Victoria WFH Law: Employer Compliance Checklist for 1 Sept 2026

Not yet. As at 19 July 2026 the bill is before Parliament, but it is not law. The Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026 was introduced to the Victorian Parliament on 16 July 2026 and has passed the Assembly second reading. It amends the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) to give eligible employees a right to work from home two days per week. It has not passed both houses and has not received Royal Assent, so none of it is enforceable yet. The official premier.vic.gov.au release remains the primary source for the commencement dates.

The timetable for employers to plan against:

This checklist is forward-looking preparation for a scheme that is still before Parliament. Until the bill passes both houses and receives Royal Assent, every obligation below should be read as expected, not enacted. Re-verify at each remaining stage and at Assent.

If the bill passes as introduced, it applies regardless of employer size — there is no small-business exemption. The Victorian Government has expressly ruled one out. What smaller workplaces get is extra time, not an escape: businesses with fewer than 15 employees have until 1 July 2027 to comply, while employers with 15 or more employees are expected to comply from 1 September 2026. This is a timing deferral only.

Who the bill excludes. The bill as introduced carves out employees on probation, apprentices, trainees, interns and graduate program participants, along with regulated workers and regulated businesses under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). If your workforce includes any of these groups, they sit outside the new entitlement (though the federal right to request under s.65 may still apply to them).

What is still not confirmed:

• Whether the 15-employee threshold is measured by headcount or full-time equivalent, and how it is counted across sites or related entities.
• Whether a minimum qualifying period of service applies.
• How "regular" casual employment is defined.

The entitlement is two days per week for full-time employees, and pro rata for part-time and casual employees — that pro-rata treatment is now set out in the bill rather than left to promised guidance. Treat the 15-employee line as your trigger for the September 2026 timeline, and do not assume any of the open questions above resolve in your favour. You can pressure-test individual roles and employee circumstances against the announced eligibility test using our Victorian WFH eligibility checker.

Because Victoria cannot amend Commonwealth industrial law, it uses its state equal-opportunity jurisdiction instead. The right is created by amending the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic), not the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). That single structural choice drives everything an employer needs to plan for:

• It is framed as a substantive entitlement, not just a right to request. Federal law (Fair Work Act s.65) gives certain employees a right to request flexible arrangements that an employer can refuse on "reasonable business grounds". The Victorian bill creates an actual right to work from home — two days per week for full-time employees, pro rata for part-time and casual employees — for any eligible employee whose role can reasonably be done remotely.
• Disputes route through VEOHRC, then VCAT. The Premier's release confirms disputes go first to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission for conciliation, and to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal if unresolved — not the Fair Work Commission.
• Refusals are expected to be judged against a higher bar. Legal commentators (Maddocks, Clayton Utz, Kennedys, HR Legal) anticipate that, because the right sits inside the discrimination framework, an employer refusing WFH will face a materially tougher standard than the federal "reasonable business grounds" test. The exact statutory wording is not yet known.

The practical message: "office culture", manager preference, and blanket return-to-office mandates are unlikely to be defensible reasons to refuse. Build your decisions to withstand discrimination-law scrutiny, not just Fair Work-style review.

Audit every role and classify it as remote-capable, hybrid-capable, or on-site-only — each with a written, role-specific rationale. The eligibility test covers employees "whose roles can reasonably be performed from home". How that test will be applied in practice remains unsettled; commentary infers a balancing test (role requirements, operational needs, employee circumstances, work health and safety), but that is inference, and no tribunal has tested it.

The biggest litigation risk an employer can create for itself is blanket categorisation and inconsistent treatment of similar roles. If two employees do substantially the same work and one is allowed home while the other is refused, that inconsistency is exactly what a discrimination-framework tribunal will examine.

A defensible audit:

• List every position, not every person. Classify by the inherent requirements of the role.
• For each role, record why it can or cannot reasonably be done from home — tie the reason to concrete tasks (e.g. on-site equipment, supervised activity, in-person service delivery), not to seniority or preference.
• Flag where similar roles land in different classes and document the operational reason for the difference.
• Keep the audit dated and reviewable, so you can show your reasoning predated any individual request.

Because the test is not yet settled in practice, design the audit to be re-run once the bill completes its passage and the meaning of "reasonably performed remotely" is clearer.

