Since 1 September, full-time employees in the Australian state of Victoria have had a legal right to work from home two days a week, provided the job can reasonably be done there. The right sits in the state’s equal opportunity law rather than in employment law, so a refusal is handled like other questions of discrimination. Employers have 21 days to answer a request, may only turn it down on a defined list of grounds, and have to cover the reasonable costs.
Disputes go first to the state’s Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission for conciliation, then on to the tribunal. Workplaces with fewer than 15 staff have until July 2027. The government’s own figures put more than a third of Victorian workers at home regularly, saving an average of $110 a week and over three hours of commuting. What has changed is not the practice but its footing: it is no longer something you ask for.
So…:
What do you still grant as a favour that people have started to expect as a right?
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