Employment Law Assessment - Essay Example

In this analysis, steps that BSG Company can take to prevent legal action from Tony against the company because of the events that occurred have been recommended. This case involves HR issues, as well as, legal issues. First, it should be noted that both employers and employees have a shared responsibility to ensure that everything is alright in working practices and working conditions, as well as, other areas of working life. These areas include grievances, health and safety at the workplace.

Employers owe a legal duty of care to their employees (Gennard & Judge, 2005, p, 378). It is expressive that Tony has an injury to mental health because he has not been reporting to work for four weeks due to stress associated with the ridicule he has been going through at work, after he was nicknamed the ‘BSG Smurf”. Therefore, the legal issue in relation to this situation is that BSG Limited has failed to fulfil its duty, as an employer, of ensuring health and safety at the workplace for Tony, as one of the company’s employees.

Instead, Tony has been subjected to harassment from fellow employees, and the company has not taken any reasonable steps to stop this behaviour, in spite of the fact that this has been going on for a period of four weeks. It is imperative to note that harassment is prohibited both in criminal and civil law (Groenendijk, Guild, & Minderhoud, 2003, p, 181). Employers should guarantee a healthy and safe working environment for their employees is healthy and safe, as outlined in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (ACAS, 2012, p, 3).

Therefore, employers should ensure that there is a code of practice enforcing discipline, which employees should follow. The BSG HR has failed to ensure that discipline is observed by all employees to prevent unacceptable behaviour towards other employees, which may cause harm. As a result of Mickey’s behaviour and other employees at the Guildford BSG garage, Tony is suffering from stress. Furthermore, according to the Law of Tort, individuals have a duty not to act in ways that may cause physical or mental harm to others.

Tort of Negligence in employment law requires or places a duty on employers to ensure the safety of employees (Mothersole & Ridley, 1999, p, 512). According to Gennard & Judge (2005, p, 378), stress levels that are allowed in the place of work is not regulated or controlled by specific statute. As a result, general doctrines that apply in addressing personal injury claims are used to address issues of work related stress. In law, mental health injury such as stress is treated just like physical health injury (Gennard & Judge, 2005, p, 378).

Employers are generally responsible in the law for the acts of their employees, unless the employers can show that they took reasonably practical steps to prevent the employee carrying out the harassment from doing so (Davies, 2010, p, 68). It a high test for employers to show that indeed they took steps, which were practically reasonable to stop harassment. Employers are responsible for the unacceptable, harassment activities of their employees, if the victim proves that there was a course of two or more occasions of harassment that caused harm, and the perpetrator must have known or ought to have known the conduct amounted to harassment, as per the provisions of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (Davies, 2010, p,