Managing bullying and harassment at work

Work environments where bullying and harassment occur are known to have greater stress, as well as relationship problems, higher turnover, lower morale, lower productivity, and higher incident and accident statistics. Because bullying and harassment directly impact employee safety and well-being, employers are directly responsible for stamping out this type of negative behaviour. In this article, we’ll address how to do this so you can protect your business and your people from these serious types of workplace risks.

What is bullying and harassment?

According to Worksafe, bullying and harassment in the workplace is defined as: “repeated unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or group of workers that can lead to physical or psychological harm”. ‘Repeated’ means the behaviour occurs more than once, directly targeting the same employee, but doesn’t mean that it has to be the exact same behaviour each time.

To clarify, bullying and harassment aren’t things like:

• One-off occasional instances of less than ideal behaviour.
• Setting performance standards – even high ones – or managing performance.
• Constructive feedback or performance reviews.
• Normal discipline, correction, guidance or management practices.
• Personality clashes or differences of opinion that do no escalate.

So what is considered bullying and harassment?

Behaviours that can be bullying and harassment can be both personal and/or work related in nature.

Examples of personal harassment can be attacking or belittling a person’s:

• Race;
• Beliefs;
• Gender or sexual orientation;
• Physical size; and

Work related bullying and harassment can be actions such as:

• Setting impossible deadlines or workloads.
• Destructive criticism.
• Consistently not giving due credit.
• Allocating meaningless work.
• Removing responsibility for no good reason.
• Treating similar situations differently.
• Refusing leave for no good reason.

Dealing with workplace bullying

Employers are required to ensure the health and well-being within the workplace and are directly responsible for dealing with bullying and harassment. This isn’t just the management of an incident, but the creation of a safe and positive culture that doesn’t tolerate bullying or harassment. They should do this through a number of important things:

• Leading by example.
• Providing training and information.
• Establishing a consistent culture of zero tolerance.

Employers should use policies to ensure all employees understand what is expected of them. A bullying and harassment policy should setout:

• What behaviour will and won’t be tolerated.
• How to make a complaint.
• How complaints will be handled.
• What consequences might follow such behaviour.

Bullying and harassment can happen at any level or between different levels of an organisation, in any direction. It usually involves employees but can also occur with customers, suppliers or even visitors. It’s often not directly visible to leadership, because it’s a covert strategy, and unless it’s reported directly, leadership can be completely unaware of its existence. At worst, it can even be allowed or perpetrated by junior leaders. Overall, managing bullying and harassment at work is the employer’s responsibility to ensure it’s being dealt with appropriately, to protect the health and well-being of all employees.

How can Citation HR help?

Citation HR Software comes with hundreds of legally sound, best-practice templates, documents, and policies to help you tailor and update your bullying and harassment policy. Should a claim arise, our experienced and friendly workplace experts at Citation HR will guide and advise you via the 24/7 HR Advice Line. Want to learn more about how a Citation HR subscription can protect your business and your people? Contact us today.