The Fair Work Commission (FWC, or Commission) recently confirmed that an employee who falsified timesheets while working from home was not unfairly dismissed in Mr Neeraj Kumar v Hansen Corporation Pty Ltd [2026] FWC 519. The decision highlights the importance of remote-work accountability, appropriate workplace monitoring and procedural fairness.
The applicant was employed full-time as a database manager and permitted to work from home due to the on-call nature of his role. Concerns arose after he repeatedly failed to attend online meetings on time, prompting his manager to investigate his system activity.
Using monitoring systems including Zscaler, Microsoft Entra and SentinelOne, the employer identified negligible activity during periods where the applicant claimed full working days. Despite the manager previously approving the timesheets, the investigation concluded the recorded hours could not have been worked based on the available data.
The applicant was issued allegations concerning falsified timesheets and failure to perform contractual hours. Reports were produced that suggested that he only logged in for ten minutes on one day. His WFH arrangement was not questioned per se, but the allegations addressed his sub-par performance of work.
In response, he largely admitted the conduct, acknowledging he had been “barely keeping up with the minimum” and accepting responsibility for inaccurate time recording.
Following a disciplinary meeting, the employer...
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