A senior HR manager claimed her employer forced her out. The Fair Work Commission disagreed – and turned her own expertise against her.

Naomi Harnett had more than a decade of senior HR experience when she joined Hands On People Pty Ltd, an NDIS services provider, as Manager of Human Resources in April 2025. Within four and a half months, she had resigned, lodged a WorkCover psychological injury claim, and taken the matter to the Fair Work Commission, alleging she had been forced out.

On February 26, 2026, Commissioner Spencer dismissed her application. The finding was blunt: Ms Harnett had not been dismissed. She had resigned voluntarily.

The details, though, are anything but routine.

From early in her tenure, Ms Harnett raised compliance concerns about the organisation's NDIS obligations. She built an HR Strategic Plan and recommended that a particular employee be terminated following a disciplinary investigation. The Managing Director, Sajesh Paul, ran his own investigation and landed somewhere different – demotion, a final written warning, and mandatory training rather than dismissal. He explained his reasoning. Ms Harnett disagreed.

The Commission found this was a business decision made by the person with the authority to make it. "The taking of a separate business decision by the Respondent as communicated to the Applicant does not amount to a situation where the Applicant was being forced to resign," Commissioner Spencer wrote.

It was not a one-off. Throughout the...

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