A worker who claimed she was bullied and abused at work for a decade has been granted permission to sue her former employer over her mental injuries, more than three years after the limitation period ended.
The Fair Work Commission has issued orders prohibiting the parties to a stop-bullying application from yelling at each other or discussing the merits of the case in the workplace or elsewhere, after hearing the alleged bully persistently tried to engage with the applicant on the matter.
A major employer's anonymous behaviour feedback system allows it to quickly identify unsafe practices and resolve them informally, stopping inappropriate behaviour from escalating and requiring formal disciplinary action, its executive director of people and culture says.
Two workers who bullied new employees made it "very difficult" for them to gain experience and posed a risk to their safety and welfare, but their employer should not have sought to force the bullies to resign by ignoring their text messages, a commission has found.
A worker breached his employer's bullying and harassment policy by creating and sharing a Hitler video parodying the company's protracted negotiations, a commission has found. Meanwhile, a court has blocked a morbidly obese worker from making a further 15 claims against an employer, and found he "needlessly" compared its conduct with Nazi guards.
Workplace bullies should be starting to get the message that there are serious consequences for their actions, after yet another bully and his company were convicted and fined for breaching safety laws in acting aggressively towards employees.
A regulator has warned workplace leaders that they have a duty to "live and breathe" their anti-bullying policies, after securing its second reckless conduct conviction involving a life-threatening attack on an apprentice.
Public sector agencies have been warned against responding to allegations of misconduct with strategies designed to "camouflage poor systems" instead of preventing incidents, after an anti-corruption survey unearthed "shocking" reports of bullying and nepotism.
A worker's actions in "counselling" and psychologically injuring a colleague cannot be considered reasonable action "taken by an employer" unless the worker's role involves managing and disciplining the colleague, a tribunal has ruled.
Ninety per cent of workers won't use workplace complaint processes to stop bullying, so employers need to "empower" them to tackle the roots of the conduct through strategies like communication upskilling, according to a workplace bullying prevention and management specialist.
