Workplace Bullying – Senior Adviser Q&A
Published: May 14, 2018
Our senior adviser, Gabrielle Findlay, shares her insider knowledge on harvesting a safe workplace by preventing workplace bullying. In the video above, she responds to frequently asked questions.
Read Transcript
Is workplace bullying a problem in New Zealand?
It's definitely becoming something that
we're seeing a lot more often
So over the past year, for example,
we've had over 400 cases of grievances
or workplace bullying that we've dealt
with in the advice team here.
How is bullying defined?
So bullying is typically defined as
repeated acts of insulting, abusive, or
inappropriate behaviour towards an
individual or a group that calls them to
feel threatened or intimidated in the workplace.
What should employers do?
So I think if an employee,
feels bullied while they're at work there's
definitely an issue there.
Bullying obviously is defined under
legislation, but I think it's always an
employer's obligation to look into any kind
of behaviour that could constitute bullying
and make sure they investigated that fully
and before they decide whether it's just an
employee who feels they've been bullied
or if they actually are being bullied by
definition. And either way that behaviour
needs to be addressed so that person
feels safe and like they have a good work environment
Are there different types of bullying?
We see varied types of bullying
so it can be an employee who
feels they're being bullied by their employer,
staff members, colleagues that
feel like they're being bullied by each other.
Yeah, that's generally what we would see most often.
What's the impact of bullying?
Definitely a negative impact
on the company as a whole we see.
We see a lot of performance issues that
stem from bullying behaviour.
Absenteeism, a lack of engagement in the
workplace, and also a high turnover of staff.
within that company which then in turn can result in
that company having to fork out extra costs for training
and rehiring of that role.
What steps should employers take if there is bullying?
This is where I think it's really important that you have
those strong frameworks and those policies in place to
fall back on that allow you to know what you should do
if you are to come across bullying in the workplace
so we would always advise that
it's a full investigation is undertaken to
establish what's actually going on in that
situation and then steps are taken
obviously to prevent that from happening again in future
and to make sure those staff are aware that
any complaints will be taken seriously
and that you are going to look into them
and that they feel comfortable
and they know how to raise these issues
when they come up.
Advice for employers?
Yeah, I think again with the policies it's really
important to have a solid policy in place
that's communicated to all your staff
So they know what to do if they feel they're in a situation
where they're being bullied
They feel they can come to you and that you will help
them and there is an end to the bullying
that they can see.
There's a lot of times we do see that people don't bring
it up because they just feel that nothing can be done
which is not true at all.