Workplace Bullying Compensation Australia: Your Three Pathways

What counts as workplace bullying

Under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), workplace bullying is "repeated, unreasonable behaviour by an individual or group of individuals towards a worker or group of workers, that creates a risk to health and safety." Three elements:

• Repeated — a pattern, not a single incident (one-off sexual harassment or assault is a different claim with separate pathways)
• Unreasonable — would be considered unreasonable by a reasonable person in the circumstances. Reasonable management action is excluded.
• Creates risk to health and safety — physical or psychological harm potential, even if not yet realised

Common bullying patterns recognised in Australian decisions:

• Sustained verbal abuse, belittling, public criticism beyond reasonable performance feedback
• Setting impossible deadlines or unreasonable workloads designed to set the worker up to fail
• Exclusion from meetings, team activities, information needed to do the job
• Withholding training, support, or resources that other workers receive
• Spreading malicious rumours, complaints not founded in fact
• Threats of dismissal, demotion, or transfer used as intimidation
• Discrimination on protected attributes (sex, race, disability, age, etc.) — overlapping discrimination/bullying

Three claim pathways compared

Most bullying claimants pursue workers compensation for the financial recovery and (where they've left employment) a general protections claim if there's evidence the bullying led to constructive dismissal.

Workers compensation claim

The primary path for monetary compensation. To succeed, you need to show:

1. You suffer a diagnosable psychological injury (depression, anxiety, PTSD, adjustment disorder)
2. The bullying caused or substantially contributed to that injury
3. The bullying was not "reasonable management action taken in a reasonable way" (which is excluded)

See our psychological injury hub for the state-by-state thresholds and the full claim process.

Fair Work anti-bullying orders

The Fair Work Commission can make orders preventing further bullying — for example, ordering the bully to undertake training, requiring the employer to enforce policies, or restructuring reporting lines so you no longer report to the alleged bully.

Anti-bullying orders do not provide monetary compensation. They are preventative. They are most useful when:

• You're still employed and want the bullying to stop without resigning
• You want a formal record of the bullying for use in a later workers compensation or general protections claim
• The employer has been unresponsive to internal complaints

Once you've left the employment, anti-bullying orders are no longer available to you (the Commission can't make orders against an employer you no longer work for).

General protections claim

Under the Fair Work Act, an employer cannot take "adverse action" against an employee because they exercised a workplace right (e.g. raising a complaint about bullying). Adverse action includes dismissal, demotion, harm in employment, or refusing to employ.

Where you've been dismissed (or constructively dismissed by intolerable bullying that forced you to resign) shortly after raising a bullying complaint, a general protections claim can lie. Compensation can include:

• Lost income (often substantial — extends until reasonable mitigation, sometimes years)
• General damages for hurt, humiliation, distress (often $50,000 – $200,000)
• Penalties payable to you

Tight time limit: 21 days from the dismissal/adverse action to lodge in the Fair Work Commission. Don't sit on it.

Evidence to gather now

Even if you're not ready to claim, start preserving evidence. Once you leave the employment, access to internal systems is gone.

• Email yourself copies of relevant work emails, including hostile messages and any HR complaints you've made
• Save text messages from colleagues — screenshot to your personal phone
• Take photos of any documents showing unreasonable workloads, meetings cancelled without notice, exclusions
• Keep a contemporaneous diary with dates, people, and exactly what was said/done. The contemporaneous nature is what gives it evidentiary weight.
• Note witnesses — colleagues who observed incidents — and their contact details
• Get medical attention early. Treating GP and psychologist records linking your symptoms to workplace stressors are critical.

Time limits — the most expensive thing to miss

• 21 days for general protections claims from dismissal or adverse action
• 6 months (most states) for workers compensation lodgement from the injury date
• While employed for Fair Work anti-bullying orders
• 3 years for negligence-based common-law damages (state-dependent, with extensions for late discovery in some cases)

Some claims interact — pursuing workers compensation doesn't preclude general protections, and vice versa. A specialist will work out the right combination for your facts.