Employers and HR practitioners continue to make some avoidable mistakes after dismissing employees, which increase their likelihood of losing claims in the Fair Work Commission, a workplace lawyer says.
Resigning may well have been the right decision for an employee who didn't trust HR to take her workplace complaints seriously, according to the Fair Work Commission, but this didn't mean the employer's conduct forced her hand.
An employer that failed to take any steps to review its procedures after a court found it engaged in unlawful adverse action has been ordered to pay an employee $30k in compensation and penalties.
Returning to work after a pregnancy carries retention, safety and legal risks, but many employers fail to mitigate them, and in some cases exacerbate them, an HR professional warns.
A safety-critical employee, who turned up to work in an impaired and unfit state to perform his role, has failed to convince the Fair Work Commission his misconduct wasn't "serious" and he shouldn't have been summarily sacked.
When workplaces harness their "superpowers" of empathy, creativity, systems thinking and wisdom, employees over 50 offer "the ideal workforce for the modern world", a career coach says.
It wasn't unfair to dismiss an incapacitated employee without first trying to redeploy or rehabilitate him, the Fair Work Commission has found, given the "likely permanence" of his inability to perform any work.
Workplace bullying complaints continue to pose significant challenges for employers, including where the behaviour doesn't meet the legal definition of bullying or the threshold to make a claim. Watch this HR Daily Premium webcast to understand key lessons from cases where bullying complaints interact with other claims and issues.
What constitutes "best practice" when managing neurodiversity at work is evolving all the time. Watch this HR Daily Premium webcast to learn how to embed neuroinclusive practices into HR programs and every stage of the employment lifecycle.