Clerks Award working from home changes: employer guide

The Clerks Award now includes new rules about working from home. In reality, this isn’t a big shift for most of our clients, as many businesses have already been offering flexible work from home options.

Here’s a quick rundown for business leaders:

• From 26 October 2026, any of your team members covered by the Clerks Award can formally ask you to work from home. The new rules set out how a request is made and what needs to go into a working from home agreement.
• For most businesses, this simply puts a framework around something you’re probably already doing. It also gives you a clear way to put existing arrangements in writing.
• It’s not an automatic right to work from home. Employees can ask, and you can approve, but you don’t necessarily have to say yes to every request.

A welcome bit of extra flexibility

An interesting change is the greater flexibility to tailor working from home arrangements to individual employees. Previously, the Award required ordinary hours to be worked continuously with set rules for rest and meal breaks. Now, employers and employees can agree to vary those rules.

For example, an employee could work in split blocks around school pick-up or take lunch at a time that suits them. Existing flexibility options can also form part of a working from home arrangement, including varying start and finish times, making up time off, and taking time off instead of overtime pay.

Any changes must be genuinely agreed with the individual employee and clearly recorded in the working from home agreement.

There are still times when working from home just won’t work

The Award doesn’t spell out a strict test for declining a request. However, to avoid a dispute, we recommend basing any refusal on genuine business reasons linked to the role, and explaining those reasons to the employee in writing.

As an example, think about a receptionist who’s covered by the Clerks Award. While they may have a range of duties, the main part of their role is being physically at the front desk to meet visitors at your business. That’s just not something they can do from home, so in that case, declining a working from home request is likely to be reasonable.

What you can do (and what we can help with!):

• Check your employment contracts: Make sure they’re up to date for any roles covered by the Clerks Award.
• Review your policies: If you have a flexible work or working from home policy, now’s a good time to check it’s up to date. If you don’t have one, it might be worth putting one together.
• Put existing arrangements in writing: If some of your team already work from home, documenting those arrangements now can save confusion later.

Got questions about Modern Awards or HR compliance?

Contact our team of resourceful humans if you’d like to chat about what this means for your business.

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