With the holiday season fast approaching, now is an ideal time for employers to consider how to prevent a Christmas party disaster and HR headaches after office celebrations!
Even though Christmas parties often occur away from the workplace and outside of working hours, employers still have a responsibility for the health, safety and wellbeing of their staff. Failing to meet these responsibilities can have serious legal implications. These include claims of bullying and sexual harassment, as well as issues associated with worker compensation, termination of employment and potential workplace health and safety violations.
Work Christmas parties are notorious for alcohol-fuelled incidents, especially inappropriate behaviour such as unwelcome hugging, kissing or touching and suggestive comments or jokes. Failure to take reasonable steps to prevent or mitigate the risk of such conduct during the function may result in the business being held vicariously liable.
What are reasonable steps to prevent discrimination and harassment?
- Implementing written anti-discrimination and harassment policies which are appropriate and practical for your business.
- Providing training during inductions and regular refresher training on policies
- Foster a ‘speak up’ culture and encourage and/or require staff to come forward if they witness questionable conduct. Ensure you properly investigate complaints and follow disciplinary processes if applicable.
Tips for preparing for the festive season
Before the function
- Update policies: Review workplace policies to ensure they are up-to-date and easily accessible, including clear consequences for inappropriate behaviour at work functions.
- Communicate expectations: Send an email reminding all employees about key workplace policies and emphasising appropriate behaviour. This includes policies related to conduct, sexual harassment, bullying, drugs and alcohol and social media. Also, make sure to communicate any policy changes to your workforce and ensure they receive appropriate training on the policy contents.
- Check the venue: Confirm that the venue complies with responsible service of alcohol guidelines.
- Consider surveillance: Enquire about access to surveillance footage after the event in case there is a need to investigate an incident.
- Confirm event timing: Set an end time for the function and advise all staff in writing. Unless you want to extend your duties into the early hours of the morning, clearly advise all staff that any after-party isn’t a sanctioned work function and that all staff must leave the premises at the end of the official event.
During the function
- Manage alcohol consumption: Incidents at Christmas parties are often fuelled by alcohol. Allowing all employees unhindered access to alcoholic drinks is very risky. It’s crucial to monitor responsible service of alcohol and confirm that there is appropriate oversight. Ensure that plenty of food and non-alcoholic drinks are available.
- Assign monitors: Appoint a person/s during the function to monitor alcohol consumption and behaviour of staff (particularly severely intoxicated employees) and any other safety issues that arise. This person/s should (ideally) abstain from alcohol throughout the party.
- Safe travel arrangements: Make sure employees have safe travel to and from the event.
- Announce the end: Ideally, make an announcement at the end of the function so that everyone knows the event has formally ended. Referring and/or contributing to any continuing celebrations may extend an employer’s liability. For example, it can be difficult to establish that an after-party was an outside employment relationship.
After the function
- Address complaints properly: You will need to fast-track an investigation into the incident to ensure memories of an alleged misconduct are still fresh and relevant staff/witnesses are around before they go on leave for the holiday period. Critically, if misconduct may warrant a dismissal, employers must follow correct procedure. For example:
- conducting a thorough investigation;
- obtaining views of the allegedly offending employee; and,
- forming a view on whether the alleged behaviour actually occurred.
Otherwise, an employer may be at risk of an unfair dismissal claim, commonly on the basis that the employer didn’t afford procedural fairness in dismissing an employee.
2. Monitor social media: Keep an eye on social media posts if possible, to mitigate any potential harm to the company’s reputation from inappropriate photos or comments
Talk to Coleman Greig’s Employment Law team about how you can prioritise the health, safety and welfare of your employees and prevent a Christmas party disaster this festive season.
