Legal experts are urging businesses to train their staff in up-to-date social media policies this year, after activewear brand Lorna Jane won a two-year legal battle in November against a former employee who claimed the company was responsible for the psychiatric impacts of bullying at work. Former Brisbane store manager Amy Robinson filed a legal claim against Lorna Jane in 2015, seeking $570,000 in damages. The former manager claimed Lorna Jane was negligent and should be held responsible for her being bullied by a learning and development manager at the company, which led to psychiatric illness and a loss of employment and future employability. The company came out swinging against the claims early on,   posting a later-deleted Facebook post in 2015 defending itself against the claims  and saying it had been “very disappointed” by what had been reported in the media about the case. The claims included that Robinson was bullied and called a variety of names while...

The serious threat SMEs are ignoring: One in two small businesses don’t have a policy for bullying claims One in two small businesses do not know how they would respond if bullying allegations were raised by their staff, according to new research, leaving them open to significant costs and productivity issues. But workplace experts say these concerns can be prevented with forward planning A survey of 400 businesses from employment relations advisory Employsure found one in two Australian small businesses don’t have a “defined action plan” for when bullying is raised at work, with many unaware that they could face costs related to dispute resolution or even penalties relating to bullying cases in some states. The research, which surveyed businesses with up to 15 employees, found those businesses with between two and four employees were the most likely to be unaware of best practice processes for dealing with bullying claims, with only 40% of businesses saying they know the st...

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...

Australian Public Service bosses have pleaded with their workplace authority for help with false claims of  bullying and harassment  from the bureaucratic rank-and-file. Now the Australian Public Service Commission has warned that bogus bullying claims could serious consequences for those concocting them. The commission's new question-and-answer service for federal bureaucrats struggling with workplace issues has attracted pleas for help from public servants who fear being unfairly smeared as office bullies. The reports offer more evidence that the public service's workplace slackers are using bullying allegations to derail efforts to get them to lift their games. One manager told of workers, under pressure for their inappropriate behaviour or underperformance, telling "anyone who would listen" that they were being bullied. Bullying and harassment has been a serious problem in government departments for some time. In the 2016-2016 financial year,...

When children are experiencing bullying in the playground, or our teens are being bullied across social media, we feel outrage and as a community, we tend to rally behind the victims, advocating for their rights to exist in a world free from victimisation and harassment.  We understand that the emotional, psychological and physical impact of bullying changes the brain chemistry of our children and can impact the way they perceive themselves and the world. Research out of Yale University indicates that bullied victims are seven to nine per cent more likely to consider suicide. We run anti-bullying programs in schools. And yet, when we grow up and enter the workplace, our staunch advocacy for bully victims is silenced. Workplace bullying is defined as repeated ‘unreasonable behaviour’ directed towards a worker or a group of workers resulting in a risk to health and safety. It often involves an abuse of power and the incidents of bullying are deliberate and targeted with the inte...

Workplace investigation report inadmissible in anti-bullying case The Fair Work Commission has rejected an employee's request to view a workplace investigation report that he alleged includes details of bullying at a colleague's previous job, finding it inadmissible in his current anti-bullying case. The Deakin University lecturer sought orders in March 2017 from the Commission to stop workplace bullying by a number of colleagues. He also applied for the 2015 report to be produced, claiming it contained evidence of one of his colleagues having been "at least perceived by a number of staff" to have engaged in bullying behaviour while working at the University of Newcastle (UON). He said the colleague's conduct as a manager at UON was "materially relevant to the substantive issues in dispute". Deakin University, the colleague, and UON objected to producing the report on a number of grounds, and after considering their refusal, Commissioner Bissett...

Workplace bullying affects not just employees themselves, but the productivity of the whole organisation. Yet it can be difficult to stamp out. It’s a wide-reaching phenomenon — in the Victorian public service, for example, around 20% of employees report having been bullied in the workplace, a rate that has remained largely unchanged in the past decade. One in four say they’ve witnessed bullying. But some organisations do manage to make a significant difference, whether through direct intervention with problem individuals, training staff to recognise bad behaviour, or by creating a more open and trusting workplace culture. A new report from the Victorian Public Sector Commission,  Turning the tide on bullying and poor workplace cultures ,  aims to make it easier to tackle the problem by providing five case studies of public sector bodies that have managed to successfully turn around acrimonious work environments. “With bullying, it’s not hard to focus exclusively on t...