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Bullying: no workplace is immune and employers must be vigilant

By Nareen Young - posted Friday, 12 August 2011


Bullying at work is unlawful and should not be tolerated under any circumstances. It is only inevitable if employers fail to grasp their responsibility to prevent it or if employees think it’s OK to treat each other badly.

Bullying is not new. It has been with us since any of us can remember, from our personal experiences, or from those who are close to us. We see it in all facets of life and it takes many forms – from schoolyard bullying, bad parenting and ugly parent syndrome at kids’ sport to more serious forms like child abuse and domestic violence.

Schools usually strongly discourage bullying and most of us grow up understanding that bullying is wrong. Why is it then that news stories seem to emerge every day of bullying and harassment in the workplace?

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Recent cases of workplace bullying, such as that experienced by cafe worker Brodie Panlock that led to her suicide, have sickened us all, and resulted in changes to the law that make bullying at work a criminal offence in Victoria with prison terms of up to 10 years possible.

But what does bullying behaviour actually look like at work? Bullying is generally defined as repeated, unreasonable behaviour directed towards an employee or group of employees, that creates a risk to health and safety.

Bullying can consist of obvious behaviours like persistent shouting, abuse, swearing, threatening, hitting and physical abuse. It can include humiliating jokes or comments, ‘over the top’ practical jokes or teasing, ‘ganging up’ on someone or interfering with a person’s personal effects or work equipment. It can also include unfair, unconstructive criticism, degrading or impossible work demands, setting impossible time lines, unfairly blocking promotion or training, deliberately withholding information and ignoring or isolating someone.

Estimates of its prevalence in the workplace vary, but one study outlined in the Productivity Commission’s 2010 report on benchmarking occupational health and safety estimated that somewhere between 2.5 million and 5 million Australians experience some aspect of bullying over the course of their working lives.

Diversity Council Australia’s national representative survey of Australian employees, Working for the Future, found that almost 20 per cent reported being bullied by a manager in the preceding year, and 15 per cent by a work mate. Interestingly, employees who are female, Indigenous or who have a disability seem particularly vulnerable to workplace bullying, and these were most notable when looking at incident rates of bullying by co-workers.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were almost twice as likely to report experiencing bullying by co-workers (27 per cent versus 14 per cent). Similar findings were found for people with disabilities – they were more likely to report being bullied by co-workers (22 per cent versus 14 per cent for people without disabilities) and by supervisors (26 per cent versus 18 per cent) – and for women, who were significantly more likely to experience bullying by co-workers than men (17 per cent versus 11 per cent).

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The Productivity Commission estimated costs to business of bullying and harassment are huge at somewhere between $6 and $36 billion per annum.

These costs arise from a multitude of factors including lowered workplace productivity, increased absenteeism, higher staff turnover, legal and compensation costs, and damage to a company's reputation of publicised cases of bullying, not to mention the hidden cost of lost management and employee time in investigating and addressing allegations of bullying.

Then there’s the cost of the health and medical treatment or income support and other government benefits victims may require from a range of psychological and physical illnesses and injuries caused by bullying.

Given the litany of negative impacts that can arise from bullying, it makes sense then that organisations do everything in their power to prevent or minimise the incidence of bullying and harassment.

Employers have a legal responsibility to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent harassment, bullying and discrimination occurring in the workplace. There are many preventative measures they can take to minimise the risk of bullying, harassment or other unlawful behaviour and manage it appropriately when it does occur.

Having up-to-date diversity and EEO policies, grievance procedures and support networks are good first steps. Continual education of staff on these and on their rights and responsibilities at work is also important.

DCA’s Working for the Future research, however, revealed a pressing need to develop an organisational culture in which employees feel able to seek assistance, and to build managerial capability on preventing and responding to inappropriate workplace behaviour in Australian workplaces.

Capability in this area is important given the alarming incident rates of inappropriate behaviour identified by our research, the relatively low use of internal grievance procedures by complainants, and dissatisfaction with how complaints are managed.

Our research found that awareness about policy and process was quite good – approximately two-thirds of complainants knew what to do when they felt they were being bullied. However, only half of complainants raised the issue with someone to get help. Moreover, only about a quarter of complainants who did seek help were happy with how the incident was dealt with.

No workplace is immune from bullying and employers need to be aware of the warning signs. These include high levels of absenteeism (associated with particular shifts/areas), highstaff turnover, increases in grievances, complaints, accidents and stress claims, and negative staff engagement or climate survey results. They can also include more subtle indicators such as employees becoming withdrawn, isolated, unpredictably upset and underperforming.

It’s also important to audit your workplace for key risk factors. WorkSafe Victoria’s Preventing and Responding to Bullying at Work guide suggests five key work environment risk factors that can contribute to bullying. These are organisational change; negative leadership styles; lack of appropriate work systems; poor workplace relationships; and workforce characteristics (e.g. some workers are more vulnerable). Bullying can arise from a number of interrelated risk factors and workplaces should use this as the basis for implementing workplace policy, procedure and training.

Smart employers understand that creating a workplace where people actually want to work, by establishing a culture that respects difference, will produce the greatest business benefits, and this goes way beyond meeting legal obligations to address bad behaviour.

Creating a productive working environment in which everybody feels valued and respected, and where their talents are being fully utilised, should be the ultimate objective. Organisations with a reputation for this will become ‘employers of choice’ and be able to attract and retain the best talent.

Importantly, each of us has to call bad behaviour when we see it and hold people accountable at every point in out daily lives – be it at work, home or in our social lives. Culture will only change over time if every individual changes.

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About the Author

Nareen Young is the CEO of the Diversity Council Australia.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Nareen Young

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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