The employer asked for medical evidence. She never provided it
A worker's bid to save her job by filing a disability discrimination complaint did not survive its first test in a New South Wales tribunal.
The worker, a claims agent, joined Greenstone Financial Services in April 2026 on a six-month probationary contract. Almost immediately, audits of her work flagged regular errors against the company's key performance indicators. The employer provided coaching support, but the problems continued.
By early August, a formal performance improvement plan was on the table. The PIP - essentially a structured set of targets an underperforming employee must hit within a set timeframe - ran for four weeks, from August 3 to August 31.
Then came the disclosure.
On August 19, midway through the PIP, the worker wrote to her manager revealing she suffered from endometriosis. She acknowledged the condition had contributed to more frequent absences and "may have affected my progress compared to colleagues of similar tenure." She asked the company to consider letting her work from home during flare-ups and whether a flexible roster could be arranged.
The company responded on August 25. It said it would continue reviewing her performance during probation and asked her to provide supporting information from her treating practitioner outlining any functional limitations and recommended adjustments. It said it would then consider what could reasonably be accommodated.
That medical evidence never made it to the Tribunal. In its reasons, the Tribunal noted the worker had not led evidence or made arguments to support her case on either direct or indirect discrimination.
Meanwhile, the PIP reviews kept landing badly. At a review on August 18, the worker was told she had missed a critical KPI for three consecutive months and was tracking below the required target for August. In further meetings on August 20 and 24, the same message came through. On August 21, she made what the decision described as a "critical error" that triggered a compliance breach and a regulatory reporting obligation.
The PIP expired on August 31. By September 4, the company had decided to terminate.
What followed was a scramble. On the morning of September 9, the worker's manager told her she had failed the PIP and that a final decision about her employment was coming. She was invited to a meeting that afternoon but asked to postpone. The company agreed, rescheduling to September 10. The worker then asked for another delay, pushing the meeting to September 14.
On September 10 - between the two postponements - the worker lodged a disability discrimination complaint with Anti-Discrimination NSW. The next day, she applied to the Tribunal for an interim order blocking her employer from terminating her.
On September 14, the company went ahead with the meeting. The termination letter cited "unsatisfactory performance during [her] probation period."
The worker asked the Tribunal either to reinstate her or suspend her on pay while the discrimination complaint was investigated. She argued the employer had dismissed her "genuine requests" for adjustments and denied her the chance to be "assessed holistically." She said she had been "deprived of the equitable adjustments necessary for her to perform [her] role on an equal footing with colleagues who do not manage a chronic illness or disability."
The employer pushed back hard. It submitted the discrimination claim had low prospects of success, arguing that any employee in the same position would have been treated the same way regardless of disability. It said the worker had not provided any evidence that her disability prevented her from meeting the PIP targets "beyond mere assertion."
The company went further: even if the worker could prove discrimination, it argued she could not carry out the core requirements of the role, and that the compliance breach meant reinstatement would put the business and its insurer clients at reputational and financial risk.
The Tribunal applied the standard two-part test for interim relief. First: does the worker have enough of a case to justify the order? Second: does the balance of convenience - essentially, who gets hurt more if the order is or isn't made - favour granting it?
On the first question, the Tribunal was direct. The worker had not clearly stated whether her complaint was based on direct or indirect discrimination, and had not led evidence or made arguments to support either. The Tribunal could not be satisfied she had shown a sufficient likelihood of success.
Even if she had cleared that bar, the balance of convenience would have sunk the application. The Tribunal accepted the worker's family had been financially impacted by the termination. But it weighed that against forcing the employer to reinstate someone who, as the employer submitted, had "repeatedly made errors" despite months of coaching - potentially for years while the complaint worked its way through the system. The employer would not be able to recover wages paid during that period if the worker ultimately lost.
The application was dismissed on November 4, 2026. The underlying discrimination complaint with Anti-Discrimination NSW remains on foot.
For HR teams managing probationary employees, the case is a practical reminder: a disability disclosure mid-performance review does not freeze the process, but how an employer responds to an adjustment request matters. Here, the company asked for medical evidence and said it would consider reasonable accommodations - a response the Tribunal noted without criticism.
