Flexible working became one of the biggest changes to hit the travel industry during the pandemic, but a top industry recruiter has told Travel Weekly that a growing number of employers are now pushing staff back into the office.
Lindsay White, director, aviation, travel and tourism at JIVARO says working from home is consistently a point of difference in the recruitment process.
“The first question candidates ask is, ‘Is it remote working or hybrid?’ And if it’s not, then it doesn’t suit them and the conversation ends,” White told Travel Weekly.
On the employer side, however, he said there has been a rise in “the requirement for people to do at least three days in the office, two days at home.”
“A lot of the trade are saying, ‘I don’t want remote working.’ We’ll do maybe a hybrid, three days in the office. There’s probably more resistance against home working as well,” he said.
White said this was understandable when bringing new employees into a business.
“If you’re bringing a new individual into your business, clearly you want to see what their work rate’s like, rather than just saying ‘work from home’ when you don’t know what they’re doing,” he said.
However, the issue can be that some people have young families or do not live near major cities.
“You get a lot of people saying they need to attend to their son or daughter, or it depends where they live geographically,” he added.
The debate comes at a time when the market remains very tight for experienced travel advisors.
“There are a lot of agents out there at the moment that are desperate for staff,” White said. “They’re desperate for staff, but they only want experienced people.”
“The market, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland, is very, very tight.”
He added that many people are hesitant to move jobs right now due to the conflict in the Middle East.
“You know what they say ‘first one in, first one out.”
WFH blamed for performance
Flight Centre Travel Group ended its work-from-home policy in October 2024, with Graham ‘Skroo’ Turner issuing a company update stating that “A key part of our culture is the ability to form connections together in person, to learn from each other and to come together to ensure alignment on goals, training, performance, and celebration of our successes.”
He added that Flight Centre would continue to support flexible working when approved by an individual’s leader.
CEO of Luxury Escapes Adam Schwab also took a swipe at work-from-home policies yesterday on LinkedIn, suggesting they were partly responsible for hundred of recent redundancies at tech company Atlassian.
In a post outlining what Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes should have said to employees, Schwab pointed to not being in the office as a partial cause of the company’s performance.
“I’m sorry that I tricked you into leaving your job so you can “work from anywhere”. This hasn’t worked. We’re inefficient and not collaborating like we used to. We’re going to be bringing all our team back to the office.”
Schwab’s comments were not without challenge. Many people from both inside and outside the travel industry responded in the comments, arguing that working from home was not to blame.
“WFH policies have nothing to do with it,” CEO of Leatherback Travel Matthew Newton commented on the post. “Our company has become a talent magnet for people who don’t live within 25km of the arbitrarily chosen location/s of their bosses.”
He also said the policy shift can unfairly impact caregivers.
“Also for primary caregivers who also want to have a rewarding job – people who actually want to see their children.”
A senior recruiter at Atlassian also commented that “working from home has nothing to do with it”.
