Why you shouldn't jump to conclusions

Very different decisions were handed down in two cases that were in some ways alike last week.

In Prasad v Cordina Chicken Farms the Fair Work Commission ordered the reinstatement of an employee who had been sacked for failing to report a safety incident. The employer had described Mr Prasad’s conduct as “inexcusably casual and lackadaisical”.

Mr Prasad’s explanation for the failure to report was that he was not on-site when the incident occurred and he had been told by a supervisor that the incident had already been reported to senior management who were investigating it.

The employer’s Group HR Manager gave evidence that:

“this was not the first time he had failed to report and then he always had basically given an excuse that he couldn’t report because of various reasons”.

It is fair to say that this evidence did not find favour with the Commission. The Commission stated:

“Regrettably, this evidence and the evidence provided more generally by [the Group HR Manager] was unconvincing and largely unsatisfactory. There was clearly a logical, plausible and reasonable explanation for why the applicant did not complete a formal report or further investigate the safety incident. There was no evidence to establish a proper basis for [the Group HR Manager] to reject this explanation. In simple terms, whatever the applicant may have done or not done in the past does not represent a sound or defensible basis upon which to determine the issues that were under examination at that time.”

In Ramadas v Industrial Relations Secretary (Legal Aid Commission of NSW),
the NSW Industrial Relations Commission rejected the employee's unfair dismissal claim.

Ms Ramadas had been dismissed for a number of reasons, including that she had made vexatious complaints against some of her colleagues.

Although the evidence suggested that the employer had been sceptical of the employee’s complaints from the outset, the employer did not dismiss them out of hand. Instead, the employer conducted an initial investigation and – only once that was concluded – engaged an external workplace investigator to review whether the allegations were vexatious.

The workplace investigator appears to have conducted an extensive review and he produced a report of over 400 pages concluding that the allegations were not made in good faith.

The Commission accepted that the allegations by the employee were “baseless and, in some cases, scandalous” and that the employee's conduct in making them was “misconduct such as to warrant the termination of her employment”.

Obviously, every case turns on its facts. But the two cases serve as contrasting examples of how to respond to misconduct issues. In Prasad the employer perhaps jumped too quickly to the conclusion that the employee should be dismissed without giving the employee a “fair go”. Conversely, in Ramadas the employer proceeded more cautiously before reaching the decision to dismiss.