant connectivity is always on. Mentality is that you lose focus, the kind of focus you need for creativity, for deep work that goes missing because you're always being interrupted, and the more you're interrupted, you kind of come out of that focus. And a very interesting tidbit is that even if you take a second to decide whether or not to respond to this notification, you're already out of that focus because you had to make that decision.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I think I heard that it takes 20 minutes to get into flow

Dr Manju Ahuja: Precisely.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Is that the biggest challenge or the downside to the flexibility that we now have is that we're always on?

Dr Manju Ahuja: I would say yes, partly because it has a cost for wellbeing. It has a cost for relationships, and it has a cost for, you know, work outcomes such as creativity and innovation and deep thinking.

Dr Juliet Bourke: What does it do for our brains if we're always on? Are we, in fact, more productive because we're always thinking about work.

Dr Manju Ahuja: No, we think we are, but actually we're not. There's one type of productivity which one might say, Yeah, okay, because you got this done and then that done in small bursts. But there's another kind of, more meaningful, more really relevant productivity, where you're getting real thinking done, you're creative, you are making good decisions, and those are the things that matter in the long run.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And so just thinking about then this sort of abundance of tasks that we think that we're really effective with tasks. Who are the people that are doing most of those tasks, and are there a group of people who've been able to manage that creativity side of it put some boundaries in place?

Dr Manju Ahuja: You know, there's this theory of flow. You get into the flow of things. And I actually had this conversation with Csíkszentmihályi (the father of flow), and he said, young people get into this flow of multitasking, because, you know, the fact is, there's no such thing as multitasking. We cannot do two things at a time. So, what we're doing is fast switching, which is where we lose the focus, and so we can't really do anything quite well. But he's of the opinion that young people are, they grew up with this, and they are in the flow of that now. It's not been tested. But also, there are differences in how people think. For me, I'm more a big picture thinker, so if a lot of detail shows up my way, I get bored quickly. I'm not interested. But there are those who thrive on it. So there are differences.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Interesting. And what do you think about the ideas of not just cognitive overload, but actually brain rot, if we're constantly task switching? Maybe it sounds like it's good for some people, but for the majority, yeah, does it work?

Dr Manju Ahuja: It does not. There's, in fact, research to show that with most people or most things, we get better as we do more of something with multitasking; we get worse over time. And the reason is that there's this exhaustion that sets in and the brain becomes less and less effective and quick.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So are there some groups that experience more disadvantage as a result of the preponderance to work from home?

Dr Manju Ahuja: I think women. So, you know, the society expects women to take on more of the work tasks at home, and I think that shows up because now that they're home, they end up doing more of both, right? So they're doing their work, but they're also picking up more of the other and that actually shows up in our partner study that I was just talking about a minute ago, where we've found that they were doing more of the invisible work, which is cognitive load on top of their workload. So yeah, they are definitely affected more by it.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So one way of thinking about this hybrid experiment that we've been through. Is it might give people managers more confidence to do other flexibility experiments. Have you heard of a country or a workplace that's doing something interesting?

Dr Manju Ahuja: Yeah, so we know about Microsoft Japan, where they tried four days' work week, and their productivity went up by 40% so basically, their motto has been, we're at shorter time rest well and learn more. So that is one success story we can talk about. And there are other models that people have followed. So some cases, it's been five-day work week and the alternate four-day work week and so on. Others have compressed their work day into four days by not reducing hours but just making those four days longer. So Belgium's actually done that. So yeah, there are all kinds of different models' people are using.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And do you think that's in part because we've gone through a sort of global collective experiment, and people are prepared to experiment. Now, can I draw that logic? I think so. I think so. Let's take a step back. Many organisations now have these flexible work arrangements for their staff. It's really stabilised, but covid really rushed in, and maybe people didn't have a chance to set up things in the way that they would have if they had things a bit differently. Can you unpack that at a practical level? What skills and capabilities have managers had to develop when they don't see their workforce day to day? And then, of course, we'll go to and what do they still need to learn?

