Services Australia is under pressure to adopt large-scale work-from-home arrangements as the Omicron variant surges.
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The welfare agency has been urged to take the safety measure as the Foreign Affairs department became one of the latest public sector workplaces letting Canberra staff work from home in a bid to prevent COVID infections.
Services Australia has told employees it will assess the situations of individual workers in deciding whether to let them work from home.
In an email to staff on Tuesday, Services Australia said while state and territory leaders had encouraged people to work from home due to higher case numbers, there were no health orders supporting this position.
"The agency's approach has always been, and continues to be, that we will follow the health orders/directions provided by each jurisdiction," the agency said.
"In the absence of health orders specifying the need for staff to work from home, business areas can use a risk management approach that takes into account local settings to determine whether working from home can be supported to minimise infection risk for staff and protect business continuity."
The "risk management approach" would take into account the criticality of the function, employees' individual circumstances, the nature of the roles performed, technology capability, and the health and wellbeing of the staff member, the email said.
Services Australia also said it had seen staff come to work with COVID symptoms, and urged its leadership teams to check for compliance and call out unsafe practices.
Incidents of workplace exposures had increased over the Christmas and New Year break, as community transmission of COVID grew, the email said.
Services Australia staff work in service centres and office buildings throughout the country.
'Much better off at home'
One Services Australia staff member, who did not want to be named out of concern for potential disciplinary action, said any employee who could work effectively from home should be allowed.
The employee said while some staff - particularly those in customer-facing roles - had to do their work in offices, many Services Australia roles could be performed from home.
"The vast majority of the back office staff, I don't see why they couldn't work from home," the staff member said.
"You are much better off at home if you can work from home, and if you've got the technology why wouldn't you?"
Agency teams had found working from home during lockdowns last year had let staff concentrate on tasks and perform effectively, the employee said.
Services Australia spokesman Hank Jongen said the rapidly changing COVID-19 situation presented a challenge for all frontline businesses and essential service providers.
"We, like many other services, are taking a risk-based approach to work arrangements for our staff while continuing to support the community," he said.
"We continue to monitor the situation closely to manage the safety of our staff while also ensuring that our services remain accessible to our customers.
"Our staff are able to work from home where it is reasonably practicable to do so, while others continue to work safely from offices to maintain our national network."
Services Australia advised staff to stay at home if they were not feeling well and to follow state and territory health orders, Mr Jongen said.
"Our team leaders continue to closely monitor the health and wellbeing of our staff."
Services Australia has adopted COVID safety measures at its workplaces, including physical distancing, mask wearing, hand sanitiser, daily cleaning regimes, protective screens for customers and controlled entry to limit the amount of people in common areas and service centres.
'There's no excuse'
Community and Public Sector Union acting national secretary Michael Tull said its members wanted to work from home where possible.
"We all know now that employers can and should facilitate that. This far into the pandemic, there's no excuse for the Morrison government or for departments to be dragging their feet about staff safety," he said.
"Across the public service, staff have shown that they can maintain client service and productivity while working at home - so agencies do not have to choose between worker safety, and meeting their objectives."
Services Australia still lacked a clear approach to working from home, delegating decisions to local managers, which led to confusion and inconsistency, Mr Tull said.
"Services Australia does have the technical capability to allow many staff, including people doing phone-based customer contact, to work from home and during the pandemic plenty of staff did so productively and effectively," he said.
"Those staff whose roles require them to keep attending the office would also be safer, if as many other staff as possible were not coming to the workplace."
Staff return home
The Department of Social Services on Friday said that across most locations, staff were allowed to work from home if they wished to, and were able to perform their duties from home.
In an email to Canberra staff on Friday, the department said it expected most employees would work from home for the next few weeks. The department was taking a "tailored approach", where staff agreed with managers if they needed or preferred to work from the office, or if they would work from home.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade became one of the latest public sector workplaces in Canberra to change its stance on working from home on Thursday, telling staff it would adopt a "hybrid" approach the following day.
ACT-based staff with a critical need to be in the office will continue to work there, while other staff can work from home, where it meets work requirements and the needs of the employee, and is agreed by managers.
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A DFAT spokesperson on Friday said the department was closely monitoring the evolving COVID-19 situation.
"In line with Australian Public Service Commission guidance, and in light of the significant increase in community transmission in the ACT, the department has reviewed the department's business continuity and remote work arrangements," the spokesperson said.
"The department advised staff on January 6 that, as a temporary measure, it would adopt a hybrid approach to work arrangements to support workplace health and safety and the delivery of critical functions."
Agencies including the Australian Taxation Office, the Agriculture Department and the Education Department earlier told staff to work from home where practical as the Omicron variant surged.
After completing its return-to-office plans in NSW and Victoria on Tuesday, the Home Affairs Department told staff it would move to work-from-home arrangements for staff not performing critical functions as of Thursday.
The CPSU earlier this week called for the federal government to take a consistent and responsible approach to working from home, saying it should keep its public sector workers safe.
Public Service Minister Ben Morton on Wednesday said the nation had not yet seen the end of default work-from-home arrangements, after saying in November the government looked forward to them being "a thing of the past".
State and territory governments in the ACT, NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia have urged employees to work from home as COVID cases surge. South Australian premier Steven Marshall repeated his government's call for people to work from home on Friday.
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