A Queensland council paid $2.35 million to a former employee last year. Not for a physical injury. For a psychiatric injury caused by a fabricated email that a third party wrote in her name — and which the council failed to publicly correct. That figure is the point of this article. Employers have adjusted to the idea that psychological injury generates
What’s the real issue? Having a psychosocial health and safety policy is not the same as managing psychosocial risk and regulators increasingly treat the gap as a breach. The most common mistake we see is treating this as an HR document rather than a WHS obligation owned by senior leadership exactly the “Band-Aid solution” the Model Code of Practice warns against. A
Managing Psychosocial Risks in the Workplace: Why a Policy Alone Won’t Protect You Read More »
Managing ill and injured employees is one of the highest-risk tasks any Australian employer faces. When a worker is injured or falls ill, several legal regimes switch on at once — and they don’t always agree. Get it right and you protect your people and your organisation. Get it wrong and one termination can trigger multiple claims. Here’s how to do it —
Performance-manage an underperformer, restructure a team or investigate a bullying complaint, and you are no longer working within employment law alone. That decision now sits inside your work health and safety duty — and a process that is perfectly lawful under the Fair Work Act can still expose you under WHS legislation. The answer is not to