It’s extremely important for employers to have strong policies and procedures in place to combat workplace bullying. Having these in place will put a business in a much better position to proactively respond to any incidents that occur in the workplace, or any complaints made by employees.
Responding to a bullying complaint in a professional manner and with haste is vital to avoid a bullying case being taken any further and the business facing a lawsuit by an employee.
A recent case to illustrate this is that of Keegan v Sussan Corporation (Aust.) Pty Ltd [2014] QSC 64, where the court awarded an employee just under $240,000 in damages after she was bullied for 11 days after returning from maternity leave.
In this case the employee returned to her job at Sussan’s Cairns Central where a new manager was in place. This manager engaged in conduct that was found to be bullying, such as:
- excluding the employee from business discussions;
- ignoring the employee’s offers of assistance;
- making unwarranted criticisms of the employee’s past and present performance;
- using an ‘aggressive and nasty tone’ when speaking to her; and
- creating an ‘isolating atmosphere’ in which the manager was generally friendlier to the other employees.
The employee was distressed by her manager’s conduct and regarded it as bullying and made a complaint to the Queensland Business Manager after four days.
The Queensland Business Manager dealt with the complaint inappropriately by responding to the complaint by calling the store manager who the complaint was against to inform her of the complaint, rather than following the bullying and harassment policy of the company.
This action failed to stop the bullying and the employee continued to be harassed for a further seven days. At this time she made a further complaint to her employer and was subsequently told to ‘work it out herself’.
Soon after, the employee was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and filed a claim of negligence against her employer. Justice Henry of the Supreme Court of Queensland found in this case a reasonable person in the employer’s position would have realised that their failure to address the initial complaint properly in accordance with the bullying and harassment policy of the company ‘considerably heightened’ the prospect of emotional distress to the employee. Therefore the psychiatric injury suffered by the employee was a risk that the employer should have reasonably foreseen and accordingly they were negligent in continuing to permit the store manager to bully the employee.
The Court awarded the bullied employee $237,770 in damages.
An award to an employee of this magnitude could be devastating to a business which is why it is so important that a business not only have a well structured bullying and harassment policy in place, but that managers are thoroughly trained in this policy and all complaints are taken seriously and acted upon in accordance with this policy.