Dr Manju Ahuja: I would say we are developing, is how I would put it. So if you don't see somebody, how do they know what's happening, if what got done, what didn't get done? So that's one thing. The monitoring aspect job design is another thing. What kind of tasks can be done remotely? What kind of tasks require people to come back in? And then another big aspect is the culture, where, how do you create that team feeling, the team bonding, the cohesion. And that takes really deliberate planning to say, yeah, people should come in and we would just bond. But that's not how it works. Because when people don't want to come in and they are made to come in, what happens is that they look for workarounds. So they come in, have a coffee with a friend, have a meeting, and then they leave. They're calling this a kind of hush hybrid, where sometimes they work out with their manager. Yeah, I'm required to come in. But is it okay if I come in three days a week and not four? And you know, there are these informal, tacit agreements and then coffee badging, just coming in, doing something and then leaving. So these are acts of resistance. So managers are having to figure out, okay, so what is really effective? What can I ask them to do? When can I ask them to come in and have some compliance around it?

Dr Juliet Bourke: So what have managers learned then? I mean, it's been five years, yeah, so surely there's been some skill development , for managers. Where has it left them?

Dr Manju Ahuja: I think what we have learned in our research is that people are looking at a range of supervising skills. So we heard people say, well, so I would trust people to do things until they prove me otherwise, and if there's something that I feel needs supervision, then I'll start monitoring more. So they're learning to sort of do this agile management, which can vary from task to task, team to team, person to person, and they're just having to be flexible themselves.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Does that mean, at the beginning, those managers might have been micro managers, and now they've learned to have distance.

Dr Manju Ahuja: Exactly.

Dr Juliet Bourke: And are there other skills that managers have learned?

Dr Manju Ahuja: Yeah. So I think you know, when people do come in, how do you engage? I was just saying that people would come in and then you just expect cohesion to happen, which is not the case. You have to deliberately make that happen. So you have to create activities that bring people together, you have to create social time where everyone is there, because if you're having people come in, say, three days a week, but everyone's coming in at different times, so really it's not going to have that same impact. And then the other thing is space management, right? So you have this hot desk notion where people come in, they sign up for a desk. And more and more, I've read many stories where people come in and they have no space to sit. So they're having to learn that.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Particularly because I think there was a diminution in space, yes, because people were saying, or organisations were saying. Well, we're not using that space. Why are we paying that space? But now they're having to expand again.

Dr Manju Ahuja: Exactly. So cost-cutting happened, and now they don't have the space.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So what skills do you think managers still need to learn?

Dr Manju Ahuja: So one big thing we all need to learn, employees and employers, is time management, self-management, but also from a manager's perspective, blocking out time for deep work, deep thinking for creative work, where you're not interrupted unless there's something urgent. That would be one big thing from their perspective, and then from the employee's perspective, how to manage their time, where this creating separation deliberately is important for them too.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Is that where this right to disconnect finds its path?

Dr Manju Ahuja: Yeah, absolutely. So companies as well as countries are thinking about this, right? So, there are several countries that have said, okay, there will be no work-related communication during the weekend or after hours and so on. Many countries have gone to having regulation around requiring companies to have specific policies around all of this and around communication, when, where, and actually lay it down and have that published.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Any tips that you might give managers as to how to manage flexibility a bit better.

Dr Manju Ahuja: So my biggest recommendation would be to have clear policies around all these things we've been talking about, rather than having ad hoc yet leaving room for flexibility that managers can have autonomy around. So that means we train managers to supervise, to monitor and how to do that. What works when it means that we have policies that are consistent around communication, deep thinking, time, etc. It means we think about employee wellbeing and their right to disconnect. It means that we create a culture of trust. We create a culture of outcome measurement, rather than process measurement and presence. So these are all things we have to start thinking about. And what I would say is that there are so many benefits to remote work, but we have to do it mindfully.

