who is responsible for anger management therapy when an employee needs it?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

This is a question about an unfolding situation involving the behavior of a couple of professional dancers on Strictly Come Dancing (the UK version of Dancing With the Stars). Last year, one contestant complained about the behavior of her pro partner (Pro A) towards her. Because she’s been publicly vocal about it, the BBC hasn’t been able to sweep it under the carpet and had to be seen to be taking action. As a result, they conducted an investigation into the behavior of all the pros last year and one other pro (Pro B) was suddenly fired in the last few days.

Based on newspaper reports from “sources” (which may or may not be accurate), when reviewing the training footage during this investigation, Pro B was seen behaving in a manner so egregious towards his celeb partner that it apparently brought the observers to tears. Said behavior allegedly included kicking and hitting her and spitting at her — and possibly more we haven’t heard about.

More information has come out gradually — which, again, may or may not be accurate. At this point in time, the general public has no way to assess this.

At first, reports implied this behavior only came to light when the general review began due to the behavior of Pro A. Then it was reported that a junior member of the production team had seen worrying behavior by Pro B at some point during the course of the last season but didn’t feel able to report it. Then we heard that two warnings had been issued, although it wasn’t specified (only implied) that these warnings were issued to Pro B. Then we heard that Pro B had asked for assistance with anger management after receiving at least one warning but that had been refused — with the implication being that it was because the BBC didn’t feel it was their responsibility to provide this. He’s apparently considering suing the BBC because they didn’t provide this support.

In short, we have a man in a pressured and stressful job, who has anger issues. He’s old enough to know that hitting, kicking, and spitting are unacceptable behavior towards another person. He’s aware that he has anger issues and he since doesn’t have to account for every minute of the day to the BBC (we’re aware that plenty of couples take plenty of breaks during training) he could simply remove himself from the room until he calms down. There’s also nothing to stop him accessing anger management therapy by himself. He comes across as completely unrepentant and appears to have abdicated responsibility to the BBC.

But what if he’d lost it with a random stranger, for example, during an argument over a parking spot at the supermarket, and had assaulted them? I wonder if he would be blaming the BBC for this. We know that Strictly/DWTS is high-pressure and stressful for the couples, but at what point ethically and morally (not legally because this is the UK, not the U.S.) is it the employer’s responsibility to provide help with anger management and at what point is it the employee’s own responsibility to look elsewhere for the assistance they need?

Two big caveats: I haven’t been following this situation and don’t know anything about it, nor can I comment on UK law. But since the questions you’re asking could come up in any workplace, I can offer some general thoughts.

It’s not an employer’s responsibility to provide or fund anger management therapy. It’s reasonable, and in some cases wise, for an employer to tell an employee that if they want to keep their job, they’ll need to seek help for anger management, at the employee’s own expense and on their own time.

It’s also 100% okay if the employer skips that and simply fires the person, because kicking, hitting, and spitting are egregious enough that they don’t require a second chance.

In fact, by offering a second chance, the employer would be risking that other employees will again be kicked, hit, spit upon, or otherwise abused, unless there’s going to be very close supervision in place. I’d argue that the biggest obligation the employer has in this situation is to their other employees. They’re not obligated to provide anger management therapy, but they’re absolutely obligated to keep this kind of behavior out of their workplace, whatever that takes. They might decide that means they’ll fund the therapy if they want to keep the employee badly enough, but that would be about their obligation to their other employees, not to the problem person. (And again, they’re not obligated to pursue that path at all — and if they did, they’d need to monitor things closely for quite some time afterwards to ensure the problems don’t recur. Anger management isn’t an overnight cure.)

Frankly, I don’t know why an employer would choose to go the anger management route at all. This is a person who kicked, hit, spit upon other people. Just fire him.

And then look into what’s going on in the work environment that apparently allowed two people to behave like this, and people who witnessed it to be afraid to report it. The problem goes beyond Pro A and Pro B.