Managers can be held personally liable for damage to the mental health of subordinates, while companies which use "pressure management" can be sued by stressed workers, a conference organised by the EAP Institute heard last week.
Mr Maurice Quinlan, director of the EAP Institute in Waterford, describes pressure management where managers place "excessive demands on subordinates for results" as a "gross abuse of power".
Employees can feel that "if they object their employment prospects will be at risk". But the company itself and its managers who neglect the mental health of employees face an increasing risk of litigation.
Dr Mona O'Moore, a senior lecturer in the department of education at Trinity College, defines pressure management as setting unrealistic parameters within an eight-hour day: "I'm sure there will be increasing litigations once people cop on that this is a breach of the duty of care."
She warns that managers who adopt the approach: "If you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen", leave themselves open to litigation. "You can get away with a lot, but when the employee cracks or complains that he is suffering, that is where management has to sit up and take note. If they do not they are culpable.
"Once management is alerted, the onus is on them to change the working conditions. . . If they say `Oh, you're being too sensitive', they're walking right into a trap. They've been told and they've done nothing."
She warns that managers must try to accommodate a suffering worker's needs: "If you just put the onus on to the employee to change, you risk being judged to be in breach of the duty of care. It's the impact on the individual that matters. It's all about individualised management how well you know your workers. The bottom line is that you show respect."
Ms Deborah Spence, a solicitor in the litigation department of A&L Goodbody in Dublin, confirms that in Irish law, health and welfare extends to the mental well-being of employees. The definition of personal injury in the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 1989 includes any work-related disease or impairment of a person's mental condition.
She points out that the 1989 Act "imposes personal liability not only on directors and officers of a company in the event of corporate liability" but also on the manager who neglected his or her duty of care to the employee.
Any manager can be held personally liable for an employee's work-related mental ill-health. As the Act puts it: ". . . (any manager) as well as the body corporate shall be guilty of that offence and shall be held liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly".
She says that under common law employers owe a duty of care to each employee "as an individual".
Employers and managers must take on board "the individual's particular personal make-up" in caring for their mental and physical health.
An employer can be judged as negligent and liable to the employee if he or she does not take steps to eliminate a risk to the physical or mental health of an individual employee about which the employer knows or "ought to know".
Employers or managers can have to pay damages for: distress, grief and inconvenience; lost earnings; future loss of earnings until retirement; repayment of medical bills; provision for future medical expenses and legal costs.
Mr Eric Bradshaw, a Dublin-based solicitor, agrees that managers can be found personally responsible for damage to the mental health of employees if they failed to act having been advised of an employee's mental health issue. If a person's managerial style is having a serious detrimental effect on an employee's mental health that manager must respond to the employee's needs.
He emphasises that the company can be held to have "vicarious liability" because of the duty owed by the company to the employee but he adds: "I don't think they'll be held liable on the first (mental) breakdown. They have to be seen to have known and done nothing."
Evidence that a court could use against a manager includes an employee's sickness record or medical record showing the employee's inability to cope.
Even if other employees do not respond with mental ill-health to a particular managerial style or workload, that is no excuse and no legal defence for a manager to adopt the approach that it's an individual employee's problem. Mr Bradshaw emphasises that any manager has "to look at the individual, subjective health" of each employee.