Dr Juliet Bourke: Some people would say that Australia has a work, hard, play, hard culture. And I wonder if that's true, how then it plays into this flexibility that we have, and we do, we put more emphasis on the social side of it. What does it mean about banter, being part of the team? What does it make for our culture, whether we're more resistant to working from home because we don't see people what's your view on Australia and flexibility.

Dr Manju Ahuja: In the rest of the world, about 70% of the people would say flexibility is important to them. In Australia, it's 95 so almost everyone values that here, like you say, work hard, play hard. So they are very particular about having their time and just making sure that they're not going back to work five days a week. 70 some percent say if they were required to do that, they would actually look for alternate employment. So retention is an issue, and this is actually especially true for women, for highly skilled workers. These are the people you want to keep, right this. These are the scarce resources.

Dr Juliet Bourke: I'm just thinking about communication, and one of the things that we know happens with people working from home is that they have to use email communications more emojis texting, but a lot can be lost in translation. Can you tell me anything about the way that Australians like to communicate and how that has changed or needs to change in the context of working from home.

Dr Manju Ahuja: Yeah, I can speak to that personally, in fact, because I come from the US, and I have a habit of, you know, sending out a two sentence email, which gets right to the point. And what I've learned here is that no emails here start with happy Friday and end with cheers and hope your weekend's going well, so we do that here. And now I have learned to I write my email and then I pad it in the front and back. So I think we are finding that culture. I think staying on really, I see in emails, they're very friendly, but then in the middle there is that direct part which is necessary, and sometimes it takes a bit of back and forth with clarifications, because I think a lot of people rely on teams, and their messages are short and people are a little bit less formal.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So a hybrid workplace is perfect for some businesses, perfect for some jobs, but for us. The ones it doesn't work a factory can't move its production site to your house, for example. What are the implications of that? Do we end up having sort of two speeds in our economy? One is doing flexibility and one who's not.

Dr Manju Ahuja: There are some sectors that have traditionally done flexible work, right technology; people are used to working from home. Consultants, creative industries, they're used to working from home, but they need that sort of flexibility, autonomy, time to think. But then there are some industries where you can't so finance would be one, because you have high security involved. You're moving large sums of money. Manufacturing, you have to be on the floor or in the lab, and then healthcare, where you have to be there to take care of someone, for example. So, one size does not fit all in this case,

Dr Juliet Bourke: That makes sense. Does it have any larger consequences for us as an economy when you have growth in ways of working, but the other is still doing it as it was pre covid.

Dr Manju Ahuja: Yeah, but that's always the case. So some industries, people have to go in healthcare. You know you can't take care of a patient from home. So it's true, but I think it means that we have to think about these implications before we create policies that we say should apply to everybody.

Dr Juliet Bourke: So how prepared now are Australian businesses to ensure that we work from home well, that we do it better than we've done it before?

Dr Manju Ahuja: Yeah, I think we are quite prepared, not fully, but quite. You know, we are figuring out ways of managing time tasks and policies around communication and space and so on. But there's still a lot to be done. I mean, we've done a lot of interviews with managers who are doing these things, and they're figuring it out. We talked to one person who said, Well, I hired this person six months ago. I haven't met them yet, but they're getting the work done, so I'm not worried.

Dr Juliet Bourke: That's Dr Manju Ahuja, Scientia Professor in the School of Information Systems and Technology Management at UNSW's Business School. And if you're interested in how to create better, healthier workplaces, listen to our previous episode with Associate Professor Carlo Caponecchia on psychosocial safety at work.

Carlo Caponecchia: This is not about managing people with mental ill health. It's about managing the things in your business that could create those outcomes. You have a duty to control the things within your control, the way the work is organised, supervised, managed, where it's done, how it's done.

Dr Juliet Bourke: You'll find the link in the episode description. The Business Of is brought to you by the University of New South Wales Business School, produced with Deadset Studios.

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