Bullying complaint about a female work colleague
Industry: Building Services
Background: A client received a resignation and a complaint from a female employee (the claimant) with only 5 months service, regarding bullying by a more senior female co-worker (the respondent). Whilst the claimant did not seek an investigation or compensation, the client took the complaint seriously and sought an independent investigation from AblesonHowes and Associates. The client also sought fast turn-around time, minimal costs and elected not to involve legal counsel. The claimant claimed she was suffering high levels of stress and anxiety regarding having to work out her notice and was experiencing sleeplessness.
Actions: Sharon Howes from AblesonHowes met with the complainant and organised to meet with the respondent and all witnesses within 24 hours and visit the work environment. It was recommended the client allow the claimant leave the business immediately, and be paid out her notice.
Complaint: The allegations from the complainant ranged from being continually yelled at, criticized, humiliated, and a door behind her work desk continually slammed by co-workers; she claimed she was excluded from work team activities and social discussions. Claiming her health was being impacted she chose to resign and did not wish to remain – irrespective of the outcome of the investigation.
Investigation: The importance of empathy, as well as impartiality, needed to be recognised, as it is very easy to accept a highly emotional interpretation of events as fact. When work colleagues did not substantiate any of the claims, but explained how the complainant misinterpreted genuine attempts to try to assist her perform her new role, reacted negatively to feedback, and consistently attempted to blame others or cover up her mistakes, the investigation was broadened to ensure the immediate work team were not conspiring to support the respondent. The slamming door was found to be a maintenance issue – awaiting repair. Two witnesses for the claimant admitted they did not ‘like’ the respondent and found her ‘loud’ and ‘pushy’. However, when questioned appropriately, agreed they had never witnessed any of the alleged bullying behaviours, and the respondent was more accurately described as ‘passionate’ about work for clients being done accurately. None of the claims was substantiated or witnessed.
The respondent was able to show consistent and continuing performance issues by the complainant and how/why and when performance related issues and communication with the complainant had been redirected to the section manager to manage.
The manager explained the steps he had taken to retrain the complainant, and have the complainant check her work, but noted continuing client complaints and the discovery of fraudulent activity to cover up mistakes. As the claimant was no longer in a probation period, he didn’t believe he could ‘just terminate her employment,’ even though he didn’t believe she was suited to the role. The manager failed, furthermore, to formally document these issues.
Outcome: On the face of the complaint were repeated bullying behaviours as described under the FWA. It would be easy to conclude, as many HR practitioners do, that the world must be interpreted through the eyes of a complainant and how they ‘perceive’ the behaviours of others. However, the investigation revealed reasonable performance management action undertaken by a senior colleague to address continued poor performance impacting client service. Training and retraining of the complainant had been completed, yet mistakes continued. The ‘yelling’ claim was an interpretation of an individual with a loud voice and passionate nature. Exclusion from team activities could not be substantiated.
The root cause of the issue? Poor selection criteria and a poor recruitment process and a 3 month probation in the employment contract set by a junior HR officer. The section manager failed to act on the knowledge that the new employee was not suited to the role nor was the performance improving, and he failed to terminate the employee within the probation period – which had been set at three, rather than the recommended six months. He failed to adopt a more formal performance management process.
The claimants stress and anxiety was more likely a response to being the wrong person in the wrong role, and was not a good fit in a commercially driven client facing culture, resulting in an inability to perform as expected. Ultimately the result of the client failing to adopt sound HR practises.
Follow up actions: A policy introduced for 6 month probation periods in new employment contracts, management discussions on the importance of recruitment processes, and performance management training for all line managers to ensure similar issues did not occur again. And coaching for the respondent was recommended on how her gregarious and passionate disposition needed to be moderated in some situations and how different individuals respond differently to different styles – and how to identify them.