Employers have the ability to regulate their employees’ behaviour outside of work hours and will increasingly move to exercise this, according to insights shared at a recent roundtable event hosted by executive search firm GRMSearch (GRM).

Glen Bartlett, principal of Bartlett Workplace Lawyers said Australian courts and tribunals have been increasingly willing to allow employers to exercise their right to supervise their employees' private conduct in certain circumstances.

“Any behaviour can be regulated, as long as there is sufficient connection between what it is you are looking to regulate and the potential for damage to the employer’s reputation or the employee’s ability to carry out work…An employee’s behaviour does not have to be illegal for it to be damaging to an organisation, and many companies are now seeking legal counsel in the development of written, enforceable policies to regulate employee conduct outside of work hours,” said Mr Bartlett.

Paul Garth, Managing Director of GRMSearch in Australia, said that the regulation of employee behaviour outside of work was a topic he was seeing a lot of interest in – both from human resource departments and from lawyers.

“It is widely accepted that employee conduct during work hours is subject to the standards set and maintained by the employer, and that any breach of these standards comes with relative consequences…There is far less clarity and a lot of interest, however, in options for the regulation of employee conduct outside of work, particularly as this still very much has the potential to impact an organisation’s reputation,” said Mr Garth.  

Speaking about this topic, independently of the conference, Fiona Coombe, Director of Legal and Regulatory Research at Staffing Industry Analysts said:“:  Whilst“Whilst employers have the right to regulate their employee’s behaviour outside work there must be a link between the actions of the employee, and the business, or their ability to do their work for the business. This right needs to be exercised fairly and starts with written policies, as to what is or is not acceptable conduct, which are communicated clearly to the staff”.

GRM, an executive search firm specialising in the legal, compliance, insurance, banking and asset management sectors, hosted the roundtable in Melbourne attended by General Counsels and HR Managers.