ARTICLES
Working Rights Are Changing. Here's What Australian Businesses Need to Know — and What's Coming Next.
Day 25 of 31 Days of Better Workplaces — flexible work is the issue that’s generated more questions from my clients than almost anything else in the last three years. The legislative landscape is evolving, the employee expectations are settled, and the gap between the two is where most of the conflict lives.
What’s already changed
The Fair Work Act amendments have progressively strengthened employee rights around flexible work requests. Employees with caring responsibilities, disability, pregnancy, or employees aged 55 and over now have an enhanced right to request flexible arrangements, and employers must have a genuine reason grounded in reasonable business grounds to refuse.
The bar for what counts as “reasonable business grounds” has risen. “We prefer people in the office” or “it’s how we’ve always done things” is not a sufficient basis for refusal. Specific, demonstrable operational requirements are required.
What employers are getting wrong
Blanket policies. A policy that mandates a specific number of office days for all employees — regardless of role, caring responsibilities, disability, or individual circumstance — may be lawful in some contexts and discriminatory in others. Blanket mandates are increasingly being challenged, and the outcomes are not always going the employer’s way.
Refusing requests without genuine consideration. The right to request is not a guarantee of a specific arrangement, but it is a guarantee of genuine engagement. Brushing off a request, responding slowly, or giving a form-letter refusal creates legal exposure.
Conflating presence with performance. The evidence on remote work productivity is mixed — it depends heavily on the role, the individual, and the quality of management. But businesses that measure performance by presence are increasingly out of step with both the evidence and the regulatory direction of travel.
What’s coming
The conversation in Australia is moving toward the framework already established in some European jurisdictions — a more explicit right to disconnect outside of standard work hours. The Closing Loopholes legislation has introduced a right to disconnect for many workers, meaning employers need to review their expectations around after-hours communication.
What forward-thinking businesses are doing
They’re building flexible work policies that are specific, fair, and genuinely applied — not blanket rules or empty commitments. They’re training managers to manage remote and hybrid teams effectively — not assuming that managing in-person and managing remotely require the same skills. They’re treating flexibility as a retention tool, because the evidence is clear that access to flexible work is a significant factor in how employees evaluate whether to stay.
The future of work is hybrid. The businesses building the frameworks to manage that well, now, are the ones that will retain the talent that makes it possible.
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