Australia Needs a More Mature Right to Work From Home

AHRI is right to caution against blunt regulation. But informal access to hybrid work is not the same as an enforceable workplace right. The better path is a balanced middle ground: a structured, rebuttable right to work from home for suitable roles, with clear grounds for refusal and accessible avenues for review.

AHRI’s recent article, Do Australians need a legal right to work from home?, raises a fair and important question. If hybrid work is already well established across many parts of the Australian economy, is a stronger legal framework really necessary?

It is a reasonable point. Not every role can be performed remotely. Not every workplace issue should be solved by imposing a rigid statutory entitlement. Employers need scope to manage operational requirements, service delivery, supervision, safety, confidentiality and the inherent requirements of particular roles.

But that does not answer the core issue.

The real weakness in Australia’s current framework is not that work from home is unavailable. It is that access to it is still too often informal, discretionary and uneven. A practice can be common and still be insecure. It can be available in one team and refused in another. It can be supported by one leader and discouraged by the next. And it can be promoted when labour market conditions favour employees, only to be narrowed when that pressure eases.

That is why informal access should not be confused with a genuine workplace right.

Under the Fair Work framework, some employees can request flexible working arrangements, including changes to where work is performed, but that right is not universal and it is not the same as an automatic outcome. Eligibility is limited to certain categories of employees, and in many cases requires a minimum period of service before the right can even be exercised.

So while many Australians can ask, that does not mean they have meaningful protection.

That distinction matters because the current model leaves too much to managerial discretion. Where flexibility depends primarily on permission, consistency is difficult to guarantee. Two employees in materially similar roles can have very different experiences based on nothing more than leadership style, organisational culture or assumptions about “visibility” and collaboration.

This is where I part company with AHRI’s premise.

The fact that hybrid work is now common does not necessarily show that legislation is unnecessary. It may instead show that the law has not kept pace with how modern work is already being performed. If a workplace practice has become widespread, accepted and operationally embedded, that can be an argument for clearer legal architecture, not against it.

The labour market picture reinforces that point.

Based on a SEEK search conducted on 11 March 2026, there were just under 180,000 positions advertised. Of those, 25,605 were listed as hybrid and 3,209 as remote. Across 13 classifications reviewed, including Accounting, Advertising, Arts & Media, Banking & Financial Services, Consulting & Strategy, HR & Recruitment, ICT, and Marketing & Communications, there were approximately 42,155 positions advertised. Of those, 12,999 were listed as hybrid and just 902 as remote.

Those figures do not suggest that flexible work has failed. But they do suggest that the market alone is not producing broad, transparent or consistent access, even in classifications where at least some degree of remote work might reasonably be expected.

At the same time, working from home is no longer marginal. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that in August 2025, 36.2% of employed people usually worked from home. That is more than one in three workers. Whatever view one takes on the policy settings, work from home is clearly now part of the structure of modern Australian employment.

And yet the legal framework still treats it as something closer to an exception than a norm.

That is the gap in the current debate.

The answer is not to create an absolute right for every employee in every role. That would be too blunt, and it would ignore the reality that many jobs require physical presence. Frontline, site-based, operational and customer-facing work often involves genuine constraints that cannot simply be legislated away.

But the answer is also not to leave things where they are.

Australia needs a more mature middle ground: a structured, rebuttable right to work from home for suitable roles.

That model would start from a simple proposition. If the inherent and practical requirements of a role can reasonably be performed remotely, in whole or in part, then the employee should have a presumptive right to work from home. That presumption should not be absolute. It should be capable of being rebutted by the employer where there are legitimate and demonstrable reasons why remote work is not appropriate.

That is a more balanced and practical framework than either extreme.

It would preserve an employer’s ability to manage the business properly. But it would also move flexibility beyond goodwill alone. It would shift decision-making away from preference and toward evidence.

What a workable reform model could look like

A sensible reform framework could include seven core elements.

1. A presumptive right for suitable roles
Employees in roles that are reasonably capable of being performed remotely, either fully or partly, should begin from a presumption that work from home is available. The test should focus on the actual requirements of the role, not personal managerial preference.

2. Clear criteria for refusal
Employers should retain the ability to refuse a work from home arrangement, but only on defined grounds. These could include genuine operational requirements, material service delivery impacts, work health and safety issues that cannot reasonably be managed, confidentiality concerns, supervision or training needs, or the inherent requirement for regular physical presence.

3. Specific and evidence-based reasons
A refusal should be explained clearly and concretely. Generic statements about culture, collaboration or productivity should not be enough on their own. If those concerns are relied upon, the employer should be required to show how they arise in the particular role and why they cannot reasonably be managed in a hybrid arrangement.

4. A duty to consider alternatives
The framework should not operate on an all-or-nothing basis. If full remote work is not feasible, employers should be required to consider partial arrangements, such as one or two days per week, anchor days, hybrid rostering, or trial periods with review points.

5. Accessible review mechanisms
Employees should have access to an avenue of review where a refusal appears unreasonable, inconsistent or unsupported. That mechanism does not need to be overly formal, but it should exist. Rights without reviewability are often rights in name only.

6. Protection against disadvantage
Employees working under an approved arrangement should be protected from indirect career penalty. Access to promotion, development, visibility and performance assessment should not be diminished simply because an employee works remotely some of the time.

7. Capacity for periodic review
Employers should be able to review arrangements where business needs genuinely change, but such reviews should be based on objective operational factors, not shifting preference or blanket policy reversals without justification.

A better policy question

The question is not whether every employee should be able to insist on working from home regardless of role. Very few serious commentators are arguing for that.

The better question is whether, in roles that are demonstrably capable of being performed remotely, access should continue to depend primarily on discretion, or whether there should be a clearer legal framework that promotes fairness, transparency and accountability.

That is where the conversation should now move.

AHRI is right to be cautious about simplistic regulation. But caution should not become complacency. The fact that work from home is now common does not mean the law is adequate. It may simply mean that the law has not yet caught up to workplace reality.

Australia does not necessarily need an absolute legal right to work from home.

But it does need a more coherent one.