Victoria WFH Law: Employer Compliance Checklist for 1 Sept 2026

No. As at 16 June 2026 this is a government announcement, not a law. The Victorian Government has committed to introducing an amendment to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) that would give eligible employees a right to work from home two days per week. The official premier.vic.gov.au release states the legislation is to be introduced to the Victorian Parliament in July 2026 — future tense. No bill has been tabled and no bill text has been released. Some law-firm and news pages already describe the law as "introduced" or in force; that is wrong against the primary government source.

The announced timetable for employers to plan against:

This checklist is forward-looking preparation for a proposed scheme. Until the bill passes and receives Royal Assent, every obligation below should be read as expected, not enacted. Re-verify when the bill is tabled and again at each reading and at Assent.

If the proposal passes as announced, 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.

What is not yet confirmed (pending bill text):

• Whether the 15-employee threshold is measured by headcount or full-time equivalent.
• Whether probationary employees are excluded.
• Whether a minimum qualifying period of service applies.
• How "regular" casual employment is defined.

The government has said the entitlement is intended to cover regular casual and part-time workers, not just full-timers. 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 proposed as an amendment to 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 proposal is announced as an actual right to work from home, capped at two days per week, 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 announced eligibility test covers employees "whose roles can reasonably be performed from home". There is no published statutory definition of what "reasonably performed remotely" means yet; commentary infers a balancing test (role requirements, operational needs, employee circumstances, work health and safety), but that is inference, not legislation.

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 statutory test is not yet settled, design the audit to be re-run once the bill defines "reasonably performed remotely".

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 proposed scheme should cover:

• Eligibility by role class — drawing directly from your role audit (remote / hybrid / on-site-only).
• Request and decision procedure — how an employee asks, who decides, and the timeframe.
• Equipment provision — what the employer supplies for home work.
• 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 headline entitlement is described as two days per week, but sources conflict on whether that is a fixed cap or a floor (HR Legal frames it as "at least two days"); the government release and most commentary say two days. Whether the two days are employee-elected or employer-directed is also unsettled. Build your policy so it can accommodate either reading. Second, the government has promised guidance on pro-rata treatment for part-time and casual workers before 1 September 2026; that guidance is not yet released. 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 unconfirmed, and there is a real prospect the law is challenged in court for most private-sector employees. Plan for the announced scheme, but treat these items as open until the bill and any litigation resolve them.

Still unknown pending bill text:

• The exact statutory test for when a role can be "reasonably" performed remotely.
• The precise grounds on which an employer may lawfully refuse (commentary expects a "reasonable business grounds"-style test set at a higher bar, but no primary source states this).
• The remedies and penalties available at VCAT (orders to grant the arrangement, compensation, costs are inferred from the Equal Opportunity Act machinery, not specified).
• Whether the two days are employee-elected or employer-directed, and pro-rata treatment for part-time and casual staff (guidance promised before 1 September 2026).

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 announced; 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.