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Stress |
Onus on employee to send early warning signals |
A court has recently found that employees must give clear signals about workrelated ill-health. |
In the case, an employee who worked three days a week in supermarket merchandising found her workload excessive from the outset, and advised her employer on many occasions that the work expected of her had to be changed, or she should have more time or help to do it. However, her complaints made no reference to the fact that her workload was affecting her mental health. |
Five months after star ting work, the employee fell ill. Initially diagnosed as physical, the illness was later described as psychiatric. Her work was found to be a cause of depression and fibromyalgia syndrome, a psycho-physical disorder which results in pain amplification. |
On appeal the court found that a reasonable person in the employer's position would not have foreseen the risk of psychiatric injury. It rejected a proposition that all employers must recognise all employees as being at risk of psychiatric injury from stress at work. |
The court's decision confirms that employers are not expected to be clairvoyant about the mental state of employees. To recover damages for psychiatric injury due to workplace stress, the onus is firmly on the employee to send early warning signals. |
These signals can be expressed or implied by, for example, frequent or prolonged uncharacteristic absences from work. They must indicate not only that the person may be experiencing difficulties in discharging their duties, but also that those difficulties are having or are likely to have a detrimental effect on the person's mental health. |
