The Mars and Venus of workplace connection: Evolution of Australian Employees’ and Organisations' post-pandemic ways of working

The disconnections experienced as a result of being removed from the workplace and extended working from home (WFH), have illuminated distinctions in the needs and nature of connection to the office, professional identity and enablers of work for men and women. Globally, research has shown female employees disproportionately impacted by domestic and caring pressures throughout the course of COVID-19 imposed lockdowns, risking a setback of decades worth of gender equality progress in the workplace (Babatunde et al., 2022; Caligiuri and de Cieri, 2021; Garrido et al., 2021; Ipsen et al., 2021; King and Frederickson, 2021; Krivkovich et al., 2022; Oakman et al., 2022; OECD, 2021; Rozman et al., 2021). The focus has been socio-economic impacts, safety, workload, mental and physical health, attrition, and promotion opportunity. This paper documents and investigates key gender differences in Australian employees’ affective relationships to the office, needs for connection, efficacy, and flexibility in ways of working shown through extended working from home- or-elsewhere and return-to-office experiences (in lockdown-imposed and voluntary circumstances). Statistical testing and comparative content analysis of data using SPSS and NVivo 12 from three rounds of online surveys (November 2020 through February 2021, April through May 2021, August through November 2021) with Australian employees and organisations is presented. The survey sample is comprised of Organisations (n=30) and Employees (n = 169) from 11 industry sectors (Property, Design and Construction, Education, Media and Arts, Professional Services, Retail, Government, Engineering, Mining, Health, and Technology) expanding the breath of current Australian research in gender which focusses on private or specific sectors (i.e., education, training, and healthcare). Findings show the trajectory of experiences of men, women, and organisations across the 2020-2022 timeline in Australia with particular focus on the 2021 return-to-office experience between two major state-wide lockdowns in Victoria (July through October 2020) and New South Wales (June through October 2021). Flexible workplace policies in place prior to the pandemic remain a leading contributor to successful transition and continued adoption of hybrid working practices. Significant differences were found between genders in both their satisfaction with WFH and choices in ongoing number of days WFH, supporting similar global studies from the same period. More importantly, despite the freedom to choose where, when, and how to work, t-tests uncovered significant differences in male and female employee’s ongoing sense of connection and value to teams, autonomy and ownership over work and knowledge sharing overall with females reporting notably lower average scores across all domains. Gender biased nuance was also discovered in the nature of connections to employees’ physical work environments supporting existing research on principle empathic differences between genders (Mestre et al., 2009). This paper provides key insights for organisations towards development of more effective and equitable management of team workstyles and hybrid working. It also raises important inclusivity and gender-based considerations for the design of future workplace environments as optimised tools for productive work.