The one-week gap between a senior manager's resignation and starting her new job has undermined her claims that she was either dismissed during her notice period, or forced to quit due to poorly handled bullying complaints.
"Simple life experience" should have taught an employee not to bully and humiliate his co-worker, according to the Fair Work Commission, but a lack of evidence that he was trained in workplace policies meant his dismissal was harsh.
Nine Entertainment has a systemic issue with abuse of power and authority; bullying, discrimination and harassment; and s-xual harassment, a review of its culture has found.
It might have been unreasonable to make further demands of an employee who had already complied with his employer's absence notification system, but this didn't amount to bullying, the Fair Work Commission has ruled.
An employee was not eligible to apply for stop-bullying orders regarding behaviour that occurred while she was absent and receiving workers' compensation payments, the Fair Work Commission has ruled, in a case that a lawyer says takes a surprisingly narrow view of when someone is considered "at work".
In dismissing an employee's stop-bullying application, the Fair Work Commission has accepted an employer's undertakings to restrict his correspondence and interactions with the alleged bullies.
An employer must put in place new anti-bullying measures and keep two senior employees apart, after it found itself caught between retaining a "key employee" and its commitment to a bullied CFO.
Traditional HR approaches to managing bullying risks are "simply not keeping up with the complexity of the modern-day workplace bully", according to a workplace relations expert.
"For the sanity of all involved" it would be wise for an employer to continue its efforts to keep two workers separate, the Fair Work Commission has said, while declining to make stop-bullying orders.
General protections claims are the fastest-growing category of applications in the Fair Work Commission, with reforms now underway to stem the tide. This webinar will discuss important developments in both procedural issues and case law.
