Addressing workplace bullying

Bullying is a psychosocial hazard, but it can also be a sign that other psychosocial hazards have not been adequately controlled. Bullying can be an inappropriate response from workers when they are exposed to other psychosocial hazards such as high job demands or poor support. 

The process for managing workplace bullying is the same as for other workplace hazards—identify the hazards, assess the risks, implement control measures, and review and adjust them as necessary. 

Identifying bullying in your workplace

You should have a reporting mechanism and encourage reporting of all work health and safety hazards. However, there are a range of reasons workers may not feel comfortable reporting bullying, including fear the situation will become worse or their employment will be at risk. 

In addition to responding to formal reports of bullying, you should also take proactive steps, such as:

• consult regularly with workers, health and safety representatives and health and safety committees (if they exist). This may include discussions to find out if bullying is occurring or if any of the factors that increase the likelihood of bullying are present. An anonymous survey may be useful in some instances for raising concerns about unethical or poor behaviours.
• seek feedback when workers leave the organisation, for example, via exit interviews
• seek regular feedback from managers, supervisors or other internal and external parties
• monitor incident reports, workers compensation claims, patterns of absenteeism, sick leave, staff turnover and records of grievances to establish regular patterns or sudden unexplained changes
• provide access to trained peer support officers in the workplace who can provide a safe place to discuss experiences and options
• recognise changes in workplace relationships between workers, customers and managers
• develop a strong set of organisational values and operationalise in your ways of working 
• ensure behaviours form part of performance standards and annual reviews.

It is important to know what can increase the likelihood of workplace bullying. Examples include:

• poor work design (e.g. high job demands, limited job control, role conflict and ambiguity)
• extreme leadership styles (e.g. strict and directive behaviour, or provision of little or no guidance)
• poor systems of work (e.g. lack of resources, unreasonable performance measures or timeframes)
• poor workplace relationships (e.g. poor communication, low levels of support for workers, isolation)
• poor workplace culture or where a particular subgroup of workers may be subject to poor treatment (e.g. industries that can be dominated by one gender). 

Some workers are also at increased risk of being bullied, including younger workers, casual workers or people from minority groups.

Assess the risk 

To assess the risk from psychosocial hazards such as bullying consider:

• Duration – how long is the worker exposed to the hazards or risks? 
• Frequency – how often is the worker exposed to the hazards or risks?
• Severity – how severe are the hazards and the workers’ exposures? 

A person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) must control even low-level risks. However, where bullying is more frequent, longer or more severe, a PCBU will likely be required to do more to discharge their work health and safety duties. 

Control and review

The most effective way to control the risk is to prevent bullying occurring. 

Identify if there are other hazards which may contribute to the emergence of bullying such as high job demands, low job control, poor support or poor organisational justice (see more about psychosocial hazards). 

Consider whether you could change the physical design or layout of the workplace or systems of work to eliminate or minimise the risk. Examples include clearly defining roles and responsibilities, providing appropriate resources, and ensuring the workload matches the workers abilities.

As with all other work health and safety risks, it is important to monitor the controls to ensure these are working.

Workplace culture 

Your workplace culture sets the standards for behaviours expected in your organisation, so it plays an important role in preventing workplace bullying. Everyone in the workplace contributes to the culture, but those in management have a greater influence and responsibility for creating a positive workplace culture. 

Putting organisation-wide systems in place to prevent and manage bullying will be more effective than trying to address individual behaviours in isolation. Some actions your workplace can take include:

• demonstrating senior management’s commitment to identifying, preventing and responding to workplace bullying
• creating a standard for workplace behaviour, e.g. through a code of conduct or a workplace policy
• developing productive and respectful workplace relationships, e.g. by providing training for managers and supervisors in how to facilitate teamwork, consultation and cooperation.

Responding to bullying in the workplace

Effectively responding to issues when they arise can stop the situation happening again. It can also reinforce the commitment your workplace has to managing bullying seriously and consistently. It is important to apply the following principles when handling reports of workplace bullying:

• act promptly
• treat all matters seriously
• maintain confidentiality
• ensure procedural fairness
• be neutral
• support all parties
• do not victimise
• communicate the process and outcomes to all involved parties 
• keep records
• identify if there are any controls that would prevent it happening in future. 

Take all complaints about bullying seriously. And act quickly to address any bullying that occurs in your workplace. 

This content has been adapted from content created by the Australian Human Rights Commission and Safe Work Australia with permission.