As an employer, it is in your interests to make sure your workplace is bullying-free. Why? Because bullying can have many negative consequences, including:
- an increase in absenteeism;
- greater staff turnover;
- a decrease in employee loyalty and morale;
- a deterioration in employee performance/productivity/efficiency;
- an increase in workers compensation claims;
- a reduction in your capacity to lawfully discipline workers for poor work performance; and
- bad publicity for your business.
So what can you do to prevent it?
There are a number of steps you can take to help prevent bullying occurring on your workplace.
For starters, if you don’t have one already, you should develop and implement a workplace harassment and bullying policy which sets out:
- various definitions of bullying and harassment;
- the behaviour expected of all employees and supervisors across the workplace;
- what employees or supervisors should do in the event that they feel they are being harassed or bullied; and
- what will happen if an allegation of bullying is made.
Also, if you are a medium-large sized organisation, another good preventative measure you can take is to appoint one or more staff to act as ‘contact officers’ to receive and deal (initially) with bullying complaints. Each contact officer should have sufficient training to be capable of resolving complaints. Ideally, the person would be able to deal with less serious cases discreetly and confidentially.
Regards,
Charles Power
Editor-in-Chief
Employment Law Practical Handbook
P.S Here’s a great tip: The sexual harassment policy template in your handbook offers a great starting point for drafting workplace policies.
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Tags: intimidation, workplace bullying
