so let's talk about evidence in employment disputes
employees come to me all the time with disputes with their employer and they may have
brought a claim to the wrc or the labor court or they may be thinking about it
and in the discussion in the review of the situation with me in the consultation we
look at what they're claiming we'll also look at the prospects of winning and in order to
assess the prospects of winning we have to look at the evidence an employee or anybody any person
involved in a dispute can make any sort of an assertion or an allegation or a claim but the
claim or the case will only be won if the claim if the assertion if the proposition is proven
that gives rise to a question of evidence what is evidence employees then who tell me for example
that they've been bullied in the workplace say they can prove it that they've kept a notebook
or they have emails that they sent and so on but you must be able to distinguish and differentiate
between keeping contemporaneous notes for yourself for your own aid memoir as it were and evidence
so you sending evidence or an employee sending evidence to the employer about something
is really only evidence of the email being sent if indeed it was an email it doesn't actually prove
what was claimed in the email it did prove you sent an email but that's as far as it
goes from an evidential basis likewise it's a good idea for anybody who's being bullied
in the workplace to keep a notebook keep a notebook of all the allegations
or the incidents the dates the times when somebody did something that or when the bully did something
that is critically important and it's obviously very very useful later on then when you go to
put forward your claim to the wrc or wherever else you might end up but again keeping that
notebook is a notebook for you it's a notebook which will be of great assistance in helping you
put together your claim your assertion but it won't of itself prove anything simply because
the fact that you made a notebook or you made a note simply is proof that you made a note
now maybe if you do it often enough it'll have some
persuasive effect in so far as somebody might say well unless that person was completely
lunatic or raving they wouldn't be keeping all these notes but you without been some smoke
without fire etc etc but the bottom line is it is only evidence of you having made a notebook or
made a note so you do need to be aware mindful of the difference between making notes and sending
emails and sending letters perhaps and making the mistake of claiming that this proves x y or z it
may not prove x y or z it may only prove that you actually sent a letter or an email or made a note
so you do need to distinguish between making notes for your own cases where and to assist with you
giving evidence perhaps later on and to gather all the facts and so on you need to distinguish
between that and hard evidence evidence would be for example if somebody else said yes i saw him
bullying her or i saw her bullying him or just written evidence of it like an email that would be
or see series of emails for example from one person to another
which would be showing evidence of bullying behavior but you're unlikely to get that type of
evidence unless somebody is very foolish in sending their emails
anyway i hope you um can distinguish between the two i hope you find this video useful and
if you do i would appreciate if you gave it the thumbs up down below thanks a lot you