After 2 + years of Covid-19, many businesses have been yearning for a return to normal which for some businesses includes requesting their staff to return to working from the office.

However, some employees have exhibited a sense of entitlement to working from home and today we wanted to share with you a client situation that we were asked to provide advice with the hope that it may help if your business is faced with a similar situation.

Of course, if you are faced with employees refusing to return to the office or any other HR or Workplace Relations challenge you can always take advantage of our Free HR / Workplace Relations Consultation & Strategic Action plan which you can learn more by visiting ondemandhr.com.au/advice.

• The employee was a receptionist for an accounting firm who has been working from home and asked to return to the office
• The employee refused saying that she should not have to as the majority of the other staff were still working from home
• Our client was shocked as a major part of the receptionists role is meeting and greeting their customers which cannot be carried out from home
• Further the business had continue to engage the receptionist throughout the pandemic despite not being sure exactly what work was being carried out from home
• Ultimately the employees refusal to return to the office triggered our client to review their processes and it was determined that the receptionist role was no longer required and the position was made redundant following a compliant process
• Of course, if the receptionist position was still required by the business, this would have added further complexity to the situation. In this case, the likely outcome would have been a performance management process as in our view the employee was refusing a reasonable and lawful directive being asked to return to the office.

Overall in our view, in the current environment if an employee’s job duties have a physical component such as meeting and greeting clients it is reasonable for employers to direct them to return to the office should they wish.  However we also caution that this is not a blanket rule and to be considered reasonable, the employer would need to consider the circumstances and duties of each employee.

Again if your business would like some assistance in directing your employees returning to the office or any other HR or Workplace Relations Challenge, to schedule a Free Consultation supported by a written strategic action plan, please reach out to us by visiting ondemandhr.com.au/advice.

My name is Andrew Koleda, I am the operations manager for On Demand HR and we are looking forward to seeing you all in the next update.