‘Unreasonable’: ANZ staffer loses bid to work from home permanently

The Fair Work Commission has rejected an ANZ employee’s plea to permanently work from home because she feared contracting coronavirus, in a further test for workers and employers still battling over edicts to return to the office.

Deborah Lloyd took ANZ to the tribunal after it earlier this year refused her request to work from home five days a week, saying there was no medical reason preventing the project business analyst from returning to the bank’s Docklands headquarters in Melbourne.

The Fair Work Commission ruled an ANZ employee’s request to permanently work from home was unreasonable. Credit: Eamon Gallagher

In a decision given this week, Fair Work Commission deputy president Ian Masson sided with ANZ and described Lloyd’s requests as “unreasonable”.

“At its higher end, the premise of Ms Lloyd’s case appears to be that ANZ is required to accommodate her fears about attending the workplace due to the risk of contracting COVID,” Masson said in his judgment. “That ANZ should be expected to accommodate those fears, no matter how disproportionate those fears may be to the risk, is simply unreasonable.”

Peter Vogel, Lloyd’s lawyer, said the 62-year-old was considering appealing the decision, and added her litigation “raises serious issues which concern a lot of Australian workers”.

Almost four years after the COVID-19 pandemic sent most white-collar workers across the nation to work from home, employers are still struggling to lure their staff back into the offices. This has led to vacancy rates in Melbourne’s CBD hitting almost 20 per cent – the highest since 1995 – and 15 per cent in Sydney.

The case will raise further questions about lifting office attendance and managing hybrid arrangements. NSW Premier Chris Minns this month ordered all public servants back to the office three days a week, a move mocked by Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, who said flexible work arrangements were here to stay.

Lloyd, who has been a permanent employee of ANZ since 2015, works in a team of 10 people, five of whom are based in Melbourne and the other five in India.

Her main interactions with the India-based team are over Teams every second day, and because the Melbourne-based employees are in different buildings, she also meets them via Teams, Lloyd told the tribunal, arguing her presence in the office was unnecessary.

She said she feared contracting coronavirus because of her age, and that she found being in the office stressful. Lloyd, who was asked by Masson during the hearing to remove her mask so he could see facial expressions, told the Fair Work Commission she minimised the time she spent outside the home or her car and permanently wore a respirator when she was in public.

“She says these measures have assisted her [to] avoid any respiratory illness since 2020,” Masson wrote in his judgment.

However, ANZ argued its current expectation that staff spend at least half their time in an ANZ workplace was “already a significant amount of flexibility”, and there was no medical reason underpinning Lloyd’s fears.

The bank told the tribunal Lloyd occasionally attended the office until November, had recently travelled interstate to care for her mother, and occasionally left her house to “undertake required tasks”.

“In doing so, you have shown that you can and do break from your reported self-isolation despite the concerns you hold,” the bank said. “On this basis, ANZ believes the attendance expectations it holds of you are not unreasonable.”

While Masson acknowledged the risk of contracting a serious illness from COVID-19 increased with age, he said Lloyd did not demonstrate she had an underlying medical condition that would make her vulnerable to the disease. He also conceded she could “theoretically perform” her duties from home.

In a statement, ANZ said it was pleased with Masson’s judgment but declined to comment further out of respect for its employee.

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