The Commonwealth Bank is being sued by a scorned financial planner after he argued their order he work from home permanently would disrupt his home life and cause tension in his family.
The financial planner, from Newcastle in NSW‘s Hunter Region, last week filed action in the Federal Circuit Court after the Commonwealth Bank avoided paying him 20 years worth of redundancy entitlements when he refused to take the remote job offer in December, 2021.
When the bank closed its retail financing planning business, it offered the man, who was on $134,000 a year, plus bonuses, a job at the new owner, insurer AIA.
At first he accepted the job as he felt he had no other choice and because the bank said he would not get redundancy pay if he rejected the offer.
But he later withdrew his job acceptance because he said he needed to work from an office and could not work from home as it interfered with his private life.
The man is seeking $172,000 redundancy pay, interest payments and civil penalties from the bank.
The Commonwealth Bank is being sued by a financial planner for $172,000 because he objected to being made work permanently from home, saying it caused family tension. Pictured is a stock image of a man working from a home office with a toddler by his side
‘As part of the sale of our financial planning business, the person concerned was offered a comparable role as a financial planner with the new owners but did not take up the position,’ a Commonwealth Bank spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.
The man told the bank, including in an email sent to CEO Matt Comyn, that the new job was worse than the one he had as it did not provide office space.
According to the planner’s statement of claim with the Federal Circuit Court, AIA said it would look for office space in Newcastle, but then offered equipment so he could work from home instead.
Under his agreement with CBA, if his job transfer offer had less favourable conditions than his original job, he was entitled to redundancy pay.
He said the AIA job was worse as he’d had an office for 20 years and the transfer was ‘an intrusion into private home and life to which he did not consent’, as well as an intrusion into his family’s lives, the Australian Financial Review reported.
‘Not attending a workplace outside the home can lead to tensions with other family members,’ the planner said in his claim.
The man also said working from home was isolating and could lead to ‘adverse health implications’ for him.
He said his house was not suitable for full-time home work as there was ‘insufficient space to incorporate a permanent and private home office’.
The man also said that working from home 100 per cent of the time would not allow him to comply with the financial services industry’s confidentiality and privacy standards.
Working from home would also mean fewer opportunities to earn a bonus and limit him to clients aged 55 or below when most of his previous customers were retirees, he said.
The Commonwealth Bank said it believed it had fulfilled its obligations to find the a comparable role and therefore redundancy payments were not payable in his case.
However, the bank’s human resources head Sian Lewis said last week that it opposed roles that were 100 per cent work-from-home.
Commonwealth Bank’s management ‘do not believe that there’s any role that can be done completely remotely,’ she told the Australian Financial Review.
When the Commonwealth Bank (head office in Sydney pictured) closed its retail financing planning business, it offered the man a job at the service transferred to insurer AIA
‘We’ve done some work that says if you don’t go into the office more than a couple of days a week, the numbers of people you collaborate (with) within any particular period of time goes down by about a third.’
But the financial planner’s court case may now force the bank to argue for permanent remote working, to avoid paying out for a redundancy.
‘Given that he has now lodged court proceedings, which we intend to contest, we are unable to comment further at this stage,’ the CBA spokesperson said.