Suspension Disguised as “Work From Home”: Legal & Leadership In Indonesia Risk

“Please work from home for the time being.”

It sounds harmless. Perhaps even considerate.

But what if the employee is not really working from home? No meaningful work is assigned. Access is limited. Meetings stop. Colleagues are told little. Weeks turn into months.

Then comes another meeting: the company wants to terminate the employment.

This is where an HR arrangement can become a legal problem.
Article 157A of the Manpower Law, as amended by Law No. 6 of 2023, allows an employer to suspend an employee during the termination process while continuing to pay the employee’s wages and other entitlements normally received.

I once came across a situation involving a secretary who was told to work from home for several months. She was later called in and informed that the company intended to terminate her employment because her manager no longer felt “comfortable” working with her.

Then the explanation changed. The termination was said to be based on efficiency following changes involving her supervisor.

That change mattered.

In employment disputes, the legal basis for termination is not simply a label attached at the end of the process. The facts must support it. “Discomfort” is not, by itself, a statutory ground for termination. Efficiency may constitute a legitimate basis under Indonesian employment law, but the employer must be able to demonstrate that the circumstances meet the applicable legal requirements.

When the story keeps changing, the problem is no longer only legal.
It becomes a credibility problem. And credibility matters in an employment dispute.

Calling an arrangement “work from home” does not necessarily determine its legal character either. If the employee is effectively removed from the workplace, given no meaningful duties, isolated from normal operations, and left without clarity for months, the substance of the arrangement deserves closer examination.

This is why termination should never be treated merely as an HR administrative exercise. For management, it is also a governance decision.

What matters is whether the company had a defensible reason for the termination and followed a process consistent with that reason. If the explanation changes along the way, that inconsistency may eventually become part of the dispute itself.

Sometimes companies avoid the word suspension because it sounds harsh. But ambiguity is not necessarily kinder. In many cases, clarity is fairer to everyone involved.

Employment relationships sometimes have to end. That is part of business.
But the manner in which they end tells employees, both those leaving and those staying, something important about the organisation.

Contracts end. Culture remembers how they ended.