{"id":178581,"date":"2025-11-13T14:14:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T14:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/178581\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:14:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T14:14:16","slug":"denis-obrien-will-not-like-the-latest-australian-court-decision-on-remote-working-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/178581\/","title":{"rendered":"Denis O\u2019Brien will not like the latest Australian court decision on remote working \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remote working<\/a> \u2013 and its cousin flexible working<\/a> \u2013 look like they are here to stay, despite the criticism of some senior business figures such as Denis O\u2019Brien<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The most recent Central Statistics Office<\/a> figures show that almost 36 per cent of people worked at home at least some of the time around the middle of this year, up from 20 per cent in the same period in 2019, before the pandemic hit and upended working arrangements.<\/p>\n

The proportion of people working from home has stayed relatively steady since 2022, when some normality returned after the pandemic, though there has been a bit of a fall in the numbers working from home \u201cmost of the time\u201d in favour of those working there \u201csome of the time.\u201d <\/p>\n

For some, in other words, three days a week working from home has turned into two. And the 2025 survey<\/a> by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) shows that around 15 per cent of employers intended to increase the amount of time that employees should work in the office this year. <\/p>\n

There is also a trend, the survey shows, towards greater central control in organisations of remote working policies, rather than leaving it to line managers and \u2013 anecdotally \u2013 many report their employers are now monitoring attendance more closely.<\/p>\n

A lot of this, says Caroline Reidy of the HR Suite, a human resources consultancy, is a normalising of new work arrangements which started in an emergency setting during Covid-19. But she believes that the situation is still settling.<\/p>\n

After a clamp down on remote working from some international companies early this year \u2013 for example JP Morgan which called staff back to the office full-time \u2013 and tensions elsewhere as employees push back against a tightening of the rules in organisations such as AIB <\/a>\u2013 Reidy feels \u201cwe are not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Companies need to keep consulting their staff as new arrangements emerge, she says Many are reviewing their policies again ahead of next January, according to Reidy, but she does not believe there is a general pullback likely from remote working in 2026, with the model of three days in the office and two at home increasingly common. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Workers unlikely to be the winners as new norm on working from home takes shapeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In the public service, meanwhile, many employees continue to work from home three days a week, a point underlined by O\u2019Brien in his speech. <\/p>\n

Employees have a legal right to apply for remote or flexible work under 2023 legislation and the Workplace Relations Commission <\/a>(WRC) has published a detailed code of practice <\/a>on how these rules should be applied. <\/p>\n

Flexible working refers to those who have caring responsibilities for young children or other family members requiring care. The remote working rules, meanwhile, try to set down a framework for the post-Covid working world for all employees.<\/p>\n

\"\"Irish business grandee Gary McGann on working with Michael Smurfit, the fall of Anglo Irish and the current state of the Irish economy<\/p>\n

To date, almost all of the cases brought to the WRC by employees to complain about the way their applications for remote working have been dealt with have gone in favour of the employer. <\/p>\n

Only one of the 56 complaints bought by employees have been upheld, leading to a \u20ac1,000 compensation payment to an employer by Salesforce, which was seen to have breached the rules in how it dealt with his request.<\/p>\n

The role of the WRC under the legislation is overseeing the process applied by companies, rather than judging the merits of the argument on whether the employee is required at the office. However there has been criticism of the way the rules operate and there may be a push in a review to be undertaken next year to allow the WRC to take a wider role. <\/p>\n

Jennifer Cashman, partner with RDJ solicitors, points out that the review will be wide-ranging, including considering extending the right to seek flexible working \u2013 currently confined to those with caring responsibilities \u2013 to all employees. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Women and hybrid workers face more obstacles to promotion, data showsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Emer Currie, the Fine Gael TD who chairs the Oireachtas group on remote working, has called for the legislation to be strengthened so that company decisions in this area come under more scrutiny.<\/p>\n

In a briefing paper<\/a> on the decisions made by the WRC, Rachel Jones of lawyers Lewis Silkin says that they show \u201ca key reality that employers maintain full discretion over whether to approve or deny requests.\u201d <\/p>\n

Decisions, she said, \u201chave confirmed that the WRC can only assess whether an employer followed the correct process, not whether the refusal was justified. Ultimately, the decision reinforced that employees have the right to request but not to be granted remote work. \u201d<\/p>\n

In this context, an interesting recent decision by the Australian National Workplace Tribunal, the equivalent of the WRC, has, according to RDJ, drawn interest from similar jurisdictions, including Ireland, where employees have a similar right to seek flexible or remote working.<\/p>\n

\"AA Westpac bank in Melbourne. Photograph: Asanka Ratnayake\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

A briefing written by Nathalie King and Cashman<\/a>, employment lawyers at the firm, outlines the case of Karlene Chandler, am employee at Westpac, one of Australia\u2019s biggest banks. <\/p>\n

Chandler was seeking to remain working remotely rather than return to work two days a week, as the company wanted. When this was refused she offered to go two days a week to a bank office outside of Sydney, rather than the company headquarters in the city centre where the company wanted her to attend.<\/p>\n

The basis of the request was to allow her to look after her two six year-old children and take care of school drop-offs.<\/p>\n

The bank responded in an email that \u201cworking from home is no substitute for childcare\u201d and that her working arrangements were at the company\u2019s discretion. The tribunal decided that her request should be granted as Westpac had failed to establish business grounds for refusing the request and that ruling in her favour would be fair in the circumstances. <\/p>\n

Key to its finding were submissions from Chandler about how she could successfully work and interact with her team from home.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Hybrid work: \u2018We get the buzz of being together but without the pressure of five days in\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

While in Ireland the WRC cannot order an employer to agree to a request, RDJ says the case carries important lessons for employers. Wespac was criticised by the tribunal for being somewhat sloppy in the way it responded to Chandler and for taking a \u201cone-size-fits- all \u201d approach, where it did not make a specific case in relation to why the employee should be in the office by referring to her particular job.<\/p>\n

The case also shows the need for employers to be mindful of the employee\u2019s needs and assess potential alternatives, the lawyers say.<\/p>\n

It also opens up the question of how the Irish system may be reformed in 2026 and whether employers may face a more onerous situation where employees have a right to challenge not only the way their application for remote or flexible working was dealt with, but also the merits of the argument. <\/p>\n

Cashman says that on balance she does not believe the WRC will be asked to examine whether a company decision was fair, or that it be given powers to rule on what arrangements should be put in place. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Are workers really enthusiastic about going back to the office?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

However, with criticism that the rules are too favourable to employers, legal experts will closely follow next year\u2019s review by the Department of Employment.<\/p>\n

According to Jones of Lewis Silkin: \u201cone of the biggest criticisms of the Code continues to be the high degree of discretion that employers have when refusing employees requests to work remotely or flexibly based on business needs.\u201d <\/p>\n

She says it is possible that the WRC will evolve into a forum where employees can appeal the fairness of the employee\u2019s refusal and that \u201cthere is also a need for clarity on whether employees can re-request a remote or flexible working arrangement following an initial refusal. \u201d<\/p>\n

Either way, this new world of work looks to be here to stay. As Reidy of the HR Suite says, companies find they have to offer some kind of hybrid arrangements to attract the best staff. <\/p>\n

The question is what happens if the jobs market turns down and more power moves back to employers? This will perhaps be the acid test of how much of the Covid-19 world of work will survive in the longer term. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Remote working \u2013 and its cousin flexible working \u2013 look like they are here to stay, despite the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,1412,18,2357,19,17,25243,13083,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-178581","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-central-statistics-office","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-hybrid-working","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-remote-working","15":"tag-smart-money","16":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115542810368524442","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}