Her bosses called her 'slippery' on a voicemail they thought was private
An accidental voicemail let a health-care worker hear her own manager and director describe her as "slippery" and "unreliable." Her employer called it a breach of its respectful workplace policy. Her claim for mental-injury compensation was still denied.
British Columbia's Workers' Compensation Appeal Tribunal released the decision on June 11, 2026, with Vice Chair Christopher Ramsay denying the worker's appeal. The worker, an infection control practitioner represented by her union, had asked for compensation for a mental disorder she traced to bullying and harassment across 2023 and 2024. Ramsay confirmed an earlier Review Division ruling that had turned her down.
The voicemail at the centre of the claim
The worker had booked Oct. 8, 2024, off after her spouse's surgery and was allowed to work from home the next day. On Oct. 9 a call went to her voicemail and recorded her manager and director discussing her, calling her "slippery" and "unreliable" and doubting that her spouse was really ill.
The employer investigated. The manager said she had been speaking privately with the director about performance reviews when the worker was phoned partway through, leaving the voicemail by accident. The employer found the incident breached its respectful workplace policy, and the decision records that the director was remorseful.
The worker submitted that the voicemail was the heart of her claim and that her symptoms started after she heard it. She argued the comments were intimidating, humiliating or degrading, and that they led her to recast earlier events in a harsher light. She also contended the voicemail may have been left deliberately.
Grievances going back to 2023
Speaking with a Board officer in January 2025, the worker described incidents going back to 2023. She said a change to vacation booking left staff without their preferences despite seniority, that a research project she submitted was accepted and then taken back, and that she was handed extra work she believed was retaliation for complaining.
She also said her manager monitored her closely, taking photographs, checking her whereabouts and calling near the end of shifts. She was told to use taxi vouchers instead of her own car, was not reimbursed for materials on a model she made for an October event, and, while on sick leave that November, was asked to collect her belongings or have them shipped.
A person in the employer's human resources department gave the Board a different account. She said the vacation process applied to everyone, that the worker was removed from the project over ongoing performance concerns, that checking on staff fell within management's rights, and that the belongings question was meant to be supportive.
Where rudeness ends and bad faith begins
Ramsay accepted the events happened in some form but found none were traumatic and none cleared the bar the law sets. Under the Workers Compensation Act, a mental disorder is compensable only when it follows a traumatic event or a work-related stressor severe enough to count, and employer decisions made in good faith on generic processes are left out. He cited the recent Pickering ruling, which narrowed that exclusion.
On the everyday complaints, he found the scheduling, monitoring, workload and taxi arrangements were either ordinary workplace tension or legitimate management. The human resources account showed she had not been treated differently from others. As he put it, "supervision and the division of labour without some sort of bad faith on behalf of the employer is something the labour relations exclusion would apply to."
The voicemail itself drew the most analysis. Ramsay called the word choice "rude and thoughtless" but found no intent to humiliate, since the conversation was private and reached only the worker. The managers' questioning of her leave, he held, was a management matter the exclusion captured. "There is not a requirement that the employer act perfectly," he wrote, before denying the appeal and confirming the Review Division decision.
