The PIP was live and a show-cause meeting loomed - then she hit send on her resignation
A care worker resigned the day before her show-cause meeting, then told the Fair Work Commission she was forced out. It disagreed.
In a decision handed down on June 19, 2026, the Fair Work Commission dismissed a general-protections claim from a former Care Advisor, finding she resigned voluntarily and was never dismissed by her employer, Proveda Ltd.
The case is a tidy walk-through of a scenario HR teams know well: a performance plan, a disciplinary process, a resignation, and a fight afterward over what really happened.
The worker started with Proveda in March 2024. By July 2025 she was on a performance improvement plan covering data accuracy, communication, time management and collaboration, with fortnightly check-ins. Then the stakes rose. In October, Proveda sent her a letter with three allegations it said were more serious than the PIP issues - a failure to follow workplace health and safety procedures, "inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour towards colleagues," and "interfering with colleagues' workflow and data integrity" - and moved them into a formal disciplinary track.
She went on sick leave, and the disciplinary meeting slid to November 12. She attended with a union officer and put in a written response. The next day, Proveda said it had formed a preliminary view that her conduct amounted to ongoing and serious breaches and called her to a show-cause meeting on November 17 to explain why she should keep her job.
She resigned first. In her evidence, she said her manager had told her on her return from sick leave that she hadn't been expected back and that "Christine was given your role two days ago," then didn't speak to her for two days. The employer's evidence was different: it said no one had been engaged to do her job at that point, and that the manager likely hadn't expected her in because her medical certificate covered that day. The worker said she felt ostracised and, on Sunday, November 16, emailed her resignation. The email named no notice period.
What followed became its own dispute. Proveda called her the next morning, said it would pay her leave in lieu of notice, and asked for her equipment back. Her union then emailed to confirm her last day was that day, with two weeks' pay in lieu. She later said the union's email didn't match her instructions - but she didn't flag that until she filed her claim.
The Commission's reasoning is where the value sits for practitioners. Under section 386 of the Fair Work Act, a resignation is only a dismissal if the employer meant to end the job, or if ending it was the probable result of the employer's conduct, leaving the worker no real choice. The Commission found the worker genuine and credible, and accepted she was under real work-related stress. But it held the medical evidence didn't link that stress to unreasonable conduct - performance and disciplinary processes are inherently stressful and can be entirely legitimate.
Two silences hurt her case. She never told Proveda she was struggling, so it had no way of knowing she felt cornered when her resignation arrived. And she never raised a grievance about the manager's alleged treatment until she got to the Commission. There was also no evidence the employer had sanctioned that alleged conduct, which would have been needed to pin it on Proveda.
On the show-cause process, the Commission leaned on earlier authority: telling an employee their job is at risk during an investigation is not, by itself, a forced resignation. And on notice, because her resignation set no period, the Commission found Proveda hadn't imposed an early end date - it had settled two weeks' notice through the union it reasonably believed was speaking for her.
The takeaway under the law is not that PIPs and show-cause processes are risk-free. It is that a fair, documented process - one the employee doesn't challenge in real time - can hold up even when the employee is genuinely distressed and later says they felt they had no choice. The application was dismissed. Because the jurisdictional objection was upheld, the Commission did not go on to decide the underlying general-protections claims.
