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When your own WHS manager is at risk!!
In Boyd v Roadworx Surfacing Pty Ltd FedCFamC2G 101, an Illawarra contractor based around West Dapto / Kembla Gorge found out the hard way what happens when your WHS manager becomes the biggest risk on site.
This is not a small backyard outfit. Roadworx Surfacing Pty Ltd is a serious surfacing and asphalt contractor. They held ISO accreditations, used Smarter Safety software, and had a CEO (Stephen Gillies) who actually cared (enough to front court and give evidence). What they didn’t expect was that their own WHS manager – Melissa Boyd – would almost blow up their safety system, vendor relationships and internal management in less than a year.
The hire: February 2024
In February 2024, Roadworx hires Melissa Boyd as WHS / QA Compliance Manager/Officer, based at West Dapto Road, reporting into the COO and working closely with the CEO.
Her job description? To:
- “Develop, maintain and oversee a consistent Work, Health, Safety and Quality Management and Compliance culture across the Roadworx Group.”
- “Maintain appropriate policies and standards.”
In other words: she was supposed to be the grown‑up in the room on WHS and compliance.
What followed looked nothing like that.
Going rogue on the safety system (June–August 2024)
Roadworx used Smarter Safety, an integrated WHS/quality management system they’d had since 2009. Christine Morgan at Smarter Safety was effectively the gatekeeper of their online procedures, risk registers and audit trail.
Melissa’s brief included recommending system changes; but only after CEO sign‑off. She knew this. She even wrote that once policies were approved by Stephen and the COO, she’d send them to Smarter Safety.
Then she did the opposite.
- 17 June 2024 – Unapproved policy upload:
She emailed Smarter Safety asking them to “update/add” new WHS/CoR policies, without waiting for the CEO’s approval, even though she knew he had to sign off first. - 24–26 June 2024 – Nuking the vendor relationship:
She wrote to Christine Morgan demanding Smarter Safety “recheck all policies, procedures and documents” and ensure the system was current and compliant – effectively suggesting they weren’t doing their job.
When Morgan pushed back and asked for evidence upload so she could run an internal desktop audit, Melissa dismissed a fresh audit as a “waste of your time” and then lobbed a grenade:
“We have improvement requests from our audits dating back four years that still haven’t been actioned… That is not a good representation of our organisation to the auditor.”
Morgan responded by attaching the Improvement Log showing everything signed off since 2018, and then wrote to Melissa – copying the CEO:
- Smarter Safety would not renew support after July 2024.
- She “would not read any further emails” from Melissa.
Gillies later told the court that by this point, he saw that Melissa had put Roadworx in a position where it “could have had no operating system and potentially lost their ISO and safety accreditations.”
- Told to stop contacting them – she kept going:
Gillies instructed that Melissa was not to contact Christine Morgan directly again. He said this was repeated “on multiple occasions”.
By 9 August 2024, she was still emailing Morgan. Morgan forwarded the email to Roadworx saying:
“I will not engage with Melissa in any form. If this is not suitable to you and you no longer wish to avail of our services, please let me know.”
On 12 August 2024, when Melissa went around Morgan and emailed the Smarter Safety support team, Morgan escalated to the CEO:
“Smarter Safety will not be continuing support for Roadworx… We are continuing to have issues with your employee and I will not subject my employees to this person.”
Gillies had to personally ring Morgan and talk her down so Roadworx didn’t lose their WHS system altogether.
Attendance chaos and “unmanageable” behaviour (Illawarra, late 2024)
Roadworx expected Melissa to be based at West Dapto Road and visit other depots (Ingleburn, Montague St Wollongong) as needed for audits.
By November 2024, her new manager, Luke Hulme, had had enough. In an email to HR on 22 November 2024, he wrote:
“Melissa’s attendance at West Dapto Rd over the last 2 months has not been high. I am asked by Managers at my level and the level below on a daily basis as to her whereabouts.”
Gillies told the court:
- Melissa was often working from other locations rather than West Dapto, even when specifically directed to work there.
- Hulme was having “difficulties managing” her.
