An employer's duty of care to avoid psychiatric injury to an employee is informed by the contractual obligations the employee has undertaken, and in the absence of warning signs, the employer is entitled to assume the employee is capable of performing those duties. Complaints about workload that relate to industrial relations problems (inability to implement changes within desired timeframes) rather than health do not constitute warning signs of psychiatric injury risk. Where an employee holds himself out as an experienced professional capable of the role, and is paid a commensurate salary, the employer is not required to anticipate psychiatric breakdown from performance of the contracted duties. Alleged oral promises made during pre-contractual negotiations that are inconsistent with or absent from the written contract of employment are unlikely to be characterised as promissory.
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