The Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026 was introduced on 16 June. If it passes, eligible staff get a right to work from home two days a week from 1 September. This free kit gives you everything to be ready: two plain-English guides, two ready-to-use spreadsheets, and a toolkit of fillable templates, all built on the Bill and backed by employment lawyers.
Five tools to get work from home ready, sent straight to your inbox.
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Two guides to understand it. Three working tools to run it. Everything built on the Bill and ready to use.
Working From Home: A Victorian Employer's Guide. The practical overview, in plain English.
A clause-by-clause dissection of the Bill, for when you need the detail behind the summary.
Pre-assess every role against the closed statutory list, before a notice ever arrives.
Log every notice and prove your 21-day response, automatically.
The wrapper that runs the whole process, with fillable templates.
The headline facts you need before you read a single clause. The full picture is in the download.
A note on status. The Bill was introduced to the Victorian Parliament on 16 June 2026 and is not yet law. Treat the obligations as expected, not enacted, until the Bill passes and receives Royal Assent. The guide explains what to action now and what to watch for.
This is framed as a right, not a request you can decline on business grounds. Here is what shifts.
You can only refuse where allowing it is not reasonable, judged against a list of factors that mostly require a significant adverse impact. Each notice gets assessed on its merits, with the reasons documented.
Employers must cover the reasonable costs of working from home, including equipment and secure access to your systems. Budget and provisioning need a plan before the start date, not after the first notice lands.
This sits in anti-discrimination law, so disputes run through VEOHRC and VCAT rather than the Fair Work Commission. The process, the remedies and the strategy are different from what your managers are used to.
Once a written notice arrives, you respond in writing within 21 days. A compliant template and a clear internal workflow keep you inside the window and consistent across every manager.
If you employ outside Victoria, you decide between a single national policy and a Victoria-specific approach. The guide lays out the trade-off so you can make the call deliberately.
Position descriptions, work from home policies and contracts all need to reflect any genuine location requirement with evidence behind it. The checklist shows you what to rewrite and in what order.
Get all five together: the guide, the clause companion, the role matrix, the notice register, and the toolkit of fillable templates. Built by lawyers, ready to use.
Download the full kitEverything in the kit is prepared by the employment team at Cowell Clarke Commercial Lawyers, the firm behind HR Command. When the Bill changes on its way through Parliament, the guidance is updated to match. This is general information, not legal advice.
Prepared by Cowell Clarke employment lawyersHR Command is a workplace compliance platform built on the legal foundation of Cowell Clarke Commercial Lawyers and three decades of industry experience. Contracts, policies, employee management and live advice sit in one place, so your team spends less time chasing compliance and more time running the business.
Click through what you'd actually use, day to day.
A quick watch on what changes when your contracts, policies, and advice all live in one compliant place, backed by real employment lawyers.
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The short answers. The full detail is in the guide and clause companion.
The Equal Opportunity Amendment (Work from Home) Bill 2026 will change on its way through Parliament. We post every update first on LinkedIn: what passed, what shifted, and what your team needs to do about it.
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