A compensation case has made public some of the impacts of outsourcing and restructuring at the University of Canberra with the changes leading to one claim for compensation.
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An employee who worked "long", "odd" hours after some jobs were outsourced to India and the workforce was restructured has been denied compensation.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal agreed that a difficult meeting between the man and his managers in November 2013 contributed to a significant degree to his major depressive disorder.
But the tribunal agreed with a previous Comcare decision that the meeting was a reasonable administrative action taken in a reasonable manner and could not be defined as an injury under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act.
The man, unidentified in the published decision, had received a favourable workplace review a week before the controversial meeting in which his performance was classed as "significant" – the second-best rating possible.
"The applicant worked long hours," senior tribunal member James Popple said.
"Because some of the university's payroll function had been outsourced to a provider in India, he would sometimes have to work at odd hours of the morning to suit Indian working hours.
"The manager agreed with the applicant that the applicant's workload was more than was reasonable, and that the applicant had been given insufficient support or handover when he first moved into his position.
"The manager reviewed the applicant's position description, and proposed changes to reduce the applicant's workload. He also proposed training for the applicant, which would better equip him to perform the payroll functions of his job."
The tribunal was also told that the university's restructure had been a disruption to the way he worked.
He worked in the human resources area from July 2012, but by mid-2013 he was moved to the IT area, notwithstanding concerns expressed to his supervisor that his background "was in HR and not IT".
About the time of the restructure, he took what was intended to be three weeks' leave after the birth of his child but was asked to return to work after just one week because some of his colleagues had left their jobs.
Some colleagues raised with the manager their concerns about the quality of the man's work, his dealings with his workmates, and his general demeanour. This included his dealings with one of his workmates who was expected to perform some of his duties while he was on leave.
In the meeting with his superiors in late 2013, the man recorded what was said using the video function on his phone, unbeknown to his bosses.
During the meeting one of the managers said to the man: "I think we're heading towards perhaps doing a performance management plan and that's an instruction I've received".
Later in the same meeting, when the man complained he had not been given time to prepare a response to him being put on such a plan, the manager said "we're not doing a performance management plan".
When the man said he was being given conflicting information the manager said "in hindsight, maybe the performance management plan was a bad thing to suggest".
The tribunal's senior member Dr Popple found that it appeared as though the managers were reconsidering their views on performance management after hearing the man's side of the story.
"Even if the idea of a plan being put into place was humiliating to the applicant, that would not necessarily make the meeting unreasonable," Dr Popple said.
"It might not have been reasonable for a performance management plan to have been put in place at the meeting, without the applicant having been given time and an opportunity to respond to the issues raised.
"But that is not what happened.
"Neither the manager nor the manager's manager intended to put a plan in place at the meeting, and neither of them thought that a plan was inevitable."
