Many employees, at all levels of seniority within workplaces, are not permitted to access any social media sites through their work computers.  However, the result of such a policy is often that many (or most) employees then sit around on their smartphones accessing the sites they want to, when they want to.  I would imagine such a policy would be extremely costly to administer from an infrastructure perspective - but yet it is totally ineffective.

So why do employers ban social media and is it the right move?

As we discussed in our earlier blog post "What’s in a $500k general protections claim?", employers who take an “adverse action” against an employee because of that employee’s “workplace right” will be liable for a range of potential remedies (including uncapped compensation and fines). 

The Act states that an employee will have a “workplace right” if the employee is able to make a complaint in relation to his or her employment. So what complaints will employees be able to rely upon?

Much fanfare and controversy surrounded the introduction of the “general protections” under the Fair Work Act on 1 January 2010.  This set of provisions still cause employers a great deal of angst.  Perhaps more so, since two employees have each been awarded in excess of $500k in two separate general protections decisions of recent times.  Although the award of compensation and damages to the employees in both cases has been based on the employers’ multiple contractual and Fair Work Act breaches (of a persistent nature), these cases do shed some light on the harsh stance taken by Courts. 

There is no denying that performance reviews incite fear and loathing on both the part of employees and employers. This doesn’t have to be the case. Nor should it be.

Despite the discourse advocating for the abandonment of formal performance reviews altogether, The Workplace believes that formal performance reviews can serve their purpose for employers (in terms of employee productivity and engagement) and for employees (in terms of learning and development and career development) if adopted as part of a wider 5 step strategy.

It was only fairly recently that it was authoritatively determined that there is an implied term of trust and confidence underpinning all employment relationships in Australia. Why does it matter to employers? Well, it works one way. It is an obligation on all employers not to conduct themselves (without reason) in a way that is likely to destroy or seriously damage the employment relationship.  It fundamentally tips the balance of the traditional master/servant relationship back towards the servant.

Whether or not there is an implied term of trust and confidence in Australian employment relationships has been an uncertain area of the law in Australia for some time. There have been a number of decisions that have (rather frustratingly for employment lawyers) proposed different approaches to the issue.  However, in August last year, the full Federal Court handed down its first decision on point, in the case of Commonwealth Bank of Australia v Barker [2013] FCAFC 83.