A person working as an Executive Assistant to one of our SES employees has complained of being under pressure to work long hours. What do I suggest?
It is important here to be able to distinguish between an industrial issue and a harassment issue. The SES employee may well believe that, so long as the arrangements in the agency’s Certified Agreement have not been breached and the work needs to be done, then it is justifiable to request the EA to work long hours. You might, with the EA’s agreement, approach the SES employee, or the issue might be more effectively dealt with by bringing it to the attention of management through the agency’s workplace consultative arrangements. You may wish to put the EA in touch with workplace representatives or raise the matter with them yourself. The long-term solution may be the implementation of workplace policies that recognise family responsibilities. If, on the other hand, the requests to work long hours are accompanied by threats or bullying, then the SES employee may be breaching the Code of Conduct. While you could offer the EA advice on the processes that are available to combat this type
