The ‘reasonable management action’ exception in workers’ compensation claims in Tasmania: an analysis of published decisions

Workers who suffer a work-related psychological injury are generally entitled to claim no-fault workers’ compensation, except where an injury was substantially caused by ‘reasonable management action.’ Workers should expect to be safe from psychological injury at work. Employers want to be able to effectively manage both their employees and the risk that managerial action could cause an employee distress. The exception protects employers from a category of claims for workers’ compensation, thereby reducing the financial risks of workplace management that causes psychological injury to workers. However, this means that what ‘reasonable management action’ means is central to the determination of a worker’s entitlement to compensation (where managerial action has contributed to their injury). The need to evaluate management behaviour within context and taking into account all of the surrounding circumstances, makes it difficult to define with certainty. This article focuses on published Tasmanian cases about ‘reasonable management action’ in psychological injury cases, to see how determinations by courts and tribunals have shed light upon the legal meaning of the exceptions. The article explains how the published decisions were identified by the authors. It then explains what the case law illustrates about actions that are capable of being ‘reasonable management action.’ We focus in particular on how multiple causes of psychological injury are weighed, given that there is rarely a single cause of a psychological injury, and what decision makers have said when assessing reasonableness.