Life is rarely black and white. Any situation arises based on multiple people's actions and a percentage responsibility is attached to each. It becomes difficult where you get a feedback loop as one person's actions impact on another and then the other's subsequent actions feed back in. This seems to be the case in your post.
To take it away from a situation that may be personal to you, say an employee is forced to work under unreasonable stress, becomes either depressed, surly, abusive of substances, or takes sick days when not sick (or any combination of the above). Most people would advocate personal responsibility and say the employee shouldn't be acting like that. But, by that point, the feedback loop is already in effect. I agree the employee should take personal responsibility but it should have been in the first instance. In this case, they need to make their employer aware that their stress level is unreasonable. If the employer refuses to address the situation in any way, it's perfectly reasonable to take legal advice because the share of responsibility is very clear at that point.
It's possible to address it later but much harder and it's much less liable to go well for the employee (or ex-employee) as their actions will be judged at face value, rather than as part of a sequence of events.
Can you hold someone responsible for your failure if this happens?
← View full post
Life is rarely black and white. Any situation arises based on multiple people's actions and a percentage responsibility is attached to each. It becomes difficult where you get a feedback loop as one person's actions impact on another and then the other's subsequent actions feed back in. This seems to be the case in your post.
To take it away from a situation that may be personal to you, say an employee is forced to work under unreasonable stress, becomes either depressed, surly, abusive of substances, or takes sick days when not sick (or any combination of the above). Most people would advocate personal responsibility and say the employee shouldn't be acting like that. But, by that point, the feedback loop is already in effect. I agree the employee should take personal responsibility but it should have been in the first instance. In this case, they need to make their employer aware that their stress level is unreasonable. If the employer refuses to address the situation in any way, it's perfectly reasonable to take legal advice because the share of responsibility is very clear at that point.
It's possible to address it later but much harder and it's much less liable to go well for the employee (or ex-employee) as their actions will be judged at face value, rather than as part of a sequence of events.