news, latest-news

It was acceptable for a public service manager to tell a staff member she looked like she had no vigour, liked to be comfortable and had "no interest in driving the program", a tribunal has ruled. In rejecting a compensation claim by a Canberra public servant who said her workplace mentor's comments drove her to a psychiatric breakdown, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal said a number of performance-related comments were appropriate for a manager to use. These included "I don't think you have any passion for the work", "I think you like to be comfortable" and "You look as though you have no passion for the work". The AAT heard the "mentor" would go around Environment Department headquarters in the capital as a "roving executive officer" telling bureaucrats to "smile, it's not that bad". But the tribunal knocked back Prudence Gaffey's claim for workers' compensation, finding the department's handling of her workplace issues were reasonable and that the mentor's conduct was fair enough under the circumstances. Ms Gaffey said her serious psychiatric troubles began at a performance assessment meeting in August 2012, where she had asked her official mentor, roving executive officer Piet Laut, to be present. It was alleged that during the meeting Ms Laut made upsetting comments to Ms Gaffey, who suffered chronic pain from a variety of physical conditions, disparaging her "appearance of pain, tiredness, grumpiness, absence of passion for, or interest in, her work". At another meeting 10 days later, Ms Gaffey alleged, Ms Laut made more "inappropriate, negative and upsetting comments about her physical appearance and the impression created in relation to Ms Gaffey's work attitude and ability". Just before Christmas Ms Gaffey was told by her boss she was not performing and colleagues informed her that staff cuts at the department were being used to get rid of older or sick people, people on long-term leave, or those not performing. Ms Gaffey went on sick leave in February 2013, has not returned to work yet and has since been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalised anxiety. She argued in her claim to federal workplace insurer Comcare that she was not told during the ill-fated August 20 meeting that she was being performance managed and that the department decided after the event that she was being subject to the process. Comcare accepted that Ms Gaffey's psychiatric condition was caused by the workplace incidents, but refused to pay, arguing the Environment Department had acted reasonably in its dealings with its employee. When the executive level 1 public servant challenged the decision at the tribunal, her former mentor Ms Laut denied making the negative remarks, but said she was mentoring up to 40 public servants at the time and had destroyed all her notes when she left her job soon after the meeting. By contrast Ms Gaffey's version of events was backed up by her work diary, a personal diary, and a pain diary. But her appeal to the tribunal failed after Senior Member Robin Creyke decided that Ms Laut's comments were fair enough under the circumstances. "The comments are precisely the kinds of comments which could be expected by a mentor in response to discussion about barriers to, and improvements which could be made to, the performance of a person being mentored," Ms Creyke wrote in her judgment. "So in that context and in the context of discussions about performance issues the remarks were not unreasonable." Ms Creyke also rejected the argument that the performance management process was notified after the event, noting that a public servant with 20 years' experience and occupying an EL1 position should have realised that she was being performance managed. Ms Gaffey's legal team say they are considering an appeal.