Aisling Parkinson and Jacqueline Ho review recent case law to highlight common employer mistakes in managing mental health at work and the practical steps needed to reduce legal risk.
In our previous article, we looked at how employers can proactively protect employee wellbeing from stress and burnout by building a supportive culture and putting practical policies in place. Good intentions, however, are not always matched by good practice.
As the cases in our previous articles showed, it is often the handling of the situation, rather than the underlying condition, that turns a manageable issue into a claim before the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), the Labour Court or the High Court. In this follow-up article, we look at case law examples of mistakes that employers commonly make.
As we noted previously, mental health conditions are capable of falling within the definition of “disability” under the Employment Equality Acts 1998–2015 which means the obligation to provide reasonable accommodation applies unless there is a disproportionate burden on the employer to do so. The most common mistake we see is not a refusal to accommodate, but a failure to engage with process properly or at all.
The leading Irish authority is the Supreme Court decision in Nano Nagle School v Daly [2019] IESC 63. Although the case concerned a physical disability, its principles apply equally to mental health conditions. The Court...
[OSEN=Choi Lee-jung Reporter] As past remarks by singer Yang Hong-won expressing his dislike of infidelity resurface, reactions continue to grow that the recent 'motel infidelity allegations' agai...