A common question that arises these days is whether the employer has to, legally speaking, permit its employees to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The answer is a qualified \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n
Absent the passing of legislation or an order by the government, employers do not have to allow their employees to work from home. Indeed, some employers are simply unable to do so because the physical presence of the employee is a job requirement.<\/p>\n
In other instances, where a certain job may be performed remotely, an employer may choose to allow its employees to work from home if the alternative would be failure to comply with the employer\u2019s obligations to ensure a safe and healthy workplace. However, failure to provide employees with a safe and healthy workplace is not a \u201ccart blanche\u201d for the employee\u2019s right to work remotely\u00a0per se<\/em>. Instead, the employer is legally obligated to facilitate a safe work environment instead of extending the definition of \u201cworkplace\u201d to a remote location. Thus,\u00a0failure to attend at a\u00a0safe<\/em>\u00a0workplace<\/a>\u00a0while insisting on the ability to work from home is an act of insubordination which constitutes cause for dismissal.<\/p>\n Ontario\u2019s employers should, however, be mindful of their obligation to ensure compliance with the Ontario\u00a0Human Rights Code, 1990 (\u201cCode\u201d)<\/em>. This means that if, for instance, a parent employee requires accommodation that would necessitate working from home due to a lack of childcare obligations the employer may have to facilitate such an accommodation to the point of undue hardship. What constitutes undue hardship under Ontario\u2019s legislation are financial costs, outside funding, and health and safety risks. Such an accommodation (including the looking into the possibility of such an accommodation) would only be expected if a protected ground under the\u00a0Code<\/em>\u00a0is triggered.<\/p>\n Although there are recurring themes during this unfortunate time, each case should be contextually analyzed with a view to the employer\u2019s legal obligations towards its employees and the organization\u2019s practical business interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A common question that arises these days is whether the employer has to, legally speaking, permit its employees to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The answer is a qualified \u201cno.\u201d Absent the passing of legislation or an order by the government, employers do not have to allow their employees to work from home. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Is-my-employer-obligated-to-allow-me-to-work-from-home-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic-GettyImages-1125981919_WFH_Larger.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeilikmanlaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}