Last updated: 20 October 2026
TL;DR: Working from home is impossible for most clinical work, but rotas, payroll, insurance claims and HR admin can. A statutory flexible working request can only be rejected for a genuine business reason, changed contract terms must be confirmed in writing within a month, and display screen duties follow the person to the kitchen table.
A practice manager asks to do her admin day from home. The owner’s instinct is no, because nobody else in the building can work from home and it will look like favouritism. That instinct is understandable and it is the wrong starting point, because the test is not whether everyone can do it, it is whether there is a genuine business reason to refuse this request.
Be honest about which roles can do working from home, because the list is short. Consulting, surgery, nursing, dispensary and reception all require someone in the building.
What is left is real, though. Rota building, payroll preparation, insurance claims, invoicing and credit control, HR administration, policy and protocol writing, marketing, and the reporting a practice manager never gets a clear hour for on site.
Working from home in a veterinary practice is therefore almost always partial: a day, a half day, or a fortnightly block for the tasks that need uninterrupted concentration. Framing it that way makes the conversation much easier than treating it as an all or nothing question.
This is the real objection to working from home, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a policy. If the practice manager is working from home on Wednesdays, the nurses who cannot will notice.
Two things help. Say plainly which tasks can be done off site and why, so it reads as a property of the work rather than a privilege of the person. And look for the equivalent flexibility that clinical staff actually want, which is usually predictable finishes, self rostering or protected admin time, not homeworking.
Our notes on self rostering and shift patterns cover what to offer the people who will never be able to work from home.
A request for working from home is usually a flexible working request. Acas states that employers can accept, partially accept or reject a statutory request, and can only reject it if there is a genuine business reason.
Partially accept is the option practices forget. One day rather than two, a trial period, or a fixed day that suits the rota are all legitimate answers, and all of them are better than a flat refusal.
Acas also notes that arrangements can be agreed informally without using the statutory procedure. That is often the right route for a single admin day, provided you still write down what was agreed. Our guide to flexible working requests in a veterinary practice covers the formal process.
Whichever route you use, give the reason in writing. A refusal with a stated business reason is defensible; a refusal with no reason is the one that becomes a grievance.
It can be. Acas is clear that if any contract terms change, the employer must put the changes in writing within one month of agreeing them.
Decide deliberately whether the arrangement is permanent or a trial, and say so. A permanent change to place of work belongs in the contract. A six month trial belongs in a letter that states what happens at the end of it.
Without that sentence, a trial quietly becomes custom and practice, and withdrawing it later is a contract change you will have to negotiate. Our guide to contract changes in a veterinary practice covers what that involves.
Your duties follow the work. Acas notes that an employer might need to carry out a risk assessment for working at home, to check it is suitable and safe to work there.
Display screen duties apply too. HSE guidance says the regulations cover home workers and hot desking as well as fixed workstations, for anyone using screens daily for continuous periods of an hour or more.
Use a self assessment checklist and act on it. The point is not the form, it is finding the person doing payroll from a sofa and giving them a laptop stand, a keyboard and somewhere to sit. Our guide to the DSE assessment covers the four duties.
Agree what happens when the day gets interrupted anyway. A practice manager working from home will still be phoned about a payroll query or a difficult client, and the honest arrangement names one or two people who may call and leaves everything else until the next day on site.
Review it after three months. Ask whether the work that was supposed to get done actually got done, and whether anything on site suffered. That review is what turns working from home from an argument about principle into a decision about output.
An admin day at home usually means payroll, personnel files and sometimes client records leaving the building, which is the part most practices never think about until something goes wrong.
Four simple rules cover it. Practice devices only. Remote access rather than downloaded copies. Nothing printed at home. And a locked screen where other people in the house could see it.
Put those four lines in the working from home agreement rather than the IT policy nobody reads. Our notes on GDPR and staff records and data breaches cover what happens if it goes wrong.
Keep the arrangement in the rota rather than in an understanding. If Wednesday is off site, the rota should say so, so that nobody books a meeting for it and nobody wonders where she is.
Reachability is worth agreeing explicitly. A practice manager at home is not unavailable, but she is also not interruptible every nine minutes, which was the point of the day. Our page on employee self service covers how to remove the queries that generate most of those interruptions.
Book a free 30-minute HR health check if you have a request on your desk and want the wording checked.
You can, but Acas says a statutory flexible working request can only be rejected where there is a genuine business reason. You can also partially accept, which is often the better answer. Give the reason in writing either way.
Only if it is presented as a perk. Explain which tasks can be done off site and why, and offer clinical staff the flexibility they actually want, which is usually predictable finishes, self rostering or protected admin time.
Display screen duties apply to home workers, so a workstation assessment is needed and you should act on what it finds. In practice a stand, a separate keyboard and a usable chair cost very little and prevent a musculoskeletal problem later.
It can. Acas says changed contract terms must be put in writing within one month of being agreed. Decide up front whether the arrangement is permanent or a trial with an end date, and say which in the letter.
Easily if it was a stated trial, and with more difficulty if it has become custom over years. That is exactly why the trial or permanent sentence matters at the start rather than at the point you want to change it.
The owner whose instinct was no had a fairness worry, not a business reason. Once the question becomes which tasks genuinely need the building, working from home stops being a favour and becomes a rota decision like any other.
We write working from home agreements and flexible working policies for independent practices through HR consultancy for veterinary practices and employment contract drafting.
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