The Queensland Supreme Court last month awarded $1,703,530 in damages against an employer, whose Chief Executive Officer's "unjustified blaming, humiliation, belittling, isolation, undermining and contemptuous disregard" of the plaintiff employee resulted in serious psychiatric injury. The employer was found vicariously liable for the CEO's actions and to have breached its own duty of care. Repeated mistreatment and harassment of employee by CEO Ms Robinson was the District Director of Nursing for the Cape York Health Service and brought her claim against the State of Queensland for negligence and vicarious liability. Ms Robinson complained that, from March 2010 to 17 January 2011, the CEO repeatedly harassed and mistreated her. This conduct included: unjustified, loud and aggressive disciplining and belittling of her in public and in front of other staff on multiple occasions; failing to inform her of allegations against her and failing to provide those alleg...

Domestic and overseas travel has become highly accessible and affordable which has presented many opportunities for national and multinational businesses as employees can travel relatively easily and cheaply between offices, sites and clients. In fact, the prevalence of business travel is quite significant and in 2016, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported 9% of overseas trips taken by Australian residents were related to business.  This is quite a substantial figure and although long distance travel clearly offers many benefits for employers, it also raises questions as to their legal obligations and how to best manage employees who are away from the office and required to travel for work. Businesses must consider three issues to ensure that their travelling employees are behaving and performing appropriately whilst also ensuring protection of the business's commercial interests and adherence to legal obligations. Manage employee behaviour and performance ...