A work from home policy gives your employees and managers a shared set of rules for remote work. It answers practical questions such as who can work from home, how often, where they can work, what equipment they receive, and how you handle availability, security, expenses, and performance.
Without a written policy, those decisions tend to happen case by case. One manager might approve three remote days a week while another allows one. Employees may make different assumptions about working hours, travel, equipment, or what counts as an approved work location.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through the sections worth including, show you what a completed policy can look like, and give you a free editable template you can adapt to your company.
If you want to build the policy directly rather than starting with a blank document, you can use our editable template.
It includes sections for eligibility, remote work arrangements, requests and approvals, working hours, communication, office attendance, equipment, security, AI use, expenses, location changes, temporary exceptions, accommodations, policy reviews, and employee acknowledgment.
Included in the template:
[Download the Work From Home Policy Template]
The template is designed as a starting point, so you should remove anything that does not apply to your company and review the final version against the legal, tax, payroll, security, and workplace requirements that apply where your employees work.
A work from home policy is a formal company document that explains when and how employees can work remotely.
It usually covers:
You may also see the terms remote work policy, WFH policy, telecommuting policy, or employee work from home policy. Companies use the terminology differently, but they usually describe the same basic set of rules.
Some employers use one policy for occasional, hybrid, and fully remote work. Others separate them. I’d base that decision on how different the arrangements actually are in your company. If hybrid employees follow very different attendance or scheduling rules, a separate hybrid policy may eventually be easier to manage.
I’d treat these as two different documents.
Your work from home policy sets the company-wide rules. A remote work agreement records the arrangement approved for a specific employee.
For example, your policy might say that eligible employees can work remotely up to three days a week. An employee’s agreement could then confirm that they work from home on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from an approved address in New York.
If you use individual agreements, keeping them with the rest of the employee’s documentation makes them much easier to review later. Good employee record management helps you track who has an approved arrangement, where they work, and when that arrangement needs another review.
You don’t need to copy every possible clause into your policy. You do need enough detail that two managers looking at the same situation are likely to reach the same decision.
Here are the sections I’d cover.
Start by explaining why the policy exists and who it covers.
You should make it clear whether the policy applies to:
Scope matters because someone working from home once a month may not need the same rules as an employee hired into a fully remote role.
Eligibility is one of the areas where vague policies create problems quickly.
I’d define it around the requirements of the role rather than leaving the decision entirely to manager preference.
Consider:
If your company handles accommodation-related requests, keep that process separate from ordinary remote work eligibility. Those requests can carry different legal obligations depending on the employee and jurisdiction.
I’d also name the arrangements you actually allow.
For example:
Defining these terms early prevents employees and managers from using “remote” to mean different things.
Employees should know exactly how to ask for remote work.
Your process should answer:
If these requests happen frequently, HR workflow automation can keep the request, approval, notifications, and final record connected instead of scattering them across email threads and spreadsheets.
Remote work does not automatically mean work from anywhere.
Your policy should state where employees can normally work and when they need approval to work somewhere else.
That may include:
I’d be especially clear about state and international changes because one employee changing location can affect payroll, tax, insurance, employment law, immigration, data security, or customer requirements.
You should also make it clear when remote employees are expected to work.
Include:
I’d keep remote work and leave clearly separated. Working from home is still a working day. If the employee is sick or taking vacation, your PTO policy template should govern that absence instead.
“Be available” sounds clear until two people interpret it differently.
I’d define:
For example, “respond to internal messages within two hours during core hours” is much easier to apply consistently than “stay responsive throughout the day.”
If you have hybrid or fully remote employees, tell them when physical attendance may still be required.
That might include:
For hybrid employees, define whether office days are fixed or determined by the manager or team.
Remote work should not change what good performance means.
Your policy can explain that remote employees follow the same role expectations as everyone else while also clarifying how managers will assess performance.
That could include:
I’d focus on outcomes rather than online presence. A manager should not need to infer performance from how often someone appears active in Slack or Teams.
A structured performance review template can also help managers evaluate remote, hybrid, and office-based employees using the same evidence and criteria.
Your remote work equipment policy can sit inside the main remote work document.
Specify what you provide, such as:
Then explain:
For new remote hires, I’d connect this with your onboarding process so devices, software, and access are ready before the employee starts. Thrivea’s employee onboarding checklist covers remote setup alongside the other tasks that need to happen before and during an employee’s first days.
Equipment return should also appear in your employee offboarding checklist so hardware recovery does not depend on someone remembering it manually.
Your remote work security policy should tell employees how to handle company information outside the office.
I’d cover:
Remote work can also make AI usage harder to oversee, especially when employees use personal or public tools. Your AI policy template should therefore align with the remote work policy on approved tools, confidential data, customer information, and acceptable use.
If employees work from cafés, coworking spaces, hotels, or airports, give them practical rules.
For example, you may require:
This is one of those sections where a few specific rules are more useful than a general reminder to “be careful.”
You do not need to dictate what an employee’s home office looks like, but you should define the minimum conditions needed to work effectively.
Depending on the role, that may include:
Also explain what employees should do if a power or internet outage prevents them from working.
Possible options include working from another approved location, coming to the office, or resuming work once service returns.
If your company pays remote work expenses, document exactly what qualifies.
Your work from home stipend policy may cover:
State:
Requirements can vary by location, so check the rules that apply where your employees work.
If remote work can affect compensation, tell employees before they make location decisions.
Some employers keep salary unchanged regardless of location. Others use geographic pay bands.
Whatever approach you use, document it.
I’d also confirm whether remote employees have the same access to:
I would never leave this implicit.
