Email from home gets
employee sacked.
Email, sent from home,
outside of work hours, results in sacking
This case happened in the UK but
could it happen in Australia? Perhaps this case should be a lesson to employees anywhere
Mr Gosden was a care worker
working with drug users inside Moorland Prison (UK). He sent an email containing offensive comments, accompanied by
images of naked women, from his home computer to a work colleague's home computer, outside working
hours.
The email concluded: "It is your duty to pass this on!" The
colleague forwarded the email to another colleague who worked at the prison. The email chain came to the
attention of the prison, which instituted an internal investigation.
Mr Gosden's co-worker then forwarded the email on to another colleague at the prison
and so the email entered the prison service's system. Mr Gosden was dismissed following a disciplinary hearing but
argued that the dismissal was unfair because he had sent the email from his personal email address outside of
working hours. The tribunal disagreed. Although he sent the email from home, it clearly stated that it should be
passed on and so he should reasonably have expected it to have been forwarded. The tribunal concluded that a
reasonable employer would be entitled to conclude that Mr Gosden had committed an act of gross misconduct that
could damage the company's reputation or integrity and so the decision to dismiss was therefore within the band of
reasonable responses.

In view of the increasing use of social media and to avoid debate over privacy
issues, employers should ensure that internet usage policies make it clear that employees should not send offensive
emails, or similar communications, inside or outside the workplace and that disciplinary action could result if
they do.
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