Employee wanting to reduce hours

[tubefeed]

We have a reception/admin/accounts person currently working 30hrs a week. The prev person that filled this role was full time, but we allowed this person to work less hours so that they can do school drop offs.
Then they changed end time from 4.30 one day to 2.30 so that they could take a child to an after school activity.
Last year this person had 4 weeks a/l (given extra leave as a bonus), also had a couple of weeks lwop, and a nice handful+ of sick days.
Now they want to change their hours to 25hrs and finish early 3 days a week.
This is not acceptable to the business as a key task of this role is to man the phones and sometimes there is noone else in the office.
My question - if this person cannot do a min of 30hrs a week can we then terminate the position as they do not have the capacity to do the job?
To further complicate things, this role was an area that I was wanting to add more tasks to and expand, not further reduce!
Can we lawfully terminate, and what are the employers rights? As employers we try to make the workplace pleasant and family-friendly, but feel like we are getting pushed beyond what is reasonable!

[Qld IR Consultant]

First question would be is there any wokrplace agreement in place? Individual contract? Letter of offer signed by the employee? Need a bit more info before giving some advice but no you can't terminate her. You could however respond to her request that no, the further reduction of hours is not acceptable to the business. Make sure you document everything in relation to wanting to expand the tasks the role undertakes etc. From my experience once you tell her no she can't then her absences will increase. When that happens you can go down the performance management path and lead to termination. A prolonged process but if you do it then FWA won't have any holes to exploit when she goes for unfair dismissal.

[tubefeed]

Hmmm not an easy one is it...how many weeks of short hours do we tolerate before it is fair to dismiss?
We have a perf appraisal this week, so can start the perf mgt process this week. After this week she goes on 2 weeks leave (1 week a/l 1 week lwop - again another illustration of the employer being flexible!). We wanted to tell her that she must resume 'normal' hours upon return - we have already tolerated 2 weeks, and then this week will be 3 of shortened hours.

[Qld IR Consultant]

First off you can't bring the lwop or annual leave into it as you have agreed to it. Make sure you focus on excess sick leave and her actual work performance, then go from there. You are more than within your right to tell her that she must resume normal hours, and make sure that you get her to sign the outcomes of the meeting so that she fully understands her obligations upon return. I've got a gut feeling though that within the 2 weeks she'll find another job and you won't need to worry about it. If i'm wrong i'll shout you a beer and draft her dismissal for you lol. Performance managing people out of a business is not hard, just time consuming.