In a recent decision the Human Rights Review Tribunal ordered telecommunications company, Orcon, to pay $25,000 in damages. This case sends a strong reminder to agencies to check the accuracy of personal information before using it.

The Bill reforming health and safety law has been further delayed, with the Committee report back date rescheduled to 24 July 2015.

Performance management brings together the organisation’s goals and strategies, its human resources policies and practices, and all the elements of good people management and employee communication — integrating them into an organisation-wide process for planning, managing, reviewing, rewarding and developing people and their performance.

With ANZAC Day falling on a Saturday this year,  the new Holidays (Full Recognition of Waitangi Day and ANZAC Day) Amendment Act or, as it is more commonly known, the ‘Mondayisation Bill’, will have its first big impact.

Until now, compensatory awards for hurt and humiliation for employees bringing successful personal grievances have commonly been between $5,000 and $7,000. Costs awards are normally far lower than the actual costs incurred, so the likelihood is that the employee will be out of pocket.

The Privacy Commissioner’s office have produced a guidance note explaining what types of cases the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT) can hear under the Privacy Act.  Before you can take a case to the HRRT, the Privacy Commissioner’s office must have investigated the aspects of your complaint that you want the Tribunal to consider.  Click here to see the guidance note.

The Holidays Act 2003 provides that on one or more separate occasions an employee can request that his or her employer pay out a portion of the employee’s annual leave entitlement. There are conditions and restrictions to this cashing up provision (sections 28A-F), the main ones of which are outlined below:

The Human Rights Review Tribunal has found Credit Union Baywide, trading as NZCU Baywide, interfered with the privacy of a former employee by distributing a Facebook screenshot to Hawke’s Bay employment agencies with a warning against employing her.

A clause in an employment agreement that provided a commonly used clause did not entitle an employer to deduct four weeks pay from an employee’s pay when the employee left without giving the requisite notice.  The clause stated:

Judge Inglis has repeated her reservations about the “double-whammy” effect of dismissal and a damages claim, both arising out of the same poor performance during the employment relationship. She considers that it “sits uncomfortably with the statutory mechanisms for resolving employment relationship issues and may well have a chilling effect on employees considering a personal grievance, concerned not to prompt a retaliatory damages claim in response” (Rainbow Falls Organic Farm Ltd v Rockell [2014] NZEmpC 136.