Tell your boss of Health & Safety concerns

The Employment Relations Authority has dismissed an allegation by an employee for stress in the workplace because of the employee’s behaviour in delaying reporting his health and safety concerns to the employer.

The employee had been promoted into a training role by the employer and was involved in training a new employee with a mental health condition.  The employee claimed that he found training the other employee so stressful that he had to leave his employment, because of his resulting mental health issues.  The ERA rejected the claims, because the employee had not told his boss of his safety concerns until far too late in the process, when he was already suffering serious side effects.  As soon as he brought it to his boss’s attention, the employer took immediate action to deal with the issue.  If the employee had brought it to his employer’s attention earlier, then the employer would most likely have dealt with it in a similar fashion and that would have saved the employee from suffering the breakdown that he did.

If you do have health and safety concerns, it is really important to bring those to your employer’s attention as soon as possible, so the employer has an opportunity to consider those and to deal with them before any health and safety problems arise.

Alan Knowsley
Employment and Health & Safety Lawyer
Wellington