An employee breached her duty of fidelity to her employer by running a business that directly competed with it, the Fair Work Commission has ruled in finding her misconduct termination fair. Meanwhile, two other employees have lost similar unfair dismissal claims.
A performance improvement plan (PIP) that warned of possible disciplinary action at the bottom of every page came across as punitive but didn't constitute bullying, the Fair Work Commission has found.
An employee who "unfairly characterised" nearly every interaction with superiors as bullying has lost his unfair dismissal claim, with the Fair Work Commission finding he was a "peddler of false allegations".
A dismissal meeting that "blindsided" an employee accused of misconduct while on annual leave "should never have occurred in the way it did", the Fair Work Commission has chided.
An employer has to compensate an employee for a workplace-bullying-related psychological injury, after it failed to prove it had a reasonably arguable case to dispute her claim.
An employee's opportunity to respond before he was sacked for serious misconduct was too "narrow in scope", an FWC full bench has ruled, while nonetheless upholding the dismissal as fair.
Two managers could have handled certain situations better, according to the Fair Work Commission, but it has stopped short of granting stop-bullying orders to an employee who claimed he was "insulted and humiliated" by them.
It was reasonable for an employer to contact an employee while he was on sick leave after a Facebook post implied he'd caught COVID-19 from a client, the Fair Work Commission has found in dismissing his stop-bullying claim.
The employers coming closest to zero-tolerance for poor workplace behaviour are doing so through their culture, with policies taking a backseat, an academic says.
All employers should consider putting in place a workplace s-xual harassment prevention plan, even though such plans are only expressly prescribed in one jurisdiction, according to a risk management expert.
Recent events have shone a spotlight on whistleblowing, placing employers firmly on notice that their response to a protected disclosure could be subject to intense scrutiny. Watch this webcast to understand the role HR plays in this challenging space.