I’m Struggling

Kalpi Prasad| Working form Home

Most founders don’t talk about this openly, but it sits quietly beneath strategy meetings, policy updates and all-hands calls. It surfaces in half-empty offices, in late-night Slack messages, in the uneasy feeling that something has shifted — and not entirely for the better.

I’m struggling with a question that has no clean answer: should I allow my team to work from home, or should I ask them to return to the office?

This isn’t about nostalgia. It isn’t about distrust. And it certainly isn’t about control. It’s about stewardship — of people, culture and the long-term health of a business — in a working world that has changed faster than our ability to properly understand it.

Across Australia, founders are being forced to take a position on work-from-home policies as though the issue is settled. It isn’t. And pretending otherwise is doing real damage.

The quiet transformation of work

Work did not just move locations over the past few years — it changed form. Offices were once the default container for learning, accountability and momentum. Now they are optional. Sometimes peripheral. Occasionally symbolic.

On any given morning, work is happening before I arrive at the office. Emails have been sent. Tasks completed. Meetings scheduled. Productivity, at least in the narrowest sense, is visible.

And yet the space itself feels different. Less alive. Less spontaneous. The incidental conversations that once shaped decisions are rarer. The informal mentoring that used to happen without effort now requires planning.

What’s missing is difficult to quantify, but easy to feel.

Why productivity misses the point

Much of the public debate has fixated on productivity metrics, as though output alone can settle the argument. That framing is convenient, but it is also misleading.

Businesses are not machines that simply convert hours into results. They are ecosystems. And ecosystems depend on trust, shared understanding and human connection.

Yes, some individuals work exceptionally well from home. They focus deeply. They avoid distractions. They manage their time with discipline. For experienced professionals, autonomy can be empowering.

But companies are not built solely on individual excellence. They are built on collective capability — on how quickly teams align, how effectively knowledge transfers, and how well judgment develops under pressure.

Those things are harder to cultivate at a distance.

The invisible erosion of context

In an office, context flows freely. People overhear decisions being debated. They see how senior leaders respond to uncertainty. They absorb the unwritten rules of the organisation simply by being present.

Remote work interrupts that flow.

Context must now be documented, scheduled or explained. Meetings multiply. Written communication carries heavier loads. Misalignment takes longer to detect. Small issues that would once have been resolved in passing can quietly grow into larger problems.

None of this shows up immediately on performance dashboards. But over time, the drag becomes real.

Culture is not self-sustaining

Culture is often spoken about as though it is an asset that can be set and forgotten. In reality, culture is a living system. It requires constant reinforcement.

In physical workplaces, culture is shaped daily — through behaviour, tone, conflict resolution and decision-making. Remotely, culture must be designed and defended intentionally.

That level of intentionality demands strong leadership, mature managers and robust systems. Many growing businesses simply don’t have all three in place at the same time.

The risk is not that remote work fails outright. It’s that businesses underestimate what it takes to make it work well — and pay the price slowly.

The mentoring problem no one wants to own

Perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of the work-from-home debate is its impact on early-career professionals.

Senior staff often champion flexibility because they already possess context, confidence and networks. They can navigate ambiguity independently. They have already been shaped by proximity.

Younger employees have not.

Learning in the early stages of a career is not transactional. It is experiential. It happens through observation, repetition and exposure to complexity. It involves being present when things go wrong — and seeing how others respond.

Remote environments flatten that experience. Learning becomes scheduled rather than continuous. Over time, this affects the depth of capability businesses develop internally.

As a founder, this worries me deeply.

Trust is more complex than we admit

The narrative that office attendance equals mistrust is simplistic. Trust is not an abstract virtue. It is a system.

I trust my team to act in good faith. I trust their intentions. But trust also relies on feedback loops, shared visibility and timely course correction. When those weaken, trust becomes fragile — not because people are dishonest, but because assumptions replace understanding.

Ironically, remote work often introduces more monitoring rather than less. More reporting. More metrics. More tools designed to recreate visibility artificially.

In trying to protect trust, we sometimes erode it.

The uneven reality leaders manage

One of the hardest truths founders face is that flexibility does not affect everyone equally.

Some roles lend themselves to remote work. Others do not. Some individuals thrive with autonomy. Others struggle without structure. Managing this disparity fairly is extraordinarily difficult.

Hybrid models promise balance but often deliver confusion. Who should be in the office, and when? What happens when some people are present and others aren’t? Who gets access to leadership? Who gets noticed?

These questions have real consequences for careers, morale and retention.

The office as a question mark

There is another layer to this struggle that rarely gets acknowledged: offices themselves have lost clarity of purpose.

Are they collaboration hubs? Cultural anchors? Training grounds? Or simply relics of an older model of work?

An office without a clear role becomes resented rather than valued. And yet abandoning it entirely feels premature — even reckless — for businesses still building identity and momentum.

I’ve sat alone in meeting rooms and wondered whether the office is waiting for us to redefine it, or whether it is quietly becoming irrelevant.

The moral weight of leadership

This decision is not purely commercial. It is ethical.

Founders are asked to balance wellbeing with performance, flexibility with discipline, autonomy with accountability. These tensions are not theoretical. They affect real people, real families and real livelihoods.

Choosing one path inevitably disappoints someone. That burden is rarely shared, and often carried quietly.

What founders need most right now is not certainty, but honesty.

Where this leaves me

I don’t have a definitive answer. And perhaps that is the most truthful position.

Flexibility has improved lives. Presence still matters. Culture must be protected deliberately. Learning requires proximity. Autonomy requires trust — and trust requires structure.

For founders across Australia, the work-from-home debate is not about winning an argument. It’s about building something that lasts in a world that no longer offers simple rules.

I am still struggling. But I am learning that leadership is not about pretending the struggle doesn’t exist. It’s about acknowledging it — and making the best decision you can, knowing there is no perfect one.