A cleaner who failed to regularly clock on and off via an employer app has had her sacking upheld by a tribunal.
Anarieta Virisilla argued before the Fair Work Commission in Melbourne she was unfairly dismissed from her job at Mermaid Cleaning Services, where she worked from May 2020 to October 2021.
Ms Virisilla said her dismissal was unfair because she was not properly trained on how to use the HumanForce app on her smartphone and said it often did not work.
When it failed to work, she would send a message to her boss, attaching a screenshot of the error message and later confirm with them the hours she worked.
She said on most or all times she complained about this to HR, she was offered no support.
Eventually she received further training on the app in March 2021 but this only lasted 15 minutes.
Mermaid Cleaning told the commission Ms Virisilla was sacked seven months later after she “persistently failed” to clock on and off using the app.
The employer said she had been taught how to use it and failed regularly to log her hours at the start and end of each shift, despite being required to.
Ms Virisilla claimed she was singled out as there were many employees who did not use the app.
FWC Deputy President Alan Colman accepted Ms Virisilla had been shown how to uxjmtzywse the app when she started the job and the training was sufficient to allow her to know how to use it.
She was successfully using the app after starting the job but records showed she failed to use it about two thirds of her entire rostered shifts, he said.
Mr Colman said it was a condition of Ms Virisilla’s employment she clock on and off at the start and at the end of each shift and there were no faults with the app, nor other workers who had similar consistent problems.
“Ms Virisilla was not diligent in her use of the application. The company clearly warned her that this failure consistently to clock on and off was unacceptable,” he said in his decision last month.
“In my opinion, the company had a valid reason to dismiss Ms Virisilla.
“By not using the application consistently, Ms Virisilla created a large amount of unnecessary administrative work for other people. This was not sustainable.
“The company was very patient with her. In the end, its patience understandably ran out.”
