Impact of the Victorian Workplace Bullying Laws - Guest Blog

Back in April I wrote about the Victorian government introducing legislation that imposed potential jail terms for serious workplace bullying. At the time there was uncertainty about what impact this legislation would have and how it would be applied however 3 months down the track the impact is starting to show.

Rachel Wells of The Age discussed this in her article on Sunday titled "Most Workplace Bullying Claims Fall Short"- the upshot is that while bullying complaints have more than doubled, very few were referred on to the bullying response unit and only a small percentage of those resulted in an inspector visit to the workplace.

There are differing views on whether the increase in complaints is a result of the legislation or just an increased awareness of bullying and the high profile cases that make it into the media. It appears that many of the complaints would be better dealt with either by internal procedures where the organisation has clear and concise policies around bullying and harassment (something all employers should have), or by complaints to external agencies such as Fair Work Australia or Human Rights Commission where the incident is not as serious as contemplated by the bullying legislation which refers to "repeated unreasonable behaviour…".

The flip side of the coin is the potential abuse of the bullying legislation by employees who do not like the way things are going for them at work. Of course genuine situations involving bullying need to be appropriately dealt with but we had one situation recently where an employee was claiming to be "bullied" because he was being told by his manager that his performance was not up to scratch and he believed that the manager had some hidden agenda. On delving a little deeper we found the manager had a well documented record of specific written warnings given to the employee which referred to particular behaviours all within the job description of the employee (such as not providing reports to the manager and not attending meetings he was required to attend). The lesson here for the employer is to always ensure, when dealing with undesirable employee performance or behaviour, that you document everything and preferably have another person present when having face to face conversations with that employee.

This is certainly an area of behaviour in the workplace that needs careful attention and it is good to see that both employers and the law-makers are taking it seriously.

Guest Blog by Christine Broad, Solicitor, BlandsLaw.