- Another senior manager, David Smith, refused to manage her because of the issues.
By December 2024, the CEO had decided she was not part of Roadworx’s “long‑term future”.
He told Hulme and Smith something to the effect of:
“Melissa’s employment won’t be long term. I have made a decision to bring her employment to an end and I will be doing this at the start of the new year… I don’t want to put her out of a job just before Christmas.”
The court accepted that the decision to terminate was made in December – before the January fireworks and before any workers comp paperwork went in.
SafeWork NSW, psychosocial risks and a rogue email (January 2025)
Fast‑forward to January 2025, and SafeWork NSW plans to inspect the Montague Street, Wollongong depot after a complaint that Roadworx had no psychosocial policy.
Melissa had previously emailed the CEO saying they needed a Psychosocial Management Policy to comply with WHS laws and ISO standards – a fair point in itself.
But when Gillies suspected she might be behind the complaint, he made a sensible call: have the depot manager Patrick deal with the inspector and tell Melissa she didn’t need to attend.
On 15 January 2025:
- The SafeWork inspector emailed Patrick (copying Melissa) asking for “psychosocial risk management documentation including policies and procedures currently implemented”.
- At 12:16 pm, Melissa replied directly to the inspector (without copying Patrick):
“Roadworx does not have a psychosocial policy or procedure in place.”
That email led to an improvement notice. Roadworx now had a live regulatory issue and their own WHS manager had gone against instructions, taken control of the narrative and effectively hung the business out to dry.
A short time later, she emailed the CEO a long grievance email:
- complaining she’d been excluded from the inspector visit,
- complaining about lack of policies,
- raising WHS and psychosocial concerns, and
- foreshadowing workers compensation and potential “escalation” if things weren’t handled the way she wanted.
Gillies, having already decided in December to end her employment for performance and conduct reasons, moved.
Two terminations and a drowned laptop (January 2025)
- 16 January 2025 – termination with notice:
Roadworx issued a letter terminating Melissa’s employment with four weeks’ pay in lieu of notice for poor performance and conduct – based on the decision taken in December. - Return of company property – and water inside the laptop:
When she returned her company laptop, Roadworx IT found water inside the device, and the machine was non‑functional. Gillies believed it had been deliberately damaged and saw it as serious misconduct. - 21 January 2025 – termination without notice:
A second letter was issued terminating her without notice, cancelling the payment in lieu of notice on the basis of misconduct (the water‑damaged laptop).
Melissa then filed proceedings in the Federal Circuit and Family Court, claiming:
- she’d been dismissed for exercising workplace rights (WHS complaints, workers comp, SafeWork contact),
- she’d been dismissed while temporarily absent due to illness/injury, and
- Roadworx had unlawfully required her to pay for work equipment (the laptop).
The CEO’s view on anonymous SafeWork complaints
In his evidence about what happened after termination, Gillies said that following the psychosocial inspection and Boyd’s exit:
“Additional anonymous accusations have been made which would be consistent with threats and blackmail‑type allegations contained in her application for financial recompense… SafeWork NSW are now investigating the sources of these complaints given the impact it has on their resources.”
The court did not make a finding that she definitely made those complaints – but it accepted this was Gillies’ honest view, and it went to his state of mind, not some after‑the‑fact cover story.
The outcome: claims dismissed, employer vindicated
After a two‑day hearing in Parramatta (October 2025), Judge Zipser systematically walked through the evidence:
- He accepted that by December 2024, Gillies had already decided to terminate Melissa for poor performance and conduct: ignoring directions, wrecking the Smarter Safety relationship, poor attendance at West Dapto, and being very hard to manage.
- He accepted that the January SafeWork email and her workers comp talk were not the real reasons for the dismissal – they were background noise layered on top of an already‑made decision.
- He accepted that the water‑damaged laptop justified termination without notice and that Roadworx didn’t breach the Fair Work Act by refusing to pay out the extra notice.
In the end, every one of Melissa’s general protections claims was dismissed. The court made a single clean order:
“The application lodged on 24 March 2025 is dismissed.”