Work Related Stress: Avoiding Claims of Discrimination and Unfair Dismissal

By Bruce Moore

A recent Victorian study reports that work factors contributed to suicides in 109 cases between 1989 and 2000.

The authors of the study make a number of recommendations to guide future occupational health and safety research and policy, to enable OHS practice to more adequately address work factors in suicide.

There is a complex relationship between work and health, family and relationship factors. When dealing with a person suffering from an illness or injury associated with workplace stress, and its effects on workplace conduct or performance (the ability to perform work at all), the great majority of employers will be confronted by circumstances that are a re far less extreme than suicide. But by reference to the most extreme potential consequences of health problems associated with workplace stress, the existence of the study, Work Factors in Suicide, brings home the importance of carefully dealing with the complex matrix.

(Lexis Nexis Butterworths Employment Law Bulletin; vol. 9, no. 9)