'It brings operational difficulties and impacts the wellbeing of other staff,' says employer
The Queensland Industrial Relations Commission recently decided on the appeal of an employee who wanted to question his employer after it denied his request for flexible work.
The employee worked at Queensland’s Police Service (QPS) as a prosecutor (legal officer) in its legal division. He started his employment in May 2019 and was permanently appointed to his post in August 2019.
In April 2022, he applied for a flexible working arrangement (FWA), seeking to work from home for one day each week. The application was reportedly not supported, but a trial arrangement was put in place for him to work from home for one day each month.
Around July, he made a second application for an FWA to enable him to work from home for one day per week. After a month, an inspector from prosecution services wrote to him and said his application was not being supported, saying that there was “simply no meaningful work directly related to [his] current duties that [he] can perform from home.”
The employer also told him that on the days that he work from home once a month, other co-workers were already absorbing his workload, saying that the situation was “not sustainable on a weekly basis.”
“Your absence from the workplace places an additional workload on other prosecutors who are required to attend to additional court requirements, phone calls and other office related duties. This challenges the operational ability of Prosecution Services to meet our service delivery obligations and also impact the health and wellbeing of other staff,” the management said.
According to the commission, an employee may ask the employee’s employer for a change in the way the employee works, including:
(a) the employee’s ordinary hours of work; and
(b) the place where the employee works; and
(c) a change to the way the employee works, for example, the use of different equipment as a result of a disability, illness or injury.
The request must:
(a) be in writing; and
(b) state the change in the way the employee works in sufficient detail to allow the employer to make a decision about the request; and
(c) state the reasons for the change.
The employee argued that working from home gave him “more time to exercise, re-adjust and focus on mental health and well-being and self-care and make significant improvements to mental health, physical health and overall health and well-being.”
He also said “working remotely significantly improves his work-life balance by providing him with extended time with his young family, allowing time to flexibly share the parental and household load, and enabling him to be available for both his children and aging mother-in-law at short notice if required.”
The employer further included medical material in support of his FWA request, but the commission noted that it did not include information that specified a medical condition, or restrictions on duties that can or cannot be undertaken nor hours of work that can be performed.
In its decision, the commission said that if the employee was seeking a reasonable adjustment to his current duties or hours of work due to a medical condition, then he should file it with the QPS Health and Safety Unit rather than seeking to establish a plan through a FWA request.
The commission also said the denial of his request was because of the requirements at work, emphasising “the timing was based on the operational needs of the employer rather than being motivated by an attempt to stop him from accessing flexible work arrangements.”
Thus, the commission favoured the employer and upheld its decision to reject the employee’s flexible work request.
