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Monday, October 19, 2026

Working from home: The legal ramifications - Stuff.co.nz

Susan Hornsby-Geluk is managing partner at employment law firm Dundas Street and a regular opinion contributor.

OPINION: During the Government-imposed lockdowns, most employees who could work from home, did, and did not question this. People were generally prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep their employer’s business afloat, and their pay check coming in.

But the rules under the red traffic light setting are different.

Most businesses are not required to send employees home, although looking around Wellington, it appears many have. This raises some tricky legal questions as to the rights and responsibilities of employees and employers in this context.

Working from home

Hannah McLaren, 31, is a disabled person who has been able to secure a job thanks to the normalisation of work-from-home arrangements in the pandemic. Prior to this her mobility disability kept her out of work for many years.

READ MORE:
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* We need to talk about the fairness of restraint of trade clauses
* Keeping staff safe: Abuse and violence is a foreseeable hazard in workplaces
* Employers need to take a sensitive and nuanced approach to vaccination

An employee’s place of work is a core term and condition of their employment.

The Employment Relations Act requires that individual employment agreements provide “an indication of where the employee is to perform the work”.

Most agreements stipulate that this will be at the employer’s business premises,...



Read Full Story: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300517017/working-from-home...