When a worker claimed compensation for psychological injury after his employer declined to appoint a psychologist and an HR advisor to support him in a conflict of interest situation involving his wife, the employer appealed, and the Industrial Relations Commission found in favour of the employer.
The case involved an unusual situation in which a change in line management resulted in the worker’s wife – a director in the state government department where they both worked – becoming his supervisor's manager. The man’s supervisor felt that this placed him in a difficult position, particularly if he had to deal with any performance issues relating to the worker.
When the supervisor raised the issue, the employer responded by requiring the man and his wife to complete ‘declaration of interest’ forms (DIF) and proposing to transfer the man to a role in a different part of the department’s operations.
The man had been employed in the position of Experimentalist, later called Diagnostic Coordinator, in the Crop Protection Systems section of Agri-Science Queensland (ASQ), a business area of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. To manage the perceived conflict of interest, various suggestions were made to other areas of the Department to which he could be transferred. One proposal involved a position at the same level in the Horticulture and Forestry Science section at a research station in another town. Alternative solutions included a suggestion that he could continue to work in the same town but in a different business unit, Biosecurity Queensland.
Shortly after he received a written offer of a temporary placement in the biosecurity section, he applied for workers compensation, claiming he’d suffered anxiety and depression because of how the situation had been handled. He alleged that he’d been forced to sign the DIF made to comply with a predetermined management action, that transferring to another position would hinder his career and personal/family life, and that the executive director of ASQ had contributed to his injury his unreasonable management action and bullying.
His compensation claim was initially rejected, but after he sought a review by the regulator, it was accepted. The employer appealed this decision, asserting that its response had amounted to reasonable management action.
The worker's compensation regulator disagreed, and the case was heard in Queensland’s Industrial Relations Commission.
In the Commission
Having regard to the medical evidence, the Commissioner was satisfied that the worker’s anxiety and depression arose out of his employment and that his employment was a major significant contributing factor. The issue in dispute was whether his complaint arose from reasonable management action taken reasonably.
The employer’s case was that the steps taken by the Department to resolve the conflict of interest had all been reasonable management actions taken reasonably, that there had been no bullying at any stage, and that the worker had been actively encouraged, supported, consulted and kept informed throughout the process implemented by management.
The worker's compensation regulator claimed, among other things, that the decision to transfer the worker was made without adequate explanation and was made without retaining the services of an organisational psychiatrist, despite the substantial upheaval in the worker’s employment, and that the Department had failed to provide the worker and his wife with another source of HR advice (that is, apart from the HR consultant who was advising management).
The regulator’s submission asserted that the man and his wife had been singled out compared to other couples in the Department and alleged several instances of unreasonable management action, including stating that the sole reason for the worker’s proposed relocation was the conflict of interest issue when another reason was the alleged and unidentified performance issues relating to the worker.
The commission considered the evidence about each of the allegations. While Deputy President Merrell expressed some criticism of the Department for not dealing with the conflict of interest sooner, he took the view that the decisions not to appoint an organisational psychologist or another HR adviser to support the worker were not unreasonable.
With the other allegations, he concluded that the worker’s anxiety and depression arose out of or in the course of reasonable management action taken in a reasonable way or out of his perception of that action. The injury was therefore not compensable.
Accordingly, he set aside the worker's comp regulator’s decision.
The bottom line: An employee’s anxiety or stress about management action does not on its own mean that the management action is unreasonable or undertaken in an unreasonable way.
Read the judgment
