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IT’S TIME TO DEAL WITH WORKPLACE BULLIES DISCUSSION PAPER
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IT’S TIME TO DEAL WITH WORKPLACE BULLIES Introduction Workplace bullying is a very real and insidious problem in many Kiwi organisations. A recent study by CultureSafe New Zealand showed New Zealand had the second-worst rate of workplace bullying in the developed world, with one in five workers afflicted. If it’s not eradicated quickly, bullying can have far reaching consequences in terms of employee health and safety, the legal liability of managers, and workplace productivity. In the past, it has been difficult to identify workplace bullying because of the complex dynamics involved, but a new breed of anonymous workplace surveys is offering progressive managers new ways to pinpoint bullying and deal with workplace bullies. Health and safety law changes have been a major motivator for many managers over the past year. After new regulations came into effect in April 2016 making managers more liable for proactively identifying and mitigating risks, health and safety has been a focus for most Kiwi workplaces. But while physical risks are easy to identify, the risk to people’s emotional and mental wellbeing caused by workplace bullying can be much harder to spot.
“While managers are good at ensuring a workplace is safe from physical hazards, threats to mental health and wellbeing are often overlooked.
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Workplace bullying can come in many forms, from put-downs or ridicule to being singled out and treated differently to peers, to being given impossible tasks that set you up to fail or undervaluing an employee’s contribution to a project.
There seems to be a pervasive idea in New Zealand that psychological harm is less important than physical danger, so while managers are good at ensuring a workplace is safe from physical hazards, threats to mental health and wellbeing are often overlooked.
It happens in public as well as in private, and undermines the victim’s confidence and ability to successfully complete work or interact normally in the work setting. This can lead to anxiety, depression and, at worst, suicide.
Many organisations claim to have a zerotolerance policy toward bullying behaviour, but in practice these policies are often not properly policed or upheld.
CultureSafe New Zealand identified that workplace bullying is often ignored or denied and there’s an attitude that victims should ‘suck it up’ and not make it a big issue.
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Now more than ever it’s crucial for managers to rid workplaces of bullying: the new Health and Safety at Work Act makes bosses liable for fines and even prison if they are deemed culpable for action that results in serious harm or death.
Many organisations claim to have a zero-tolerance policy toward bullying behaviour, but in practice these policies are often not properly policed or upheld.
“Workplace bullying is
Another reason that workplace bullying can be hard to identify is that employees may be scared of repercussions if they came forward to accuse a colleague of bullying behaviour.
often ignored or denied and there’s an attitude that victims should
This is exacerbated when it’s a manager doing the bullying - CultureSafe New Zealand has reported 70 percent of workplace bullying is top-down.
‘suck it up’ and not make it a big
These attitudes need to change. For HR managers that means being proactive in finding out what is really going on in your business, identifying areas of concern, and making changes to remove the problem.
issue.”
It’s important to create a workplace culture in which all staff members feel safe about coming forward - but if that’s not possible, managers need to find other ways to allow their employees to pinpoint problem areas, such as an anonymous employee survey.
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“If it’s not eradicated quickly, bullying can have far reaching consequences in terms of employee health and safety, the legal liability of managers, and workplace productivity.”
I work for a company that promotes the AskYourTeam Continuous Involvement system. Companies using our system have recently uncovered some serious cases of workplace bullying in Kiwi organisations. AskYourTeam is an anonymous employee survey which asks questions about all areas of the business’ performance. The system produces reports that show leaders where to act most urgently to help their people to perform better in their jobs. Among the questions is whether intimidating or bullying behaviour is dealt with fairly and equally throughout the organisation.
Disappointingly this is regularly in the lowest 10 scoring questions for organisations.
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In one of the recent examples, multiple employees gave feedback about a manager who regularly screamed at staff members and behaved inappropriately. The severity and quantity of the comments led the alleged bully to resign on the spot when presented with the survey results. Another staff member accused of bullying had no idea of the serious impact of her actions on her team members, claiming she’d always considered her management style “passionate” but totally acceptable. She has made major progress and is getting coaching and support around her anger management and leadership style. Her first step of apologising to her team generated powerful and immediate progress.
70%
In the other case, a senior leader was identified as bullying a range of people including the company’s CEO.
of workplace bullying is top-down
This had a massive negative impact across the business: employees reported that while they had great passion for their jobs, they were unhappy with the toxic work environment. They said they were staying in their jobs in spite of the work culture, rather than because of it.
CultreSafe New Zealand
The size of the problem forced the CEO to act and along with the HR manager, decided to implant more pointed anti-bullying measures. She sent a second survey to staff, asking open-ended detailed questions such as: ● ● ●
Do you think we have systems for dealing with bullying or intimidating behaviour and are they clear and effective? Have you seen examples of behaviour at work that you would see as being bullying and intimidating? Do you believe bullying and intimidation is quite isolated (related to one or two individuals or isolated events) or do you think it is more widespread and reflective of the organisations culture?
As a result of this incident there is now better transparency throughout the organisation, and the board and CEO are aware of what’s been going on. They’re able to ensure action is taken as soon as issues are identified to prevent culpability should anything major happen further down the track. Our vision at AskYourTeam is to help leaders unleash their organisations’ potential, but one of the biggest barriers to this is making sure it’s a safe place for everyone, both physically and psychologically. The scale of workplace bullying in New Zealand is an issue of national concern. It’s time every HR manager has a plan to deal with it in their organisation.
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CHRIS O’REILLY CEO, AskYourTeam Chris O’Reilly was the inaugural winner of the NZIM NZ Young Executive of the Year, and has since held several Chief Executive Officer and General Manager positions across a range of key industry sectors of passenger transport, banking & finance, health care, and fast food including Red Bus, Citbank, Ascot Hospital and KFC. Chris brings over a decade of experience of developing organisational strategic plans, doing governance reviews and helping companies and leaders with their communication and involvement initiatives, allowing him to gain deep and truly intimate insights into New Zealand organisations and Kiwi leaders. Today, Chris is the CEO and Co-Founder of AskYourTeam a disruptive technology company, revolutionising the Organisational and Leadership performance space.
About AskYourTeam AskYourTeam enables leaders and organisations to maximise their performance in the quickest, most effective and sustainable way. A win-win-win situation. It does this simultaneously, in three ways:
1. Organisations win by knowing exactly what’s going on where and why, so they can identify, quantify and locate the biggest performance blockages to work on, and best practises to learn from and replicate. 2. Leaders win by getting better information to make better decisions and an incredibly efficient system to involve their people in coming up with the best ideas to improve results and then being able to measure progress. 3. People win by being given a genuine and meaningful voice in how their teams, leaders and organisation perform, in a continuous way.
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