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Is Bullying on your hazard board?

The Health and Safety at Work Act (2015) introduced additional changes last month. One of the areas of legislative reform is Workplace Bullying and the associated stress it can cause. As a PCBU (person conducting a business) responsibility falls on you to identify, manage, mitigate and change aspects of your business environment that are contributing to a culture of bullying.

Worksafe NZ define bullying as repeated and unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or a group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety. Occurring over a period of time, it extends to victimising, humiliating, intimidating or threatening a person.

A recent Survey of Working Life by Statistics NZ revealed 10% of employees had experienced discrimination, harassment or bullying at work in the previous 12 months. In 2013, a survey by Victoria University found almost 1/3 of the 16,000 Public Service Association members who responded had experienced bullying in the state sector. The Banking Workers Union surveyed its employees and found that 40% of bank employees experienced bullying. Of rising occurrence is the inappropriate use of technology at work leading to cyberbullying.

It’s easy to see that Bullying is not good for business – it demotivates people, reduces output and results in poor work performance. But more than that, Employers who don’t deal with it risk breaching the Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA), Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 (HSE Act), Human Rights Act 1993 (HRA) and the Harassment Act 1997 (HA).

Classic signs that a team member may be suffering workplace stress brought on by bullying include;
• heightened sensitivity
• unsatisfactory performance
• low morale
• increased mistakes and accidents
• resignation
• customer complaints
• increased absences

Employers’ responsibilities are clearly spelt out in the new Act. These include developing a culture where bullying cannot thrive, extending from staff and directors right through to clients and customers.
How in practice can this be achieved, particularly where habits are deeply entrenched? A good starting point is to review policies and processes against bullying. If you don’t have such a policy, develop one. It will be your guide should any incident come to your attention but also your defence should Worksafe NZ consider your actions in this area deficient.

Have a look for possible situations where bullying may occur in your day to day operations and put the necessary controls in place. This could include offering a support person for anyone dealing with a difficult client, re-allocating staff rosters to avoid ‘personality conflicts’ or introducing a reward system for staff displaying positive behaviour.
Make sure that any incidents of this nature are treated appropriately and without prejudice. Create a complaint-handling process and make sure all staff know what to do and who to talk to in such a situation. Assure staff of your confidentiality and discretion. Endeavour to deal with complaints in a timely way so that issues do not spiral out of control.

Finally, make sure that adequate training is offered to managers responsible for implementing and monitoring bullying policies and processes. Ideally, this forms part of their annual performance review and key performance areas.

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  1. The Unreal Donald Trump The Unreal Donald Trump What about client companies who bully their temp workers?

    And remember that workplace bullying can effect one outside work also eg. Abusing/threatening/swearing/yelling at random strangers in the street - the victim becomes desensitized to the behavior of their workplace and now thinks that the behavior is acceptable even though it's enough to warrant a pcw for disorderly conduct Friday, August 30, 2019

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