A federal authority's concerns that a dispute resolution specialist will miss out on face-to-face connections by working from home 100% of the time while looking after his child are among reasonable business grounds for refusing his request, the FWC has held.
A council's desire to have a senior planning team member pass on his wisdom in-person provided reasonable business grounds to refuse his request to work at home for all but six days a month, the FWC has found.
The FWC has endorsed AGL's grounds for rejecting a customer service consultant's flexible work request, but nevertheless ordered it to conduct a trial requiring her to attend the office for four hours on just 12 occasions over six months so she can continue to care for her incontinent, dementia-affected mother.
In a significant ruling on applications to work from home, the FWC has agreed with a multinational company's claim that its payroll officer could not devote sufficient attention to "complex" tasks while caring for two children under five.
The Victorian working from home legislation "aims to strike a balance" between making remote work available to more workers and the "operational realities" of businesses, partly by creating a comprehensive "reasonableness" test, Premier Jacinta Allan told State Parliament today.
The FWC has ordered an employer to allow a mother with two young children – one with special needs – to mostly work from her outer suburban home, rebuffing its call for her to attend its Sydney CBD office two days a week.
The FWC has backed a mining company's denial of a worker's request for flexible work to enable her to care for her baby, in a decision finding fairness a "neutral consideration" where both parties have acted reasonably.
Employers should consider broadening the definition of "family" in flexible work policies to reflect Indigenous kinship networks, according to the Centre for Indigenous People and Work, while unions are calling for a similar change to the NES leave entitlements, along with a new cultural leave entitlement.
Electors perceived as "Trump-like" the Dutton Opposition's plans to axe 40,000 public sector jobs and scrap work from home for federal public servants, with the WFH policy fuelling views that the Liberals were "unsympathetic to the needs of women", according to a damning review of the Liberal Party's 2025 federal election campaign.