Your out-of-state remote work policy should require employees to ask before changing their normal work location.
A move or temporary stay elsewhere can affect:
Make approval happen before the location change rather than after HR discovers it.
Not every work from home day needs a permanent arrangement.
You may allow temporary exceptions for:
I’d document repeated exceptions, though. If the same employee keeps needing the same exception, it may be time to review whether a formal arrangement makes more sense.
Finally, tell employees how the policy itself is maintained.
Include:
An annual review is a reasonable baseline, but you should revisit the policy sooner if your work model, technology, locations, security requirements, or legal obligations change.
Here’s a shorter sample work from home policy to show what these decisions can look like once you fill them in.
Effective date: January 1, 2027
Policy owner: Head of People
Purpose
This policy explains how Northfield Software employees can work from home while meeting our collaboration, security, and performance expectations.
Eligibility
Employees in engineering, product, marketing, and finance may work from home up to three days per week.
Support team leads work on-site at least four days per week because their roles require regular access to the support floor.
New employees normally work on-site during their first four weeks unless another arrangement has been approved.
Request and approval
Employees log planned remote days in the HR system by Friday of the previous week.
Managers respond within two working days.
Employees who need an unplanned remote day should message their manager before 9:00 a.m.
Schedule and availability
Core hours are 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. local office time.
Employees should respond to team messages within two hours during core hours.
All hybrid employees work from the office on Tuesdays.
Performance
Remote employees follow the same goals, deadlines, and performance standards as employees working on-site.
Managers hold an individual check-in with each team member at least once every two weeks.
Equipment
Northfield provides a laptop, monitor, headset, keyboard, and required software.
Employees must report lost or damaged equipment and return company equipment within five working days after employment ends.
Security
Employees use company laptops for company work and keep required security controls enabled.
Company files must remain in approved cloud storage, and employees must use the company VPN when connecting through public Wi-Fi.
Expenses
Northfield provides a $50 monthly home office stipend for internet and utilities.
Equipment purchases above $100 require manager approval before purchase.
Working from another location
Employees need HR approval before working from another state or country for more than 10 working days in a calendar year.
Permanent relocation requires approval before the employee moves.
Review
The People team reviews the policy every 12 months.
Northfield may also review an individual arrangement when business requirements, role responsibilities, work location, or performance changes.
This is intentionally shorter than the downloadable version. Your actual policy may need much more detail depending on your workforce and locations.
If you’re building the policy yourself, I’d use this process.
Before you publish, I’d check that your policy covers:
The downloadable template includes this checklist at the end so you can review the completed policy before publishing it.
If the policy says employees should be “reasonably available,” managers will interpret that differently.
Instead, write something measurable:
Employees must be available between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. local time and should respond to internal messages within two hours during that period.
Specific rules create fewer arguments and fewer accidental inconsistencies.
Try to connect remote work decisions to role requirements rather than preference.
If two people doing essentially the same job receive different arrangements, you should be able to explain why.
Employees should not feel expected to work from home when they are sick or taking vacation.
Remote work, sick leave, PTO, and other absences should remain separate processes.
Use goals, deliverables, deadlines, quality, customer outcomes, and other evidence relevant to the role.
Being visibly online is not the same as performing well.
Keep the approved schedule, location, start date, review date, and any exceptions with the employee’s records.
That becomes increasingly important when employees change managers or teams.
Remote work overlaps with security, AI use, leave, expenses, equipment, working hours, performance, onboarding, and offboarding.
When you update one of those policies, check whether your remote work policy needs the same change.
Managers are the people who will apply the policy most often.
Give them examples of:
If managers understand the edge cases, employees are much less likely to get conflicting answers.
You don’t need to wait until the annual review.
If employees keep asking whether they can work abroad for a week, clarify the location section.
If managers treat emergency remote days differently, update the exception rules.
I’d treat recurring questions as useful signals that the policy needs more precision.
A work from home policy is a company document that explains how remote work operates. It typically covers eligibility, schedules, work locations, communication, equipment, security, expenses, performance, approvals, and how arrangements can change.
I’d include purpose and scope, eligibility, types of remote work, requests and approvals, work locations, working hours, communication, performance, office attendance, equipment, security, workplace safety, expenses, compensation, location changes, exceptions, policy reviews, and employee acknowledgment.
Usually. Telecommuting is an older term often used for working away from the employer’s regular workplace. Some companies use it specifically for occasional home working and use remote work for broader arrangements.
A good remote work policy gives employees and managers specific rules they can apply consistently. You should be able to use it to answer practical questions about who qualifies, where employees can work, when they need to be available, what the company provides, and when an arrangement can change.
Yes. If you do, make sure the policy clearly distinguishes the rules that apply to each arrangement.
For hybrid employees, you may need additional detail on office days, attendance, schedule changes, and in-person activities.
The policy sets company-wide rules. The agreement records the specific arrangement approved for one employee, such as their work location, remote days, start date, and review date.
I’d review it at least once a year and sooner if you change your work model, add new locations, introduce new technology, change security practices, or face new legal requirements.
Yes. Explain what the company provides, whether employees can use personal devices, who handles repairs and replacements, and when company equipment must be returned.
Yes. Employees should know which devices and software they may use, where they may store files, when VPN or multi-factor authentication is required, how they should handle public Wi-Fi, and how to report a security incident.
Only if your company allows it. Working from another jurisdiction can create payroll, tax, employment law, immigration, insurance, and security implications, so I’d require approval before the employee changes location.
Often, yes, depending on the arrangement and applicable law. Your policy should explain when arrangements can be reviewed, what can trigger a change, and how much notice you normally provide.
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