Recently, FWA ruled that Home Choice had
unfairly dismissed an employee who had emailed the entire company calling his
MD a name (rhyming with banker!) and stating that one of his hobbies was
masturbation. Pretty extreme I would say, so why couldn't they fire him and what can we learn from this case?
Culture - it might be alleged that the company has
a culture that allows the sharing of images, bad language and verbal abuse
among employees, with senior management, at worst actively involved and, at
best, complicit. One of the issues with this type of culture is that employees
tend to assimilate and follow the patterns of behaviour - or leave, so the
culture gets stronger and stronger. I know of someone in the building game that
was working within a similar culture and survived by towing the line. This was
until he realised that he was coming home and speaking to his wife the same
way. He promptly left!
Precedence
- given that this type
of behaviour was active across the business and at all levels you cannot single
out one incident with different treatment. But had there been active management
of this behaviour and strict control, this incident would have been far less
likely to be ruled unfair
Policy - there were no policies in place to
guide and manage employees' behaviour. If employees are not told that this type
of behaviour is not appropriate you can't manage this retrospectively
So what was the ruling? - Well, the
employee did not want to be reinstated although this was an option. He was
initially awarded $30,000 compensation reduced to $20,000 because of his role
in the situation.
This company has a major cultural change
to undergo which will be painful and will need to be led from the top. They
will experience high attrition levels but the irony is that a positive culture
built around respect for the individual will ultimately increase their employee
engagement and motivation levels and improve the customer experience leading to
better financial results.
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