AFR summit told WFH trend has a downside.

 

The head of one of Australia’s largest office landlords has warned people who want to work from home that they risk being replaced by robots.

 

Charter Hall chief executive David Harrison said his firm had dabbled in activity-based working - also known as hot-desking - but had given up on it. 

 

Harrison warned that as unemployment began to rise and should productivity growth remain stagnant, companies would increasingly look to automation as a way to save costs.

 

“It’s okay when unemployment is three per cent,” he told The Australian Financial Review Property Summit, “but if we keep having to deal with a lack of productivity and people saying ‘I want to work from home’, once unemployment rises, I think we will see jobs replaced by robots.”

 

Barrenjoey chief economist Jo Masters said some pandemic-era property market trends, such as working from home full-time and moving out of capital cities were unwinding.

 

“We went through a period where we thought no one was ever going back to the office,” she told the Summit.

 

“Now it turns out, people are coming back to the office, and we’re reminding ourselves of the benefits of that.”

 

Dexus CEO Darren Steinberg told the Summit that while working full-time in the office was “finished” a need for collaboration, innovation and maintaining a team culture were driving a return to in-person working.

 

No one knows exactly what the future holds, but we can have a good guess. In part one of two articles, this white paper thinks about robots, mobile working and having a telepresence.

 

AI and the office of the future

 

The idea of robots taking over has been a talking point for many years. In 2014, office products firm Esselte commissioned a report on workplace trends and office automation to mark its 100th anniversary.

 

OPI reported that the authors of the book Race Against the Machine predicted: “The AI [artificial intelligence] revolution is doing to white collar jobs what robotics did to blue collar jobs.