Myer Forces Staff Back to Empty Offices While Stores Actually Close

Melbourne's Myer is having a crisis, and like many organizations in crisis, it has decided the problem is definitely not what the numbers say it is.

The Australian department store chain has eliminated work-from-home arrangements for its corporate employees, forcing staff back to physical offices at a moment when the company is posting a $276.5 million statutory net loss—the worst performance in years—and its actual customer-facing stores are sitting empty or closing altogether. It is, in the most literal sense, a masterclass in misdiagnosing the problem.

Corporate staff are protesting. They have reason to.

Myer's fiscal 2026 results tell a story that has nothing to do with where accounting departments sit. Sales across the organization came to $4 billion, up only 0.7 per cent on a comparable basis. The Brisbane Myer location, which had operated for 35 years, closed in mid-2023 when a landlord deal collapsed. The Frankston store in Melbourne's suburbs shut in January 2023 as a cost-cutting measure. The Werribee location also closed during the financial year. These are not corporate office vacancies. These are stores—the actual venues where Myer generates revenue.

Chief Executive Officer Olivia Wirth attributed the performance to external forces: "Myer has not been immune from the challenging macroeconomic conditions and inflationary pressures confronting the retail sector." She cited "the tough cost-of-living environment, as well as the closure of the Brisbane, Frankston and Werribee stores for all, or part, of the year" as contributing factors.

She is not wrong about the environment. She is simply looking in the wrong direction.

Myer operates in an industry that has been fundamentally hollowed out. Traditional department stores like Myer and rival David Jones have watched their market position erode as category killers—JB Hi-Fi, specialists in electronics, and others—have stripped away their most reliable revenue streams. Consumers no longer shop department stores for furniture, white goods, or electronics. That business simply vanished. Myer attempted to compensate by acquiring five clothing brands—Just Jeans, Dotti, Portmans, Jay Jays, and Jacqui E—in January, bolting on 780 individual stores to its portfolio. The company has brought forward its Christmas sales to October, betting the holiday season will deliver what the rest of the year has not.

None of this suggests that the solution involves moving people from their home offices back to headquarters.

The disconnect between diagnosis and action is revealing. Myer's corporate leadership is facing a retail apocalypse—structural decline, store closures, shrinking sales, and a customer base that has fundamentally changed how it shops. The response: mandate that people sit at desks in Melbourne or Sydney.

There is a logic to it, if you squint. Return-to-office mandates have become the default reflex for executives who sense loss of control, who worry that remote work is somehow eroding productivity or culture. The assumption is that proximity equals engagement, that visibility equals value. In Myer's case, the assumption is that the company's problems can be solved by forcing its corporate workforce to physically occupy a building while its actual stores close and its market position shrinks.

This is what happens when a company mistakes its symptoms for its disease. Myer's problem is not that its corporate staff are at home. Myer's problem is that it operates a department store chain in an era when department stores have become economically obsolete for most of what they once sold. No amount of mandatory office presence will change that.

The corporate staff protesting the policy are not wrong. They are asked to commute, to lose flexibility, to sit in an office building—all in service of a company that cannot keep its retail locations open. It is a demand without logic, a punishment without purpose. It is also, unfortunately, becoming routine. When executives cannot solve the actual problem, they solve the visible one. When the market is breaking, they mandate the commute.