The FWC has found that it has been forced to "go behind" a fundraising call centre's "flimsy" justification for sacking a manager who allegedly disclosed "confidential HR information".
Commissioner Ian Cambridge said 2evolve Pty Limited lacked an "adequate foundation" to conclude that the operations coordinator "was the source of the disclosure" that named four team leaders who complained about their manager.
The company's managing director and its general manager believed the coordinator was the only employee other than themselves who knew of the complainants' identities, and blamed her for the information getting out.
However, Commissioner Cambridge found that all four complainants had been "identified to each other".
The coordinator claimed she had been "ambushed" in an initial meeting with the managing director and general manager, and given no adequate chance to respond.
At the meeting, she disclosed that she had discussed other staffing matters in "after-hours socialising", but Commissioner Cambridge, while acknowledging that inappropriate disclosures might constitute misconduct, said it "represented little more than social banter amongst employees".
He noted that it was to the coordinator's credit that during a meeting with her employer and during cross-examination in the tribunal she accepted responsibility for "a certain level of carelessness, or even unprofessionalism" in the way she dealt with enquiries from some employees.
However, Commissioner Cambridge found that the employee's conduct "at its highest" could best be characterised as "work performance deficiencies rather than misconduct".
He said at worst the coordinator's conduct "may have amounted to minor indiscretions and inadvertent slips in professionalism".
Commissioner Cambridge said she had been promoted into a role requiring "her to exercise considerable discretion regarding the disclosure of any confidential information", but without "any formal training or qualifications in any relevant professional discipline, such as human resource management".
"In such circumstances, it would be understandable that some genuine mistakes may be made", he said.
Commissioner Cambridge said the company had dismissed the coordinator on the basis of alleged serious misconduct for the "inadequate and imprecise" reason of "disclosure of confidential HR information".
But after careful examination of the evidence, he couldn't find the coordinator had intentionally been guilty of misconduct or that "she recklessly engaged in conduct which would provide justifiable basis for dismissal, let alone summary dismissal".
Failure to provide reasons "incompetence", "deliberate discourtesy" or both
Commissioner Cambridge criticised the employer for not giving the employee a written notification of the reasons for her dismissal, saying that its failure, " particularly after it had been promised in response to the repeated requests of the [coordinator], represents a very regrettable display of incompetence, or a deliberate discourtesy, or perhaps both".
Commissioner Cambridge awarded the coordinator nine weeks’ pay in compensation ($12,456).