Circumstances do change
There have literally been hundreds of times that we have been contacted by employers who say they want a ‘casual’ employment agreement for their employee, or they want an updated agreement for their ‘casual’ employee.
When we get into it we regularly find that what may have started out, originally, as a totally intermittent arrangement between the employer and the employee where the employer was free to offer work occasionally and the employee could accept or decline the offer as they pleased, has now changed.
There's no such thing as instant termination
Without sounding like a broken record there is no such thing as instant termination. There is no such thing as an action that can result in someone being fired without the proper process being undertaken.
When performance doesn't meet expectations
The Rio Olympics ended up being one of our most successful Olympics ever. But for a time it looked like it was going to go pear-shaped. From the moment we woke up to learn our men’s sevens team had lost to Japan (most of us not getting up to watch the game given we were a shoo-in) we all started to get that ominous sinking feeling that things were not going to pan out quite as expected. Thankfully some of our less favoured athletes managed to ensure we came home strongly and our final medal count saw us end up in a very respectable overall position.
Employee snooping
Some time ago there was a front page article on the Privacy Commissioner talking about receiving several complaints about Southland employees snooping through company information.
The action was said to be known as ‘employee browsing’ when an employee has access to a company’s database and uses the database to access information they shouldn’t.
The cost of bullying - a cautionary tale
I was at the gym the other day and I was involved in a discussion about how difficult it can be to ask questions if you think it will make you look stupid. I, for example, cannot operate the thing on the petrol pump that automatically dispenses the petrol without you holding it. I have tried and tried and tried. I am surreptitious about these efforts because I don’t want other customers to see me trying in case they think I am stupid. As it appears to me that it must be simple (men can do it after all) I have always been too scared to ask how it worked in case the Petrol Attendant went back into the station to his or her colleagues and they laughed and pointed at me for being so dumb.
