A regulator has found two employers failed in their duty to minimise or eliminate workplace psychosocial risks, after one introduced a new performance management system without proper consultation, and the other placed excessive and ongoing work demands on its staff.
In an important ruling analysing vicarious liability, the High Court has upheld an employer's appeal against a $432k damages award for an employee who suffered a psychological injury due to his co-worker's drunken misbehaviour.
An employee who was threatened and assaulted by another worker has been awarded compensation for a psychological injury, after a commission found the employer's investigation into the incident was unreasonable.
Managers are now noticeably more reluctant to take action that might pose a psychosocial hazard, but holding back can create a "much worse" problem, a workplace lawyer warns.
An employer has been ordered to resume an employee's workers' compensation payments, after a commission found that requiring her to return to work with a bully colleague aggravated her psychological injury.
Employers' psychosocial risk obligations represent a "new dawn" for HR, where this area can no longer be viewed as a workplace health and safety issue. Watch this webcast to understand how psychosocial risks intersect with almost every aspect of employment law and people management.
An employee has failed to prove on appeal that his employer was vicariously liable for his co-worker's "extreme and unnecessary" behaviour towards him, which caused him to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder.
An employer has been criticised for not dismissing an employee when it was a "viable option" and instead undertaking a "misguided" performance management process that contributed to a psychiatric injury.
Recent changes to psychosocial risk management require extra attention to three big areas, but so far two are being somewhat overlooked, according to a workplace lawyer.
