Lawyer issues warning to employees about work group chats after worker sacked for using one

A lawyer from Australia has issued an urgent warning to employees who use work group chats to communicate, adding that they may be sacked for using them.

We all love a good group chat, don't we?

Chatting with the girls about potential outfits, summer plans and filling them in on our day.

Basically using it as a way to offload our inner monologue.

It's all fine and dandy to do so with your out of work friends - but it could lead to a brutal firing if you make some work besties and decide to make a group chat.

Roxanne Hart, from Hart & Co Lawyers, has issued the warning in a TikTok video, after learning of a hotel bartender from Sydney being fired due to her messages in a group chat.

For context, the unnamed woman trusted those in the group chat, thinking she was among loyal friends.

She used the group chat to vent about her lack of shifts and expressed disdain for those in charge, and attempted to rally other employees to speak out.

It seems not everyone in the chat was tight-lipped, as bosses caught wind of the venting.

They pulled her in for a meeting and told her that should it continue, she'd lose her job.

The woman, believing she'd identified the rat, made another group chat with less colleagues - but it seems they couldn't resist dobbing her in and management were once again informed.

The trusting woman was then sacked - for her comments in the chat, and a 'decline in her work standards and behaviour'.

When the employee filed a unfair dismissal case which was unsuccessful.

Fair Work said of the decision: "There is no sensible basis for describing the group as a private group chat.

"As a person working in a supervisory capacity, and who had been instructed to work together and not question management decisions, the actions of the Applicant are all the more unacceptable."

Ouch.

Hart told Yahoo Finance: "Sometimes employees will do things outside of work that have a sufficient connection to their work.

"By engaging in those acts, they can put their employer into disrepute and breach that duty to act in good faith. So a classic example is the work group chat."

She added: "These are all like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp group chats. If you do it on the employer's systems, they've got even better grounds to terminate you because it's probably a bit more obvious that you're in breach of their tech and communication policies.

"If they've heard about it, then maybe they may say, 'Look, show us what you said otherwise we can assume this is true', and you'll have to show them if you want to keep your job."

Noted.