For small and medium business owners, remote work once looked like the perfect fix: lower costs, happy staff, and fewer dramas about the commute. But as we’ve all discovered, the minute your team starts working from home, the simplicity stops.

Your legal, cultural and leadership responsibilities don’t clock off when the home wi-fi connects. Under Australia’s evolving work health and safety laws, your duty of care follows your people, wherever they may open their laptop.

And while the flexibility of hybrid work is here to stay, it’s forcing every employer to rethink how they lead, communicate and keep teams connected.

Here’s what’s changed and how to stay ahead.

Where your duty of care really begins (and doesn’t end)

Remote and isolated work is now formally recognised as both a physical and psychosocial hazard under national WHS guidance. In practice, that means employers must take reasonable steps to make sure the work being done at home is physically safe and that employees can do their job without unreasonable risks to their psychological health.

While once rare, recent cases, including one in South Australia where a council worker tripped over a baby gate, confirm that incidents in home settings can fall within an employer’s safety obligations.

The challenge for business owners now is striking the balance between respecting privacy and meeting your legal duty of care, and that starts with simple, sensible checks.

A remote work assessment doesn’t need to be complicated, it can be as simple as asking team members to complete a short checklist or share a quick photo of their setup. The goal isn’t to check up on them; it’s to make sure they’re properly equipped and working safely.

Safety now includes the mind, not just the body

If you still picture “safety” as hard hats and high-vis vests, it’s time to update that image. These days, safety also means protecting people from the mental strain that can come with work, especially when that work happens alone.

Psychosocial risks such as burnout, poor communication, high workloads and unclear expectations are now part of every employer’s WHS responsibilities. New South Wales led the way in 2022, requiring employers to identify and manage psychosocial risks, with Queensland and Western Australia following suit. Victoria will join them from 1 December 2025.

In NSW alone, psychological injury claims have risen by around 30 per cent in recent years, nearly triple the rate of physical injuries.

For SMB owners, this means safety conversations can’t stop at ergonomics. They need to include how work is designed, how workloads are managed, and whether people feel connected, clear and supported.

Core hours and the risk of being “always on”

Flexibility is one of the biggest perks of remote work, but without boundaries, it can quickly become a liability. For SMBs, the challenge isn’t just managing when people work, it’s defining when they’re available.

When teams span time zones, work can easily bleed into personal time. That’s where things can get risky, not just for wellbeing but potentially breach legislation under the Right to Disconnect.

In a remote environment, healthy boundaries are required in order to avoid a claim under this legislation.

Monitoring vs micromanaging: The subtle but important shift

We’re seeing more SMBs introduce monitoring tools like Terramind or Time Doctor, often with good intentions. The goal is accountability; the result, more often than not, is noise.
In larger enterprises, these systems have already come under fire, with several cases now surfacing where the data was misused or misunderstood, leading to privacy breaches, staff grievances and a serious dent in trust.

For small businesses, the lesson is simple: before you track, ask “Why?”. What are you trying to understand, performance, productivity, or communication? While it might feel like you’re gaining visibility, you may actually be blurring boundaries and creating a culture of suspicion.

If you do use technology, use it to improve how people work, not monitor that they’re working. The focus should be on outcomes, clarity, and connection, not keystrokes or mouse movement.

The best-performing teams don’t rely on surveillance; they rely on trust, great systems, and leaders who know how to talk to their people.

Leadership matters more than ever

Traditional leadership practices don’t translate to remote work. We used to walk past a desk, see someone working, and feel reassured that everything was on track. Now, we glance at Teams, see “away,” and wonder if they’re in deep focus or deep into Netflix.

The truth is, remote leadership is a completely different skill set. Leaders now need new habits, sharper systems, and better questions to understand how work is progressing, not just whether it’s happening.

Check-ins need to be regular, structured, and purposeful. Feedback isn’t a yearly event; it’s a rolling conversation about priorities, progress and support. Leaders also need to create moments of connection, a quick message, a light chat, or even a shared “how’s your day going?” that replaces the hallway banter.

Because what worked for you in the past won’t serve you now. Leading remotely isn’t about control; it’s about clarity, communication, and trust.

Your remote work checklist

Here are simple actions that you can take to make an immediate difference to your team and your business:

1.Have a Remote Work Policy
Define eligibility, communication standards, and core hours and then bring the policy to life through training and conversation so it becomes part of how you work, not just something everyone signs.

2. Complete a Remote Work assessment
Ask your team to complete a checklist and provide a photo of their setup so you can confirm work is being done from a safe workspace. This isn’t to pry, but to protect

3. Upgrade your systems
You can’t expect what worked in 2010 to serve you in 2025. Invest in platforms that give visibility over workload, collaboration, and project progress.

Understand your WHS obligations

Your duty of care extends beyond the office. Familiarise yourself with your state-based WHS legislation, it’s evolving fast.

4, Upskill your leaders
Train managers in feedback, connection, and virtual communication and give them toolkits to lead confidently from a distance.

5. Respect surveillance laws
If you plan to monitor, provide written notice and comply with local requirements. More importantly, focus on outcomes, not screen time.

6. Address psychosocial risks
Prevent isolation, stress, and burnout through regular check-ins, shared team rhythms, and access to an employee assistance or counselling service where appropriate.

7. Define core hours and boundaries
Be explicit about working hours and availability, set expectations around switch-off time, and, if you’re the owner, role-model where you can!

Remote work isn’t just a perk any more, it’s part of how modern businesses operate. For SMBs, the challenge isn’t whether to offer it, but how to do it well. When you combine compliance with connection, clarity with flexibility, and systems with trust, you don’t just reduce risk, you create a better place to work.

At the end of the day, good HR isn’t about watching people work; it’s about giving them the confidence, structure and support to do their best work, wherever they log on.

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