This is no country for employers. Isn’t it time someone, somewhere in government who has even an inkling of what it’s like to be an employer stood up and made it clear that many employers, particularly at the smaller end of town, are cracking under the strain?

At a time when work-from-home (WFH) employees are being targeted as weak links in business cyber protection systems by Chinese hackers, a court decision has made it harder for employers to reject requests from employees to entrench their right to avoid the office.

Let’s look at the local threat to bosses — a crazy court decision granting an employee the right to work from home. Here are the main points:

1. A Westpac employee, who had a baby, was granted a temporary WFH arrangement.
2. Later Westpac introduced a two-day-a-week return to office policy.
3. However, the employee changed homes to be close to her child’s private school, but this was two hours from her Westpac office.
4. A court has ruled that Westpac can’t make this employee accept the two-day-a-week return to office policy. Why?
5. The fact the bank had allowed the employee to work from home successfully for years after maternity leave before requiring her to return to the office ignored that the employee had met performance metrics while being home-based!

The AFR’s David Marin-Guzman reported on the Finance Sector Unions reaction to the court decision and the warning from lawyers and employers.

“The Finance Sector Union pledged to use the Fair Work Commission ruling handed down on Monday to push employers to reconsider their refusals of WFH requests as they cite other similar cases,” he explained. “The decision, which went against Westpac’s two-day-a-week return to office policy, turned on the fact the bank had allowed Chandler to work from home successfully for years after maternity leave before requiring her to return to the office.”

And this is the logical conclusion from the Australian Industry Group workplace relations policy head Brent Ferguson: “The decision will undoubtedly make some employers wary about informally permitting WFH arrangements, given this could later be used against them in a dispute.”

And while this looks like a huge challenge for businesses with WFH employees, then there are Chinese hackers!

The AFR’s Michael Read reveals that “Chinese hackers are exploiting the rise of remote work by hijacking employees’ home routers and smart devices to breach corporate systems and create a sprawling network of infected gadgets.”

He added: “The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) on Tuesday warned that state-sponsored cyber actors posed a serious threat to the nation, as it revealed the average loss per cybercrime against big business more than tripled to $202,700 in 2024-25.”

The hackers target home devices connected to the internet, such as home routers, VPNs and firewalls to create botnets that support further targeting around the globe. The tactic gives the hackers access to other connected devices like smart appliances, phones, consoles and computers.

The ASD said 96% of the 120 attacks on edge devices, which help a business system talk to the WFH employees home system, in 2024-25 were successful.

The question is if the likes of Qantas can’t stop hackers accessing its customers’ records, what hope has a successful small or medium size business?

And doesn’t this mean that the WFH trend increases the likelihood of a cyber-attack for local businesses?

In an old-fashioned world, where rationality prevailed over emotional demands about things like work-life-balance for employees, the threat of hackers that could kill a business and the jobs it creates would have taken precedence.

And I ask this question: Who in any government worries and does something about the mental health of employers, who not only have to deal with new age demands from employees, but have to cope with excessive regulation, prowling tax offices (federally and states-wise) a slow-growing economy and now Chinse hackers!

Will someone in government give employers a break?