You need a written WFH policy and position descriptions that state work-location requirements with operational justification — not a bare "office-based". A position description that simply says "office-based" carries no evidentiary weight under a discrimination standard. Rewrite location requirements so each one is tied to a genuine operational reason.

A WFH policy built for the scheme in the bill should cover:

• Eligibility by role class — drawing directly from your role audit (remote / hybrid / on-site-only), and noting the excluded groups (probation, apprentices, trainees, interns, graduate program participants, and regulated workers/businesses under the Fair Work Act).
• Request and decision procedure — how an employee asks, who decides, and the timeframe.
• Equipment and cost coverage — this is now an express employer obligation in the bill. Employers must cover the reasonable costs of the work-from-home arrangement, including essential equipment (both hardware and software) and secure access to the employer's information systems. Set out what you supply, how an employee requests it, and who pays for what — a policy that pushes home-office costs onto the employee will not sit well against this obligation.
• Home-workspace work health and safety — how home set-ups are assessed and signed off.
• Internal dispute process — a first-stop step before a matter escalates to VEOHRC conciliation and potentially VCAT.

Two practical notes. First, the entitlement is two days per week for full-time employees, and pro rata for part-time and casual employees — the pro-rata treatment is set out in the bill, so you can build it into the policy now rather than waiting on guidance. Second, whether the two days are employee-elected or employer-directed is still unsettled, so build your policy so it can accommodate either reading. You can draft and pressure-test a compliant policy now with our flexible work request tool.

Keep a contemporaneous paper trail for every role decision, request, response and refusal — the documentation is your defence. Under a discrimination-framework dispute, the employer is the one who has to justify a refusal, so the records have to exist before the dispute, not be reconstructed after it.

Train managers to maintain, and retain, the following:

• Role-classification decisions from the audit, with the dated operational rationale for each.
• Every WFH request and the written response, including dates.
• The justification for any refusal, expressed in operational terms and consistent with how comparable roles were treated.
• Remote-performance evidence — metrics or examples relevant to whether the role can reasonably be done from home.

Manager training should also cover what is not a defensible reason: personal preference, "we want everyone in", presenteeism, or culture-only arguments. Because refusals are expected to be tested against a higher bar than the federal s.65 "reasonable business grounds" standard, the safest posture is that a refusal needs a genuine, documented operational reason that would hold up before VEOHRC and, if escalated, VCAT. For employer-side resources across this and other obligations, see our guidance for employers.

Several core mechanics are still unconfirmed even with the bill before Parliament, and there is a real prospect the law is challenged in court for most private-sector employees. Plan for the scheme as introduced, but treat these items as open until the bill completes its passage and any litigation resolves them.

Still unresolved:

• How the test for when a role can be "reasonably" performed remotely will be applied.
• The precise grounds on which an employer may lawfully refuse (commentary expects a "reasonable business grounds"-style test set at a higher bar, but this is not settled).
• The remedies and penalties available at VCAT for the new right (orders to grant the arrangement, compensation, costs are inferred from the Equal Opportunity Act machinery, not confirmed for this entitlement).
• Whether the two days are employee-elected or employer-directed.
• Whether the 15-employee threshold is headcount or full-time equivalent, and how it is counted across sites and related entities.

Now settled by the bill, and worth building into your compliance work: pro-rata treatment for part-time and casual employees; the excluded groups (probation, apprentices, trainees, interns, graduate program participants, regulated workers and regulated businesses); and the employer obligation to cover reasonable costs of the arrangement, including essential hardware and software and secure access to your information systems.

The single biggest uncertainty is constitutional. Most Victorian private-sector workers are national-system (Fair Work) employees. There is a genuine question whether a state law creating a WFH entitlement is invalid under section 109 of the Constitution, given section 26 of the Fair Work Act is intended to exclude state industrial laws. The government deliberately houses the right in the Equal Opportunity Act — anti-discrimination laws can validly co-exist — to reduce that risk. Even so, commentators (via SmartCompany, ABLA, Kennedys) and business groups (Victorian Chamber, Property Council, HIA) expect a constitutional challenge if the law passes as introduced; the right may not survive for Fair Work-covered employees, and its interaction with awards and enterprise agreements is untested. The pragmatic employer position: prepare the compliance groundwork now, because the audit, policy and documentation work is good practice regardless, but do not over-commit to irreversible changes until the bill is law and any challenge is resolved.

For background on the broader scheme and how it sits against the federal right to request, see our explainer on the Victorian work-from-home law for 2026.